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Should We Rejoice At the Death of Christopher Hitchens?

2011-12-21T09:50:00.005-05:00

Since the death of the renowned atheist, Christopher Hitchens, the Christian blogosphere has been a-buzz with pronouncements of hate for him and literal delight at his demise. To justify their attitude of inner pleasure people point to Psalm 139:21-22, which declares, “Do I not hate those who hate you, LORD, and abhor those who are in rebellion against you? I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies.”

It is also being said that Jesus’ words “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44) comport with David’s words this way: when your enemy hates you, you must love him, but if he hates God, then it is permissible to hate him.

This answer only raises more questions. As a Christian how can a person hate me but not hate God? Jesus said “You will be hated by all because of My name” (Mark 13:13). According to Jesus’ view of things, people hate me for being a Christian because they first hate God. Their hatred of me is a byproduct of their hatred for God. So the possibility of somehow surgically loving others who hate me while simultaneously hating those who hate God is problematic, to say the least.

But perhaps the more important matter is the meaning of Psalm 139:21-22 and its relationship to Matthew 5:44. In ancient times, suzerainty treaties were struck between rulers and vassals. Such treaties date to the 2^nd millennium B.C., and have been discovered among ancient Hittite kings.

Without going into the intricacies of such treaties, it will be sufficient here to note that the dominant entity is called a suzerain. Among other things, he provided his vassal(s) lands and limited self-rule. In return, the vassal paid a form of tribute to the suzerain. The treaties were often convenient ways overlords kept potential enemies mollified. In medieval times the practice continued, though modified greatly in form, to include feudal lords and vassals. Here the giving of lands and titles by Kings to powerful gentry was a hopeful means of keeping the peace.

Central to the covenant between the suzerain and the vassal was also a pledge of loyalty on the part of the vassal. This most often took the form of a vow to be on the right side of warfare should the suzerain be attacked. A typical pronouncement of such loyalty was “With my friend you shall be friend, and with my enemy you shall be enemy.” Another way to put this is “Your friend shall be my friend and your enemy my enemy.” The customary pledge of fidelity did not call upon the vassal to sit around all day hating those whom hated the suzerain. It simply meant that should the King or Lord be attacked, the vassal was prepared to spring to his defense.

What does any of this have to do with whether or not we should hate Christopher Hitchens? Returning to Psalm 139:21-22, we find here the inclusion of covenantal terms that mirror the ancient and customary pledge of vassal loyalty. Now we wish to be brief so here is the point. In the New Covenant, Jesus is the vassal “servant” who fulfilled all of the stipulations of that covenant. In essence, at the cross he went to war for the King. There he overcame all haters of God, including the devil, and freed his elect by giving himself an atoning sacrifice for our sins (Hebrews 2:14-15). Indeed, “For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death. For HE HAS PUT ALL THINGS IN SUBJECTION UNDER HIS FEET” (1 Corinthians 15:25-27).

Now that God’s righteous demands have been met in His Son, we are instructed to “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt. 5:44). The surgical interpretation of Psalm 139:21-22 and Matthew 5:44 is simply unnecessary and confusing.

The loyalty pledge of the Psalmist is a prophetic indicator of Jesus’ Messianic mission. Its completion in history means that by his obedience we are free to love our enemies. By way of analogy, it also means that should our God and his gospel be attacked we are not to stew in hatred of God’s enemies but are always to be ready to spring in defense. We are to “sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence” (1 Peter 3:15).

John Barber, PhD

Immigration and the 6th Commandment

2011-08-18T19:02:00.001-04:00

The western nations in particular are struggling to keep pace with the implications of increased immigration of foreigners coupled with lax immigration policies. Anders Breivik’s July 22^nd 2011 murder spree in Oslo, Norway was fueled largely by anti-immigration fury. Problematically, his perspective was endorsed by Francesco Speroni, a leading member of Italy’s Northern League.[1]

Jacques Coutela, a member of France’s National Front party, referred to Breivik as an “icon.”[2] Clearly, immigration of Muslims throughout Western Europe, and of Hispanics mainly to the U.S., is fostering a new cleavage in societies in the move toward globalization. As the protectionist mindset of mainly the nativistic “right” entrenches itself in ethno-nationalistic and cultural fervor, the national and cultural identity of “outsiders” is viewed suspiciously if not contemptuously. If some reports are correct that the drift toward multiculturalism and religious syncretism is actually helping groups such as The Muslim Brothers of Europe in their quest for “Eurabia,” and the Reconquistas to take back part of America’s great Southwest, then suspicion is warranted, but not contempt.[3]

What can the sixth commandment offer Western countries that are to a greater extent worried about this issue? Theologian John Frame goes right to the Scriptures to say that “The Mosaic law does extend the commandment of love to ‘strangers,’ people sojourning within Israel (Lev. 19:34). But it is the New Testament that extends the covenant community to all nations. The Great Commission mandates love to all peoples as we bring good news to them.”[4] Frame does not mean to diminish the need for strict immigration policies. He means to augment our mandate by divine law to share the Good News of Jesus with strangers, regardless of their legal status or motives.

In our haste to criticize illegal immigrants, let us remember, as Frame has said, that the commandment, because it speaks universally to all “sin and righteousness” and thus to all life and death issues, points first to our own sin; that we were all at one time without life in God, “strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (italics added, Eph. 2:12). The human response ought therefore to be one of shard identity with our Lord: “I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in” (italics added, Matt. 25:43).

Moderns see the biblical remedy as a castle in the air. But history proves that the gospel alone can tear down walls of suspicion and contempt between severely divided people groups. Can anyone reading this present a comparable solution from history?

[1] John Hopper, Ex-Berlusconi minister defends Anders Behring Breivik, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/27/ex-berlusconi-minister-defends-breivik (July 27, 2011).

[2] Associated Press, French party suspends man over Oslo suspect praise, http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gngH6Fi6DG-QerFHrCy4cjZfdWRQ?docId=eef6198a611f4b80840c691c429d7ba0 (July 27, 2011).

[3] On the motives of the Muslim Brotherhood, see Brigitte Maréchal, The Muslim brothers in Europe: roots and discourse, (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2008). For a general overview of European perceptions of the Muslim advance across Europe, see Raphael Israeli, The Islamic Challenge in Europe (New Brunswick & London: Transaction Publishers, 2008). A book that includes a large section on the Reconquista movement is Patrick J. Buchanan, The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization (New York: St. Martin’s Press. 2002), esp. 123-146.

[4] DCL, 691.

Sin and Grace

2011-06-01T09:34:00.003-04:00

Sin enslaves several ways. Let’s look at just two. First, sin enslaves us by producing compelling desires. The Bible declares, “Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness” (Rom. 6:16).

Sin enslaves by making anything look more desirable than Jesus. That's what sin is: desiring something above Jesus and then acting on it. And the second way sin enslaves is that it eventually damns us. In Mark 9:46, Jesus Christ says about hell, “Where their worm does not die not, and the fire is not quenched.” Unless something intervenes, it leads to hell. I call this slavery because someone might say, “I'm fine with desiring things more than Jesus. Sounds free to me.” But you wouldn't say that if you saw clearly that the end of that road was destruction.

But thank God freedom comes in two forms. First, he frees us from the desire for sin by changing our nature through the new birth. Paul writes, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8) And the essence of it is that he gives us eyes to see that our Savior is more to be desired than anything in the world. Second, He frees us from the damnation of sin by being condemned for us. Paul says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Gal. 3:13). When our sins are forgiven, and God's wrath is taken away, and we see Jesus as a greater Treasure than all the world, we are freed from both the desire and the damnation of sin. We are free indeed. By grace, that’s what Jesus holds out to you today.

Socrates and Christianity

2011-05-06T08:17:00.002-04:00

What, exactly, did Socrates teach? Well, among other things, he
fervently believed that everyone should be serious about the
question as to what sort of life a person should live. Plato
recorded the teachings of Socrates in his DIALOGUES. At the very
end of GORGIAS, one of these dialogues, Socrates said, "You may
let anyone despise you as a fool and do you outrage, if he
wishes, yes, and you may cheerfully let him strike you with that
humiliating blow, for you will suffer no harm thereby if you
really are a good man and an honorable, and pursue virtue. . . .
This is the best way of life--to live and die in the pursuit of
righteousness and all other virtues. Let us follow this, I say,
inviting others to join us." Socrates lived these truths and he
did so even unto death, thereby causing the truths which he
taught to make an indelible impression upon his society, and upon
all future societies that would be influenced by Hellenistic
culture.

The story of the life and death of Socrates, as described by
Plato, Xenophon, and others, was therefore of vital importance in
shaping the values of Western civilization. Justin Martyr, the
ancient Christian Father who had been a student of philosophy
before he became a Christian, continued to wear the pallium, the
philosopher's cloak, for the rest of his life, because he saw in
Christianity the fulfillment of the very things that Socrates had
stood for. By the time of the Renaissance, people were still
talking about the life, trial, and death of Socrates as though
these were among the most important events of history. Northern
Renaissance Humanism placed a high premium upon these values, and
for that reason, sought to collect, study, preserve, and publish
the manuscripts of ancient Greek philosophy, of the New
Testament, and of the early church fathers. The primary concern
of these scholars was to return to the high values of ancient
classical civilization, and to the teachings of the Bible. The
work of these humanists laid the groundwork for the Protestant
Reformation in such an obvious way that it was soon said of one
of them, Erasmus of Rotterdam, that he had laid the egg that
Luther hatched.

Vos Against Two-Kingdoms Mentality

2011-03-24T08:42:00.001-04:00

*Perhaps you already know that the surname of one of America’s premier twentieth-century Reformed-Presbyterian theologians is the Dutch word for “fox.”

“Vos” was his name. Geerhardus Vos.

A friend supplied me this “foxy” quote as an encouragement in clarifying the issues surrounding NL2K (a modern construal of Natural Law + 2 Kingdoms):

[87] From this, however, it does not necessarily follow, that the visible church is the only outward expression of the invisible kingdom. Undoubtedly the kingship of God, as his recognized and applied supremacy, is intended to pervade and control the whole of human life in all its forms of existence. This the parable of the leaven plainly teaches. These various forms of human life have each their own sphere in which they work and embody themselves. There is a sphere of science, a sphere of art, a sphere of the family and of the state, a sphere of commerce and industry. Whenever one of these spheres comes [88] under the controlling influence of the principle of the divine supremacy and glory, and this outwardly reveals itself, there we can truly say that the Kingdom of God has become manifest.

But “the Fox” has just begun. Read on:

[88] And what is true of the relation between church and state, may also be applied to the relation between the visible church and the various other branches into which the organic life of humanity divides itself. It is entirely in accordance with the spirit of Jesus’ teaching to subsume these under the kingdom of God and to co-ordinate them with the visible church as true manifestations of this kingdom, in so far as the divine sovereignty and glory have become in them the controlling principle. But it must always be remembered, that the latter can only happen, when all these, no less than the visible church, stand in living contact with the forces of regeneration supernaturally introduced into the [89] world by the Spirit of God. While it is proper to separate between the visible church and such things as the Christian state, Christian art, Christian science, etc., these things, if they truly belong to the kingdom of God, grow up out of the regenerated life of the invisible church.

For your files, the complete bibliographical reference is: Geerhardus Vos, The Teaching of Jesus Concerning the Kingdom of God and the Church (Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1972 [repr.]), 87-89.

*Thanks to Nelson Kloosterman for this information from Geerhardus Vos.

Resolving Life's Paradoxes

2011-02-23T10:33:00.002-05:00

Central to Reformed theology is its proper commitment to the authority of Scripture. The role of Scripture is not tangential, but is a prima presupposition upon which Reformed theology is predicated. The predominant concern given to the importance of Scripture is set forth in the first chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith, titled, “Of Holy Scripture.”

Although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men unexcusable; yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of His will, which is necessary unto salvation. Therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manners, to reveal Himself, and to declare that His will unto His Church; and afterwards for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the Church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing; which makes the Holy Scripture to be most necessary; those former ways of God's revealing His will unto His people being now ceased.

Despite the fact that God has revealed His will and ways to us in the Old and New Testaments, there exist a whole series of issues in theology, which are almost universally accepted as “tensions.” These tensions include such areas as particularization and abstraction (in older theology this tension is called the “one and the many”), the age-old question of the relationship of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility, the catholicity and individuality of the Church, the dual natures of Christ, and the three persons of the Trinity.

In the history of theology these tensions have sometimes been made to stand out even more as theologians have superimposed on the Bible intellectual frameworks, which themselves are dualistic in nature. Here I am thinking of the inherent dualism of reason and revelation in the nature/grace schema of Thomas Aquinas, the mechanical philosophy/theology of Descartes, and the view of Wittgenstein that religious language need not be True truth. In addition, there is the alleged dichotomy of reason and metaphysics as seen in modern theology and philosophy, and the mental split in post-modern thought between individualism and multiculturalism (the emergence of this problem is more recent but actually predates Lyotard by centuries as it has appeared in different forms).

These tensions, regardless of how they are framed by the jargon of Western theology and philosophy, have, in many cases, provided a helpful set of qualifiers and quantifiers for the direction of cultural beliefs and values. Yet, upon closer analysis, these same helps are largely responsible for creating more unanswered questions. In modern times, the Dutch Reformed theologian, Cornelius Van Til, for example, attempted to settle the issue of dualisms in Scripture and in theology generally arguing that they represent a series of unexplainable “paradoxes.” Despite my high regard for Van Til as a theologian, his explanation reminds me of the proverbial dog chasing its tail. It provides a direction without really taking us anywhere.

Contra Van Til, other theologians insist that the Bible does not contain paradoxes, but only the “appearance” of paradoxes, which can be resolved by spending more time in the study of Scripture. In other words, this group argues that the persistent claim to paradoxes in the Bible is simply the lazy man’s way to justify his poor hermeneutic.

Problematically, both groups of theologians have ventured down the wrong tracks in their attempts to address the problem of supposed theological tensions. The fact is that there is no such a thing as a theological tension arising out of the Bible.[1] The thought that such exist is the result of a long-held deficiency in Reformed epistemology. Once this deficiency is addressed the tensions are resolved.

Hebrews 11:1 records, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Here the writer presents us a biblically-based, intellectual framework for one’s thoughts. Already a clue has surfaced regarding how best to solve theological riddles. The fact is that theologians who refer to theological tensions do so out of a misguided commitment to the high role of natural reason in the work of theology. In other words, they begin with the wrong intellectual framework. What theologians have a tendency to see as theological tensions are not tensions at all, but the implications of looking at Scripture from a far too temporal and rational viewpoint. Theological tensions are understood quite easily when we enlist a different intellectual framework: faith, grounded in the very Word of God. This is not to suggest that faith is a-rational or anti-reason. Faith enables us to see all of life itself from God’s supra-temporal perspective, a place where intellectual tensions do not exist.

These facts have far-reaching significance for Reformed theology. They suggest that the faith is not of secondary concern in theology, but is of principle importance. In fact, faith is intimately connected with what it means to have “the mind of Christ.” To have the mind of Christ results in many good things, but for our argument the mind of Christ enables us to see life as God sees it: as a unity rather than as a set of paradoxical pieces of a puzzle that reason cannot solve. This is not to disregard the diversity of the universe; but it places such diversity in the context of a created world of meaning without the problem of internal disassociation.

This last point should be of special interest to Reformed theologians who are skittish about faith in abstractio, which is not our point. Faith is always dependent on its object and as such maintains the key to resolving the so-called paradoxes or dualisms that typically confront us in the ongoing work of theology.

[1] Note that I am not referring to alleged textual discrepancies in the Bible such as the several accounts of the resurrection of Jesus Christ as recorded in the synoptic gospels, and which theologians have tried to harmonize. The issue at hand is theological and includes areas already mentioned: the sovereignty of God vs. human responsibility, the dual natures of Christ, the catholicity of the Church vs. the particular church, and more.

What Can Christians Eat?

2011-02-09T15:33:00.001-05:00

In 1 Cor. 8 Paul discusses meat sacrificed to idols. Here we find that some immature believers were concerned that to eat such meat engaged them in idolatry. Paul’s main point is that there is no such thing as an idol; they are only wood and stone. Thus our consciences are at liberty to eat the meat. However, should there be present a “weaker brother” who has not yet grown beyond the point of superstition (v. 9-13), one should defer to him or her and not eat.

A theological term that arises in connection with Paul’s discussion in 1 Cor. 8 is adiaphora. It comes from the Greek, ἀδιάφορα— “indifferent things.” Adiaphora in Christianity refer to matters not regarded as essential to the faith, but nevertheless as permissible for Christians or allowed in church. What is specifically considered adiaphora tends to depend on the specific theology of a Church in view.

In our day much is said about foods, especially in America, where a growing movement is a foot and that teaches abstinence from meat. People say that since God created Adam to eat food from the ground, and we are restored in Christ through salvation, and thus to our pre-fall condition, that the consistent Christian will eat only foods that come from the ground, as did Adam.

The argument is flawed on more levels than I will take the time to innumerate. However, the Bible, rather than restrict our diets, permits foods of all sorts (Acts 10-11; Col. 2:16; Gal. 4:9-10), bearing in mind that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit—a fact that ought to caution us against over indulgence regarding food. The world imposes many rules on us. But Christianity liberates our conscience. Nonetheless, our freedom ought not to be used as an opportunity for the flesh. If the choice is between acting according to our freedom of conscience and offending a brother or sister, we must decline the use of our freedom and think more highly of others (“Love your neighbor as yourself”).

Romans 1 and Covenant Breakers

2011-01-15T15:43:00.001-05:00

In a comment on Facebook (1/14/11), I made this observation: “Most of us have misunderstood Romans 1:18-21. The unbeliever not only knows THAT God exists but WHO God is; his covenant head. Suppression of the truth therefore takes on a far deeper meaning."

The passage in view teaches that fallen men know THAT God is. But their knowledge is also knowledge of his “invisible attributes” and “divine nature” (v. 20). And it should be added that they also have a personal knowledge of God—i.e., they know HIM, not just information about him (v. 21). And of course this includes knowledge of God’s ethical standards (see the rest of chapter, esp. v. 32).

Like Van Til, I think it is silly to say that someone knows THAT God is but is completely ignorant about WHO he is. How can you know the existence of something without knowing anything at all about its nature? On that premise, you can’t even specify what it is that you know the existence of. If I say I believe in the existence of mountains in Alaska, my belief certainly includes a claim to know what a mountain is.

In the language of Romans 1, the non-Christian denies the existence of mountains in Alaska. Yet his denial of mountains in Alaska still assumes that he knows what a mountain is (via negative). Likewise, the unbeliever’s denial of God assumes who he is denying.

So if someone says he believes in God, he must have some idea of what he means by God, what sort of God he believes in. For someone to say he disbelieves in God, he must have some idea of what he means by God, what sort of God he disbelieves in.

So the question amounts to “how much do fallen people know?” Or “what specifically do they know about God?”

“Eternal power,” “invisible attributes,” and “divine nature” (v. 20) are each very comprehensive phrases and Paul explicitly says the unbelievers’ knowledge includes these things, that is, God’s omnipotence and eternity. God’s love/justice is also implicit in what Paul says about the moral standards of God. And certainly the whole chapter pictures God as knowledgeable about what is happening in the world, giving up people to unbridled lusts, and so on.

But referencing the Facebook statement above, can we go as far as to say that fallen men know “deep down inside” that they are in covenant with God and therefore covenant-breakers? Paul never uses the term “covenant” in Rom. 1, although Isaiah 24:5 may allude to that. In any case, it’s important here to formulate some understanding of what “covenant” means. Covenant is a Lord/servant relationship, and clearly the sinners of Rom. 1 understand that. Further, covenants in Scripture all have the same essential elements: God’s name, historical prologue (grace), stipulations, sanctions, and administration.

In Rom. 1, fallen men know who God is (the name). They have the responsibility (stipulations) to obey and worship God—always a covenantal responsibility in Scripture. Those responsibilities are accompanied by blessings for obedience, curses for disobedience (covenant sanctions). Clearly what happens in Rom. 1 is that God administers curses for disobedience.

Now there is no “historical prologue” in Rom. 1, but interestingly Paul brings in something like this in Acts 14:17 and 17:24-30: the historical prologue (previous grace) is the fact that God has given to people the benefit of living in his world within fixed “bounds of habitation” and “fruitful seasons.” They ought to be grateful for such unmerited favor and should worship the true God alone.

Is Our Knowledge of God Analogical of Univocal?

2010-12-20T07:48:00.009-05:00

As a matter of first principles in apologetics, we can ask, “What does the unbeliever know about God?” However, the biblical apologetic is shaped not only by what Scripture says the unbeliever knows, but also by what it reveals he can know; is capable of knowing, as a believer. So we might also ask, “Is it our hope that the unbeliever can know God as God knows himself or that he can know God reflectively, in a creaturely way?” This is the univocal/analogical problem in Christian epistemology.

The question arises in the context of the structure of human thought. It bears its own unique dilemma. If we stress too excessively that knowledge of God is univocal we run the risk of lowering the incomprehensible God to the level of the finite and make God as one of us. But if we stress too emphatically knowledge of God per analogiam we may very well deprive God of all likeness to the humanity he has created with the result that all we are left with is a barren, abstraction.

To a considerable extent the argument took fertile shape in the debate of the 1940s between Cornelius Van Til and Gordon H. Clark. At issue was God’s incomprehensibility with both men claiming biblical precedent minus the faux pas of excess. It is a matter of regret that we can only provide an abbreviated review of the controversy. Van Til was jealous to protect the Creator/creature distinction both in reality, or what Frame calls “two-levels of reality,” and in knowledge.[1] “All [man’s] knowledge is analogical of God. God is the original knower and man is the derivative re-knower.”[2] John M. Frame stands with Van Til. Thus “To be a creature is to be limited in thought and knowledge.”[3] And “God’s thoughts are the originals of which ours, at best, are only copies, images.”[4] Earlier, Herman Bavinck said, “There is no knowledge of God as he is in himself. We are human and he is the Lord our God . . . he infinitely transcends our picture of him, our ideas of him, our language concerning him. He is not comparable to any creature.”[5] This led Bavinck to verify a staple of Continental Reformed thought: the archetype/ectype distinction. “Of course, all our knowledge of God is ectypal or derived from Scripture. Only God’s self-knowledge is adequate, underived or archetypal.”[6]

Clark, on the other hand, feared that if man’s knowledge was derivative of God’s then this would lead to skepticism. “It seemed to him that if there was some discrepancy between man’s ‘This is a rose’ and God’s (concerning the same rose). Then the human assertion must somehow fall short of the truth, since the very nature of truth is identity with God’s mind.”[7] Van Til, however, insisted that analogical sapentia though incomprehensive and derivative is nonetheless true knowledge.[8] “We may safely conclude then that if God is what we say he is, namely a being who exists necessarily as a self-complete system of coherence, and we exist at all as self-conscious beings, we must have true knowledge of him . . . All this we express theologically when we say that man is created in God’s image. This makes man like God and assures true knowledge of God. We are known of him and therefore we know him and know that we know him. God is light and therefore we have light.”[9]

In addition to our knowledge being analogical, Van Til held that it is also partial—or as he used to say, “non-exhaustive.” Phrased in a question, “What is the correspondence between God’s self-knowledge and the created reflection known by man?” Strictly speaking, does ectypal theology contain everything that is contained in its archetypal counterpart or do we know only what God wants us to know?” According to Clark, God knows more than we do, but the quality of our knowledge can be the same as his. Van Til argued that both the quality and the quantity of God’s archetypal knowledge differ from our ectypal knowledge.

Finally, both men agree that all knowledge is given by natural and special revelation. But for Clark, that revelation is propositional in the sense that it always conveys univocal truth. Per Van Til, God’s revelation to man is accommodated truth. Accommodated revelation is coherent to man, but true coherence does not afford identity of content between the revelation God gives and what man receives. “Van Til, therefore, insisted that even when God and man were thinking of the same thing (a particular rose, for example), their thoughts about it were never identical—God’s were the thoughts of the Creator, man’s of the creature.”[10] Here we see a precursor to Frame’s covenantal lordship principle. Because man cannot know the essence of God one-to-one, but always and forever as a servant (analogically), even now in the face of Scripture “Man knows in subordination to God; he knows as the covenant-keeper.”[11] Scripture, then, is better thought of a “system of truth.”[12] This is really what Van Til meant by “analogical”—our knowledge must accept God’s revelation as the ultimate standard of truth.[13]

Clark’s seminal idea is that “The intelligibility of the Scriptures presupposes logic.”[14] Clark interprets and paraphrases John 1:1 to mean, “In the beginning was Logic, and Logic was with God, and Logic was God . . . In logic was life and the life was the light of men.”[15] Clark, then, makes the stunning admission that “Logic is God.”[16] Clark does not mean that human logic is God, but that God thinking is logic and that the connection of his logic to ours is univocal. By virtue of this, knowledge of God in se is possible. The source of univocal knowledge is the Bible. Contra empiricism, Clark maintained a very wary view of what we can know through sense experience, arguing instead that knowledge of God was what we learn from Scripture. So then there is a direct correlation between God’s thought and Scripture. “What is said in Scripture is God’s thought”[17] and since our logic is univocal of God’s there exists a direct continuum from God’s thought, to Scripture, to us.[18] Van Til and Frame deny such an epistemological continuum between man and God.

Anticipating a critique of his views based on Isaiah 55:8-9, which stipulates that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, Clark replies, “If for example, we think that David was King of Israel, and God’s thoughts are not ours, then it follows that God does not think David was King of Israel. David in God’s mind was perchance prime minister of Babylon.”[19]

In an essay, Nathan Pitchford succeeds in countering Robert Reymond’s exact exploitation of Clark’s example. “On the contrary, given the basic legitimacy of the system, it is entirely possible to prove that God’s knowledge is in actuality analogical to what we understand by Nebuchadnezzar’s being King of Babylon; because God himself framed the symbolical/analogical essence of human language as well as the corresponding and uniform human apprehension of that absolute knowledge, he is entirely capable of making the analogical an accurate reflection of the absolute.”[20]

Pitchford charges Clark and Reymond with twisting the Nebuchadnezzar motif. Their point is at base unfair because Van Til nowhere suggests that actual reality and analogical reality are substantially different, as their critique portrays. “On the contrary, Van Til means that every human perception of actual reality (uniform and consistent to the whole race), although not absolute, nevertheless reflects that pure truth in a unique way that corresponds precisely to that real truth, much as the image in a mirror corresponds precisely to the actual thing it reflects, even though it is not that thing . . . Thus, analogical knowledge does not cast one into the morass of ambiguity as Reymond suggests.”[21]

We agree with Pitchford's assessment wholeheartedly and, generally speaking, side with the analogical interpretation of human knowledge as expressed by Van Til.

[1] “Christians believe in two levels of existence as derived from the level of God’s existence as self-contained and the level of man’s existence as derived from the level of God’s existence. For this reason, Christians must also believe in two levels of knowledge, the level of God’s knowledge which is absolutely comprehensive and self-contained, and the level of man’s knowledge which is not comprehensive but is derivative and re-interpretive” [Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, vol. 5 In Defense of the Faith, 12].

[2] Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, vol. 5 In Defense of the Faith, 167.

[3] Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, 21.

[4] Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, 23.

[5] Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Vol 2. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), 47.

[6] Ibid. 95. Peter J. Wallace, in a review of Timothy Phillips’ work on Francis Turretin’s (1623-1687) theological method, notes that “Crucial to Turretin’s discussion of theology is his distinction between archetypal theology and ectypal theology; and the further distinction between the ectypal theology of vision, which is the theology of the saints in heaven, and the ectypal theology of the traveler—‘the theology of revelation’—with which we must remain content” [Peter J. Wallace, “The Doctrine of the Covenant in the Elenctic Theology of Francis Turretin,” http://www.peterwallace.org/turretin.txt.The Turretin reference is in the first volume of his Institutes of Elenctic Theology (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1992), 4-5.] The distinction was also significant to Amandus Polanus (1561-1610). “Archetypal theology is the exemplar: ectypal theology is the exemplum, which ought to agree with, correspond with, and resemble the exemplar. Thus ectypal theology is, in rational creatures, a part of the image and likeness of God according to which they were created” [Quoted by Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1993), 135]. In Divine Discourse by Sebastian Rehnman, the author notes the use of the archetypal/ectypal theology distinction in the puritan divine, John Owen (1616-1683), in which God’s knowledge of Himself (in se) is understood to be related to, but different than, our knowledge of God (pro nobis). In his Reformed Dogmatics, Heppe says of the older dogmaticians that “Regularly they discuss the distinction between theologia archetypa (i.e. ‘the knowledge which God has of Himself and in Himself’) and theologia ectypa (i.e. ‘man’s knowledge of God’). The latter they divide into theologia beatorum and theologia viatorum, the second being theology proper” [Heinrich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, (1861, repr., Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1978), 5].

[7] Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, 22.

[8] Bavinck puts it like this, “Ectypal knowledge must not be seen as merely symbolic, a product of poetic imagination . . . While our knowledge of him is accommodated and limited, it is no less real, true, and trustworthy” [Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Vol 2. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), 95]. On the fact that accommodated knowledge is nonetheless true knowledge, R. Scott Clark, says, “Ectypal theology, as the adjective suggests, is a reflection of the archetypal theology. It is true, but it is accommodated to human creatures” [R. Scott Clark, foreword to The Free Offer of the Gospel, John Murray].

[9] Cornelius Van Til, Defense of the Faith (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 1967), 57.

[10]Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, 21-22. In an extreme polemic against univocal reasoning, Van Til therefore states, “The distinguishing characteristic between every non-Christian theory of knowledge on the one hand, and the Christian concept of knowledge on the other hand, is, therefore, that in all non-Christian theories men reason univocally, while in Christianity men reason analogically” [Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, vol. 5 In Defense of the Faith, 11]. Similarly, Augustine gave expression, “We are speaking of God. It is any wonder if you do not comprehend? For if you comprehend, it is not God you comprehend. Let it be a pious confession of ignorance rather than a rash profession of knowledge. To attain some slight knowledge of God is a great blessing; to comprehend him, however, is totally impossible” [Augustine, Lectures on the Gospel of John, tract. 38, NPNF (1), VII, 217-21].

[11] Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, vol. 5 In Defense of the Faith, 167.

[12] Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, vol. 5 In Defense of the Faith, 173.

[13] Indeed, Van Til often says that unless knowledge from Scripture is analogical, there is no possibility of knowing the truth; for all truth is a revelation of the incomprehensible God. The man who thinks he comprehends truth as God does, has made himself out to be God, which in turn precludes the possibility of his knowing the truth.

[14] Gordon H. Clark, An Introduction to Christian Philosophy. 2^nd ed. (Jefferson, Maryland: The Trinity Foundation, 1993 ), 64.

[15] Ibid. 67.

[16] Ibid. A favorite retort of Clark’s focused on the consequences of the analogical position that verified coherence but not content. So he asked if God has a different arithmetic, in which 2+2=5? [Ibid. 76]. Van Til replied that to know 2+2=clearly, as Clark suggests, is to know it exhaustively, which violates the incomprehensibility of God. But we can know that 2+2=4 on the basis of an “identity of reference point” [Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, vol. 5 In Defense of the Faith, 167].

[17] Gordon H. Clark, An Introduction to Christian Philosophy. 2^nd ed. 77.

[18] Followers of Clark are thus given to say that there are no paradoxes or discrepancies in Scripture. If such are thought to exist it is only due to a breakdown in the logical and exegetical study of Scripture. See W. Gary Crampton “Does the Bible Contain Paradox?” The Trinity Foundation (November/December 1990). http://www.trinityfoundation.org/journal.php?isbn=76.

[19] Clark, An Introduction to Christian Philosophy. 76.

[20] Nathan Pitchford, “Van Til: His Logic, Epistemology, and Apologetic,” http://www.reformationtheology.com/2006/06/van_til_his_logic_epistemology.php.

[21] Nathan Pitchford, in a personal email to the author, dated September, 28^th, 2010.

Rousseau and Social Contract

2010-12-03T17:58:00.002-05:00

Long before Arendt, we have Jean-Jacques Rousseau attempting freedom without authority in society. Once Rousseau experienced the conversion of his soul from academies and culture to the freedom and warm sentiment of nature, in 1750, he wrote his Discourse (First Discourse), in which he tried to show that the arts and sciences were the result of human vice, not virtue, and the cause of the slippery slope in Europe toward moral decline. He developed this thought further in his second Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, where he set over and against the genuine misery of the social conditions of his day the ideal of the “nature state.” Here the potential for people living together with the charm of nature as the central defining emblem of life compelled them to live as a free, sane, and good; in peace and solidarity, not in warlike aggression.

In his Social Contract, he envisions the state emerging from a hypothetical contract in which the citizens do not surrender their rights, but instead combine forces into one voluntary sovereign entity. In this romanticized fiction the people, rather than limit freedoms, allow freedom to flourish at its optimum level, they curb crime, and live for neighbor with unfeigned love.

The religious inclination of Rousseau was to see redemption, then, as a turning from culture to nature; from complex society to its original state of innocence and feeling. He posited the existence of God, but the problem is that according to him very little can be known of God. Rejecting the authority of Scripture, Rousseau argues that the Creator can only be known by observing nature and looking within one’s self. He also argues that humanity does not need the Bible, but will naturally worship the Creator, stating, “I do not need to be taught this worship; it is dictated to me by nature itself” (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile: or, On Education, ed. Alan Bloom [Basic Book, 1979], 278).

In Rousseau’s opinion, to seek any other source than nature for how to worship God would be to seek the opinion and authority of men, which he rejected as harmful. As such, Rousseau contends that that humans are autonomous creatures, and that humanity is free to do evil, but that doing evil detracts from satisfaction with oneself. Rousseau thanks God for making him in His image so that he can be free, but it is hard to determine from Rousseau if this God” if his is not nature. Frame remarks, “. . . Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78), the father of Romanticism, thought that everything good in the world is the outworking of good feelings” [John M. Frame, The Doctrine of the Christian Life (P&R Publishing), 77].

Will Evangelicalism Die or Revive: An Excerpt from My Almost for His Highest

2010-11-05T07:32:00.000-04:00

Evangelicalism is dying. The glory of God is ready to depart. As a movement, we're growing more and more content in the world. Rather than preferring to be absent from the body and present with the Lord, far too many of us prefer to be present with the body and with our future plans. We attend church. But mainly our interest is to learn how to improve our own lots in life. We're repeating the error of the impenitent thief on the cross to whom Jesus was only a matter of convenience. You can hear it in our prayers. Entreaties and petitions that once reflected verses of the Bible are now strangely at odds with Holy Writ. The way He taught us to pray, with hearts submitted to his Kingdom rule, are more and more becoming images of modern man and his quest for successful living.

What has become of the spirit of brokenness and humility in our churches? We are forgetting to bow the knee. What has happened to the cry of the penitent thief who, in unassuming contrition, cried from the depths of his sin-sick soul, "Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!" We are forgetting we are thieves. Daily repentance and walking in true faith and holiness before God are being pushed aside to make room for the idols of personal relevance and the settled life.

What has become of our commitment to the crucified life? Have we forgotten His promise that we'll be persecuted for the sake of righteousness? To scores of Protestant believers the cross is a symbol, but that is all. What was once our joy to bear His cross turned to apprehension of it, and in our apprehension of it, we soon came to revile the very thought of losing face for His gospel. We are losing our saltiness.

Once there was a highway to heaven, full of born again souls set on pilgrimage to their heavenly Zion, a place not of this world. But now the highway is quickly being paved over with the veneer of casual Christianity. Other than the remaining trappings of ecclesiastical tradition found in some of our churches, or the name of Jesus heard through the loud speakers of culturally-sensitive extravaganzas called worship services found in others, very little evidence remains in the evangelical movement of what might be coined "evangelical."

What is the cause of our sickness? Evangelical leaders, and their followers, are relinquishing their commitment to the fundamentals of the Bible in order to induce church growth, regardless of the cost to the purity of the Church. As a result, though many of our churches look prosperous on the outside, they are dying on the inside. What's so very sad is how few know it, and if they do know it, are unwillingly to admit it.

But there is hope for the future. Spiritual awakening is on the horizon. Though modern evangelicalism is dying, God is coming to revive His people. God is already at work raising a people with a Christ-centered and Christ-focused theology and manner of life. This move of God will bring reformation to many churches, ignite personal and proclamation evangelism, convert scores of people -- many of whom have been members of churches for years -- and kick off a fresh wave of missionary activity. The concerned Protestant is therefore incorrect to interpret the swelling tide of worldliness, which is now overtaking our churches, as the final word. No power on earth can resist almighty God when He flexes His awakening muscle.

This very moment God is preparing a generation of people like John the Baptist, reared in the wilderness, who truly grasp the anointing of the Holy Spirit and are fathered, mentored, and taught by God Himself through servants who proclaim His Truth. Their theology will be both scriptural and supernatural. They will feed on the works of the Reformers of old while contending for the wonders of Acts, not for the sake of spectacle, but for the unveiling of a Living, Holy God who can only be beheld through the sin-demolishing blood of Jesus Christ, the Son and Savior. It all goes back to the cross, however. When that becomes central in the body of Christ again, the sleeping giant, the Church, will arise and will be one army, united behind one cause -- the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

How will God bring revival? Precisely the way He's done it in the past. He will cleanse the house of Israel of its cultural carnality and vindicate His name among the nations. In this special season, we will embrace the "words in red" -- which we've conveniently quarantined under the "hard sayings of Jesus" -- the way an asthmatic embraces oxygen. The waste places shall be restored. The ancient fields replanted. He will put a "new Spirit" within us. No longer will we permit the culture to set the agenda for the Church. The Church will again set the agenda for the culture.

If you doubt my anticipation of a great coming revival, then consider the following historical facts. The 16^th-century European Reformation had a profound impact on virtually every area of European life. However, the spiritual danger facing Europe of the early 17^th century was one that the magisterial Reformers Luther and Calvin would not have predicted. The rising sun of the Reformation that had shown such promise of being the standard-bearer of the light of the gospel to the nations had, within just several decades of their deaths, been eclipsed by a false gospel -- the "light" of reason. In the hands of Descartes and Locke, this light was said to aid men in their search for the truth of Christianity. In the hands of Tillotson and Toland, however, this light became the grid through which all revelation was to be judged.

By the mid-18^th century, the gloves were off. When Voltaire and Rousseau referred to their activities as promoting the "Enlightenment," they meant that they were replacing what they perceived as the darkness, ignorance, and grip of Christianity that had ruled men's minds from the Middle Ages to the Thirty Years' War with the "light" of human reason, autonomy, and tolerance.

It took but a short time for the doctrines of the Enlightenment to reach the shores of America. By the late 18^th century, the "best and brightest" of our still young nation were being captivated by its seductive grip. It's believed that by the time Timothy Dwight became the eighth President of Yale in 1795, there were fewer than twenty Christians in the entire college. Yet did God wring His hands in desperation? No. In response to the prayers, fasting, and supplications of godly men and women in Scotland and America, He raised up mighty, Spirit-filled preachers of the gospel, men such as Daniel Baker and Asahel Nettleton, to usher in the Second Great Awakening.

Art as a Language and the Social History of Art

2010-10-20T08:31:00.000-04:00

Up until the mid-18th century, art functioned as an evolving yet relatively stable language of high culture with a vocabulary of conventional forms (style) and themes (subject matter) familiar both to artists and educated audiences. Because artists used vocabularies already familiar to their audiences, it was possible for them to say something significant and for art to have a serious place within a wider range of overlapping cultural forms and practices such as literature, music, theater, dance, religion, and political festivity. Like all forms of high culture, art also worked not just to reflect shared values but also to redefine them. As an active, creative, inventive force responding to individual patrons, artists, and new social circumstances, art provided a changing, flexible arena in which different social groups could interact, exchange and contest ideas, define new forms of group identity, and formulate new blueprints of "reality" and "maps" for human existence.

While no single work of art or artist ever changed the world, the totality of artistic production served as a powerful outlet for the formulation, circulation, and legitimization of new ideas, values, and practices. Of course, these were generally defined by the social elites who monopolized the patronage and consumption of material culture, especially the luxury objects of fine art: painting, sculpture, prints, illustrated books, tapestries, stained glass, furniture, metal work, ceramics, and architecture. If politics was always an important aspect of art through the eighteenth century, we are only reminded that art had a more serious and central role in the past as a vehicle for defining reality in the orderly, largely hierarchical terms defined by European court, church, and burgher elites. For all the interest in aesthetic quality and innovation maintained by patrons, collectors, viewers, and artists, art was never a completely separate "aesthetic" realm held apart from daily life nor was it ever reduced to mere decoration (even in the days of the Rococo).

We can glimpse the social function of art before the nineteenth century by borrowing Augustine's description of the fundamental role of the sacraments as a collective language of visual signs in early Christianity.

In no religion, whether true or false, can men be held in association together unless they are gathered together with a common share in some visible signs or sacraments. [i]

Taking into account the many striking national, social, and religious differences and conflicts between rulers, nobles, church officials, and burghers within early modern Europe (1300-1780), the social elites who purchased most art were to a large extent "gathered together ... with a common share" in a gradually evolving series of cultural languages and values until the later eighteenth century. To be sure, strong regional, social, political, economic, and religious differences operated within this larger, international system of material culture and generated strikingly different artistic languages from one region and moment to the next. Yet even here, art worked as a flexible medium of discussion, exchange, and mutual transformation across divisions and boundaries.

To return art to a more dynamic place within this unfolding social history, it helps to see art not just as a distinct group of objects which can be isolated from other objects and social processes but also as a medium of cultural exchange and social transformation. Aesthetic values themselves were always defined by social elites at particular historical moments and were inseparable from larger social circumstances. Even the idea of art, as we know it today, was largely an invention of the Renaissance (1400-1600) with significant contributions from the Romantic period (1790-1840).

The most conspicuous features of Western art as a shared cultural language between 1400 and 1800 was the use of an elevated, heroic language of religious, mythological, historical and allegorical subjects taken from literature, an equally lofty figural rhetoric which turned increasingly to heroic nudes after 1500, and grand, highly organized, rhetorical compositions. In new artistic categories less tied to great literary subjects, similar qualities were apparent. For example, portraits focused on the heroic social roles and larger identities of princes and leading citizens. And after 1500, landscape slowly developed as a category densely inscribed with equally grand notions of history, class, religion, philosophy, gender, and science. Even newer scenes of everyday life and ordinary objects (still-life) were frequently infused with high moral, social, and philosophical values or with an earthy humor tied, inversely, to lofty ideals.

Finally, new notions of art and artistic practice as noble, intellectual invention rather than lowly, manual craftsmanship spread through Italy after 1400 and through the rest of Europe after 1500. Derived originally from a consciously high-minded court culture, this thinking rapidly assigned a new, heroic autonomy to artistic practice and to the luxury objects it produced. Thus Renaissance Europe created the modern understanding of art, prized above all for a high intellectual and poetic vision and tied to new notions of individual artistic originality (or, after the Romantics, to "genius"). From 1500 on, individual artistic innovation was increasingly prized and marketed as a major aesthetic commodity. Despite the growing market for aesthetic "originality," artistic innovation through the eighteenth century did not mean the invention of a radically new style or subject matter. The invention of something completely new would have sacrificed the intelligibility of the invention and left audiences bewildered. From the Renaissance to the early nineteenth century, artistic innovation generally meant the clever reworking of traditional images within a larger, coherent, shared system or language of art. This was well described in the seventeenth-century by the French painter, Poussin.

Novelty in painting consists mainly not in a subject never treated before, but in good and new groupings and expressions. By these means a subject that is common and old can become singular and new. [ii]

To sum up, art from 1400-1800 was a slowly changing, collective language defined largely by social elites. It served to image and legitimize coherent views of the world and the changing place of elites within that world. For all of its conservative tendencies, art was also inherently dynamic in responding to changing social, political, economic, and intellectual circumstances and in producing new cultural maps, forms, explanations, and justifications, new forms of “reality” and of art.

[i] Augustine, Contra Faustum Manichaeum, 19.11, cited in Bernard Leeming, Principles of Sacramental Theology, ed., Westminster, 1960.

[ii] Poussin, cited in Goldwater, ed., Artists on Art, p. 157.

Vote November 2nd!

2010-10-19T16:26:00.001-04:00

"Silence in the face of evil is itself evil, God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act." Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"It does not require a majority to prevail but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set bush fires in people's minds." - Samuel Adams

"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson

"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be even a worse fate. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." - Winston Churchill

Did God Kill Homosexuals the Night of Jesus' Birth?

2010-10-01T13:19:00.004-04:00

We are all very much aware of the problem of pedophilia within Roman Catholicism. It is my personal view that this problem emanates from the vast presence of homosexuals in the Church of Rome. This general suspicion is not new.

Homosexuals were occasionally condemned by medieval writers, especially monastic writers concerned about the sexual improprieties flourishing in all-male communities sworn to chastity. Citing early Christian authorities, Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend (1270-90) goes as far as to describe the annihilation of all “sodomites” on the night of Christ’s birth as one of a series of miraculous announcements of Christ’s birth. The writer enlists Jerome and Augustine for support, though no such statements can be traced to either.

“To these shepherds, then, an angel appeared, and announced to them the birth of the Savior, telling them also how they might find their way to Him. And they heard a multitude of angels singing, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will!' In yet another way, the Nativity was revealed through the Sodomites, who that night perished throughout the world. In this regard Saint Jerome tells us: 'So great a light arose that night that it extinguished all those who were given to this vice.' And Saint Augustine says that God could not take flesh in the nature of man as long as there existed, in this nature, an unnatural vice.” [i]

Jacobus de Voragine to the left with his Golden Legend in his hands

Evidently the problem of "sexual improprieties flourishing in all-male communities sworn to chastity" is nothing new. But the answer is not to invent history, such as de Voragine has done. The true Church must remain resolute in its stand against all sexual vice.

[i] Quoted in Henry Suso, The Little Book of Eternal Wisdom, “Nativity,” p, 50.

Mission Africa 2010

2010-09-23T14:24:00.003-04:00

My most recent opportunity to serve in East Africa was filled with challenges and blessings. The first conference with Equipping Pastors International (EPI) was in Murang'a, north of Nairobi. There over 100 pastors with the Christian Foundation Fellowship gathered to hear sessions on family and marriage. My contribution was on the subject of the Cultural Mandate and its relationship to the Great Commission. Anytime I have had the opportunity to express what Scripture says on this important issue the result is generally the same. In the words of one pastor, "Our minds are being opened to see things in the Bible we've never seen before."

There is already some early discussion about my return to this area of Kenya to speak further on these key issues, in that the pastors are eager to hear more of what the Bible says about the scope of the gospel for the "whole of life."


First Class of Uzima Reformed College

Uzima students taking their final exam

That Sunday I was invited to preach at Covenant Presbyterian Church, which also served as the location for the first sessions of the new Uzima Reformed College. I feel quite privileged to have been asked to come to Kenya to teach the very first class of this new theological college under the auspices of the African Evangelical Presbyterian Church (AEPC). The class was in hermeneutics (the science of Bible interpretation). There were 21 students, mostly pastors with little formal theological education. Excitement was so high for the opening of the new school that almost 10 applicants were turned away. Uzima is the first Reformed Presbyterian theological college/seminary of its kind in the nation of Kenya.

The only real problem during the week of classes came with my intense illness, so much so that I had to be taken to the Nairobi Hospital for evaluation. The medication I was given did not help, so finishing the week was, as one might guess, quite a major challenge. But God saw me and the students through!

The following week saw me in the nation of Uganda with Rev. Martin Odi, who serves full-time with EPI. Together, we held two important conferences: one with many of the Bishops of the PAG; the other with the "Missioners", a group of Christian students from four different local Universities who gathered together at Makerere University to hear me speak for the better part of three days. In both cases I again spoke on the Cultural Mandate, this time spending more time on the basics of a Christian world and life view, challenging these leaders of tomorrow to take every thought captive in Ugandan culture.

Myself and the Bishops of the PAG

A great blessing came at the end of the conference with the Missioners, when a representative from each of the four schools created an impromptu ceremony in which I was given a Makerere University tee-shirt, was made a life-long member of the Missioners, and given the African title "Papa Otim" (mercy).

Speaking before the "Missioners" at Makerere University

Again, the responses to my teaching on the Cultural Mandate and biblical worldview were ones of surprise that such things are in the Bible. But I must say regarding both conferences in Uganda that the Bishops and the students were openly thankful for the new things they learned from God's Word. I pray that they will not forget what God showed them during the conferences but that they will move forward to help transform their culture for Christ. Especially that the Bishops, as they represent and lead many thousands of churches throughout Uganda, will mobilize and think constructively about effective ways to apply the claims of the gospel to every area of public life for the glory of God.

Please remain in prayer for these two important nations. And that the seeds that have been planted will continue to bear good fruit for the spreading and establishing of the Kingdom of God.

Before "Bujagali" Falls, Nile River

Christians and Politics

2010-08-28T15:51:00.001-04:00

Many Christians believe that Christianity and electoral politics do not mix. The popular model would have us waiting for escape from this “vale of tears” or wringing our hands in observation of the “signs of the times” as we await the rapture. While others are more to the point: electoral politics and the work of culture in general, they say, is dirty stuff in which Christians, called to purity, should not sully themselves. So, different motivations, but the same end: isolationist occupation in the world.

But God does not call his Church to be a cultural eunuch. Clearly God wants us to obey him; he calls us out of darkness into light to do his will. But he calls us to do his will in our bodies and in the concrete processes of history. There is no escaping the fact that though our citizenship is in heaven the world is our temporary address. How shall we treat it? Shall we not pick up after ourselves? Or worse, shall we let our godless roommates trash the place while we sit by indifferent to their actions because we are too holy to care?

Perhaps it would help if we saw the question of Christians and politics as part of a larger question: that of the Christian’s relationship with the world. Jesus calls us “out of the world” only to send us back “into the world” as his ambassadors. What a great opportunity politics affords the Church to be just that: an ambassador for Christ.

As a forum for ministry, electoral politics allows us to pick up after our dirty roommates and after dirty selves. But let us remember that unless our effort is first one of reforming our own hearts and also that of our roommate’s heart from one of hatred of the landlord to one of love for him, our cultural work will have been for naught.

Abortion and the Early Church

2010-08-20T12:00:00.001-04:00

In the early Roman Empire abortion was practiced with little shame. It was not uncommon for a man to insist that his wife abort their baby if she suspected it was a girl. Hippolytus of Rome records that women either took drugs or bound themselves tightly around the mid-section in order to “expel was being conceived” (Refutation of all Heresies, Book 9). Another method was to “expose” the newly born by simply abandoning it. Again, this practice was more common if the child was a girl as illustrated in the classic letter written in 1 B.C. by the Egyptian laborer Hilarion to his wife. “If you give birth to multiples, if there is a boy let it [live], but if they are girls, expose [them].” However, according to Origen (A.D. 185–254), Christianity changed men’s moral character so thoroughly that they no longer participated in these evil deeds of darkness. Christians then went on to openly challenge these practices in the public square (see Letter to Diognetus, 6 and Justin, 1 Apology 27). Though during Rome’s history Christians did not end these vile practices completely, their compassion for the unborn, infants, and expectant mothers turned public sentiment so sharply that large numbers of women were attracted to the Church. In time, it was Rome that fell. Let us therefore remain vigilant.

What is Revival?

2010-08-16T08:29:00.006-04:00

George Whitefield Preaching

(from my new book, My Almost for His Highest)

Is spiritual revival equivalent to ecstatic experience? Speaking in tongues? The manifestation of miracles in public worship? While these things have had a place in historical revivals, let’s look for a clear biblical definition of revival.

Exodus 3 and 4:17 record God’s call to Moses to deliver the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt. The call of God is the basis for Moses legitimacy as a leader of God’s people. Moses, and no one else, led the Israelites out of Egypt, delivered the 10 Commandments to the people, and called them to repentance because his legitimacy as a leader gave him the authority to do these things.

After decades of wandering in the wilderness, the nation of Israel is now about to enter the Promised Land. Chapters 29 and 30 of the book of Deuteronomy comprise the last portion of Moses’ third and final discourse to the Jewish people prior to his death in Jordan and their entering the Promised Land under the leadership of Joshua. It’s here that Moses, as God’s legitimate leader, reviews the Law first given at Sinai, calls the people to turn from idols, and to keep the Law, all of which is magnificently summed up in the words of Moses, “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants” (Deuteronomy 30:19).

In Joshua 24, Joshua and the people are gathered together at Shechem, the place where God made a covenant with Abraham and promised to give the land to his descendants (Genesis 12:1-9). Having served foreign gods, Joshua, having been called by God to lead the people, recalls the promises made to Abraham and he cleanses Jacob’s house once more. Joshua can do this because because his legitimacy as a leader gave him the authority to call the people to repentance.

When Josiah ascended the throne he instituted a series of reforms, which included reformation of the city and the nation, the reinstitution of the Passover celebration in the Temple, and the refurbishing of the Temple itself. 2 Chronicles 34 records that during the time the Temple was being restored to a place of honor, Hilkiah the priest found the Book of the Law delivered by Moses. When the faithful King, Josiah, read the Book of the Covenant before the people of Judah, a great revival took place. “Josiah removed all the abominations from all the lands belonging to the sons of Israel, and made all who were present in Israel to serve the LORD their God. Throughout his lifetime they did not turn from following the LORD God of their fathers” (2 Chronicles 34:33). Josiah was able to do these things because his legitimacy as a leader gave him the authority to call the people to repentance.

Having heard the devastating report that the walls of Jerusalem were torn down, her gates burned with fire, and the survivors left in deep distress, Nehemiah, the cupbearer of the King, turned his face toward God and prayed according to the covenant, confessing his sin and that of his father’s house. In answer to Nehemiah’s prayer, the King, Artaxerxes, permitted him to return to Judah to begin the activity of rebuilding. When Nehemiah returned to help the Jews rebuild the gates in the Jerusalem wall, he led the people in revival by assembling the people and having the Law read for three full hours a day (Nehemiah 8-10). Nehemiah was able to do this because his legitimacy as a leader gave him the authority to call the people to repentance.

In each of the cases cited above, and we could review many more throughout the pages of the Bible, we see that revival is the result of renewing the covenant. Taking into consideration the other points I’ve made, I’ll define revival more fully this way. Revival is the result of God’s legitimate leaders calling people back to the Word of God, whereby people repent and follow God with their whole hearts, souls, minds, and strength. When this happens, we’ll know that revival has come.

Would Jonathan Edwards Work Today?

2010-08-05T13:26:00.003-04:00

Yale theology professors, Kenneth P. Minkema and Harry S. Stout, provide their impressions of how Edward's famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" would work in today's church environment. Pay special attention to Minkema's virtual ridicule of hell, judgment, and God's wrath, and Stout's view that should "hell" be preached today it should not be as a real place, for such would only trivialize the idea. Rather, hell ought to preached in an existentialist fashion: as alienation from our "ground of being."

These two professors only further confirm my long-held view that my old Alma Mater is getting more and more away from Christ and his gospel.

Judge Bolton's Decision and the Bible

2010-07-29T09:28:00.009-04:00

“Soon after Judge Susan Bolton's decision was announced, a spokesman for Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said the state will appeal the ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Thursday, asking the appellate court for a swift decision to lift the injunction and allow the blocked provisions to take effect,” reports FoxNews.com.

This decision was made despite escalating home invasions, private property damage, drug-related crime, kidnappings, and murder in Arizona and other border states, all traceable to an out-of-control problem and a Federal administration dead set on doing next to nothing about it.

Mounting frustration is heard from others who complain of cut fences, escaped animals, stolen farm items, and damaged barns and watering troughs. Excess litter also spreads across the border landscape: water bottles, empty canteens, diapers, plastic bags, and clothing—just to list a few items. One rancher interviewed by Insight Magazine claimed that three of his steers suffocated from ingesting plastic bags.

Additionally, there is the cost to human lives and dignity. Amid temperatures as high as 122 degrees, both American and Mexican authorities routinely search for Mexicans feared lost and dying in the scorching desert terrain. In 2001, twelve illegal immigrants perished as they tried to traverse barren Arizona desert in 115-degree heat. It was the largest number of illegal immigrants to die at once in the Southwest desert in recent years.

Incentives for migrating to the U.S. include the availability of low-skill jobs, higher wages (a third of the Mexican people live on $2.00 a day or less), better standards of living, and expectations of welfare-related benefits. Expatriate communities furnish an attractive support network that fuels the migration northward. Additionally, keeping the flow of immigrants moving is an elaborate and lucrative smuggling network that is estimated to garnish millions of dollars each year. For example, “coyotes” or smugglers charge as much as $500 a person for a ride to the U.S. border and another $1,500 a person from the border to Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Before we look at a possible solution to the Mexican problem, let me ask, “Does the Bible teach that people have a right to emigrate?” Yes. In obedience to the call of God, Abram and his family went out from Ur of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran in upper Mesopotamia (Genesis 11:31). The likely explanation for the move is that the extreme paganism of the Chaldean countryside posed a threat to God’s long-range plan of using Abram to raise up a godly seed that would bless many nations. The choice was therefore made for him to emigrate.

Like Abram who found it difficult to obey God in the face of surrounding paganism, people down through the ages have faced the same challenge, but in the form of pagan governments. Biblically, governments are established to defend its citizens from any hostile force that would impede the free exercise of their Creator-endowed rights. To the extent that a government fails to carry out its mandate to punish evildoers and reward the righteous, it is the right of the people to abolish that government and enact a new one. But often this is easier said than done. This is why the Pilgrims followed Abram’s pattern and emigrated. When a government is not only idolatrous, but also the “system” to bring about a new government is given to idolatry, men are responsible to seek liberty for their families by emigrating. The right of people to build a better life under God’s law cannot be abridged by the state.

The Great Commission presents a second model, one that reverses God’s call upon Abram (Matthew 28:18-20). Rather than call men to cross national boundaries in order to flee idolatry, God calls the Church to go to the covenant-breaking nations of the world with the gospel. The clear implication of the Great Commission is that the right to emigrate for the purpose of discipling nations supersedes any interests of the state to the contrary.

For example, in the Church of the Holy Trinity v. U.S. (1892), the Supreme Court sided with a church in New York City that had contracted with a minister in England to perform services as its rector. At issue in the case was whether or not the church’s action violated an Act of Congress, which prohibited the importation of foreign unskilled persons to perform manual services. The Court reasoned that the minister in question was a “toiler of the brain,” not a manual laborer. Justice Brewer wrote in his opinion, “These, and many other matters, which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation” (Justice Brewer in Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 143 U.S. 226 [1892]). The effect of the court’s decision was to say that the Great Commission takes precedence in U.S. immigration policy.

Both biblical models above demonstrate that the free expression of religion should act as the cornerstone of a nation’s immigration policy. Typically, the pattern in Scripture is that people emigrate in service to the kingdom of God. The Hebrews emigrated from Egypt to the Promised Land (Exodus 12f). Ezra journeyed from Babylon to Jerusalem “to teach His statutes and ordinances in Israel” (Ezra 7:1-10). And Nehemiah left Babylon and came to Jerusalem to help rebuild the city wall (Nehemiah 1-2).

When emigration is carried out within the context of the spread of God’s kingdom it has the material effect of elevating the cultural and economic conditions of nations. However, the Mexican immigration crisis demonstrates the opposite effect: most migratory movement from Mexico to the U.S. is conducted within the context of economic motives, resulting in the exploitation of illegal aliens by political progressives to further undermine America’s Judeo-Christian foundation.

There are examples in Scripture of people emigrating for economic purposes. Abram moved his flocks and herds into Egypt to escape a severe famine throughout Canaan (Genesis 12:10). Jacob and his family also went to Egypt to escape a famine in Canaan (Genesis 37). However, in these instances, the emigrant took his means of subsistence with him, whereby he became both a spiritual and economic blessing to the new land.

It is said that most illegals are here to work, and indeed many are. Point of fact, “Remittances from Mexican immigrants in the United States to their families back home are a major source of income in Mexico, second only to oil and surpassing even the tourism industry. Money sent back in 2004 totaled $16.6 billion, a 28 percent increase over the previous year (Frontline World, 2005, http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/mexico403/facts.html)

However, it is also true that the U.S. welfare system encourages immigrant dependency. As far back as 1995, George Borjas and Lynnette Hinton noted that immigrants, including illegal aliens, receive cash and non-cash welfare benefits at higher rates than native Americans (George J. Borjas and Lynnette Hinton, “Immigration and the Welfare State: Immigrant Participation in Means-Tested Entitlement Programs,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper, no. 5372 (December 1995). Not only does welfare participation increase among immigrants over time, but also some immigrant groups appear to assimilate into welfare. The net cost of immigrants on the U.S. welfare system is estimated in the billions per year, with certain states bearing a disproportionate burden.

Now how can we work toward a biblical solution to the illegal alien crisis?

First, we Americans need to focus on ourselves; to do a little spiritual house-cleaning. Understand the real source of the illegal immigrant problem in the U.S. It is an astounding fact that ancient Israel practiced open borders. It was on the strength of Israel keeping her covenantal oath that any external threat posed by a foreign nation was destined to fail. The key to Israel’s success over hostile nations did not lie in the capacity to change their behavior, but in changing its own; in remaining true to Yahweh.

However, Joshua revealed what would happen if Israel rejected the covenant and sought after the gods of the surrounding nations. Those nations would become a deadly snare. “Know with certainty that the Lord your God will not continue to drive these nations out from before you; but they shall be a snare and a trap to you, and a whip on your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from off this good land, which the Lord your God has given you” (Joshua 23:13). On the whole, America has also rejected God’s commandments and has turned to idols. Is it any wonder that the U.S. is experiencing the same discipline as ancient Israel? The Bible teaches us that America’s ability to safeguard her national borders and interests does not depend ultimately on "sealing the border" though this is needed, but upon the spiritual sanctions we as a people place upon ourselves.

Second, let's think biblically about loving our border neighbor as ourselves. The problem in Mexico is not only economic, but also spiritual. U.S.-based churches and mission’s agencies need to do more to evangelize Mexicans (Great Commission) with the goal of discipleship in a biblical worldview of economics and related issues that can change Mexican culture and hopefully stem the tide of illegal aliens (Cultural Mandate). If biblical emigration is in service to the kingdom of God, then more Spanish-speaking American missionaries with backgrounds in economics need to move to Mexico to live and teach. Organizations like Campus Crusade for Christ International can help facilitate your call to Mexico.

Lastly, the American church must do more to reach Mexican immigrants with the gospel and a biblical worldview while they are in America. It is estimated that up to one-third of United States immigrants eventually return home. This means there is a wealth of potential indigenous Mexican missionaries in our midst. Mexican immigrants in the U.S. number over 12 million. Let’s assume that the return rate among Mexican immigrants parallels the return rate among all immigrant groups. If 4 million (1/3) return home, and of that 4 million only half of one percent were to return as Christians with a plan to reach souls and Mexican culture with the gospel, then almost 20,000 Mexicans would be sent to Mexico as Christian missionaries! This is in addition to native-born American missionaries.

What would happen to the Mexican immigration crisis within several years of the implementation of this plan? Just perhaps it would be well on its way to being solved.

Problems with Social Justice Theory

2010-07-26T10:10:00.010-04:00

In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls (1921-2002) argues from a goal-oriented or narrative ethic for an egalitarian form of liberty, in which individuals are guaranteed the greatest liberty compatible with the liberty of others, and also in which inequality is justified to help the poor and disadvantaged, which under the rule of fairness, ought to be established for all. According to David Miller, Rawls’ theory, known as “Justice as Fairness,” argues that the “Parties in the original position are supposed to be guided not only by a rational desire to promote their interests but also constrained by norms of reasonableness to ensure that they do not propose principles that some will be unable to accept” (David Miller, Principles of Social Justice [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999], 57).

There are problems with Rawls' approach. Rawls cannot base his notion in any objective standard, but only in raw subjectivity. Perhaps more importantly, Vacek notes of systems such as Rawls’ that society often confuses justice with love. He says, “Respect for ‘humanity’ is mistaken for ‘real, personal love’” (E. C. Vacek, op. cit. 161). What motivated the Good Samaritan was not social justice, but love for God and neighbor. Under the constraints of social justice theory, as espoused by Rawls, the neighbor is to be turned into a stranger when Jesus says to turn the stranger into a neighbor. Modern advocates for social justice would have us treat our neighbor with a universal impartiality that places him on the same level as someone we do not personally know or feel affection for.

We are reminded of the many instances in which nations that partition biblical principles become egalitarian. They want to help everyone by promoting for the general welfare and too often look to forms of socialism as the tool. Such powers are like an electric fence. An electric fence affects everyone who backs into it equally. What is the upshot? Governments seek to enforce the redistribution of wealth even in the face of widespread resistance to the idea. But the fence is an impersonal force, incapable of heart-felt love or real discernment. Justice as fairness, especially as state-mandated policy, dulls society’s sense of personal charity and replaces individual compassion with abstract equity.

Let us consider this alternative. What the world calls social justice, God calls loving our neighbor as ourselves. We are in fact commanded to love God and neighbor. But love of others ought not to be interpreted as "barren duty." In redemption, we are changed to love God and others as ourselves; from the heart, such that the life of Jesus is now manifest in our mortal bodies. Just as Jesus laid down his life for his friends, he sends us to do the same. He said, "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). The "least of these" ought to be front and center in our love-mission (Matt. 25:33-40).

The cross is the standard for our mission. At the cross God simultaneously loved those whom deserved justice and he met the demands of his justice by love. Distinct from humanity's tendency to confuse respect for people with love, at the cross God brought love and justice together in a single act of atonement. By bearing our own crosses before a sin-sick world the same rare combination of love and justice is displayed to the world in palpable ways that have a transforming effect on the culture.

We can look at this idea differently. To be "one" with Christ includes more than mystical union with him. It means that the intercessory nature of Jesus’ earthly ministry is ours as well. By loving in this Christ-centered way the Church not merely finds its place among the advocates of social justice, but defines it. Indeed, redefines it! All other secular answers are effete by comparison. People are not as Rawls would have us believe: abstract concepts in need of universal impartiality. People are our neighbors in need of real and heart-felt compassion. This compassion is not secularized "tolerance." It is always according to the law of Christ. If we are to think in terms of “social justice” let us start here.

Every Christian Responsible for Evangelism?

2010-07-23T09:25:00.003-04:00

Dr. Henry Krabbendam taught for many years at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain Tennessee. He is a scholar and one of the most committed evangelists I know.

For years, "Dr. K" has taught that every Christian is responsible for evangelism. One of the passages of Scripture upon which he predicates his idea is John 7:37-39. He ties together this text with Jesus' teaching that he is the "water" of life (John 4:10). The logic is this: if Jesus is the water of life and rivers of living water are to flow from our innermost being after we become Christians, ergo, Christians are to be conduits of the drink of eternal life to others.

I have always found this interpretation of Jesus' words in John 7, a stretch. But then to my amazement I found this quote by the eminent theologian J. I. Packer.

Jesus, as recorded in John’s Gospel, had already declared what this new ministry would involve. It would not be the world’s first acquaintance with the Spirit of God, who had already (so the Old Testament tells us) been active in creation, providence, revelation, gifting for leadership, and renewing of hearts. But this would be the opening of a new era, all the same, with the Spirit adding a new role to the work he was doing already. Jesus would send the Spirit as “another Paraclete” (Helper, Supporter, Counselor, Comforter, Encourager, Advocate—paravklhto" [parakletos] has a wider range of meaning than any one English word can cover), to be not just “with” but “in” his disciples for ever (14:16–17). Through his coming Jesus himself, now absent in body, and his Father with him, would come and reveal themselves to disciples in a personal and permanent way, in a communion of love (14:18–23). As teacher, the Spirit would enable the apostles to recall and grasp what they had heard from Jesus, and would add more to it (14:26; 15:26; 16:13). Thus the apostles would come to see the full truth about Jesus’ glory (16:14) and so be qualified to bear faithful witness to him (15:27). Then through that witness the Spirit would convince people everywhere of the Christian facts (16:8–11; 17:20) and bring them through new birth to the living faith in Christ that marks entry here and now into God’s kingdom (3:1–15). Hereby the Spirit would engender in life after life the joy and influence that Jesus pictured as “living water” in flow out of the believer as a temple of God (7:37-39, cf. 4:10–14; Ezek 47:1–5).

Note the last thought that the new life in Christ is one in which "living water" will flow from us. This living water is, according to Packer, centered on the "joy and influence" one will have for Christ. Joy is certainly not debatable. It is the idea of our "influence" for Christ that many believers still struggle with.

Packer's inclusion of our "influence" for Christ as a manifestation of the resurrected life is compelling and deserves our full attention.

Packer's point is that once Jesus calls us to himself we are made vessels for his service. It is through us that the Holy Spirit now calls others to himself. This is part of our great influence in the world for Jesus. Our joy is Christ. But our joy is also tied to our influence: that we are commissioned by Him to go into all the world and allow the water of life to flow through us to others in the saving message of redemption.

Roman Catholicism's Dislike for the Renaissance

2010-07-19T15:31:00.004-04:00

Recently, I had a discussion with some of my Italian study friends over why representatives of the Roman Catholic Church were unhappy not only with representatives of the Reformation but also with some of the men of letters of the Italian Renaissance. The reason has to do with the fact that Renaissance scholars had a way of exposing as fraudulent many of Rome's documents, some of which were said to establish the church's claim to large land holdings. A prime example is as follows...

Lorenzo Valla (1406-1457) was the author of the standard Renaissance text on Latin philology. The text was titled: Elegences of the Latin Language. He was primarily active as a secretary to the King of Naples.Although a good Catholic, Valla became a hero to later Protestants. His popularity among Protestants stemmed from his defense of predestination against the advocates of free will and especially from his expose of the Donation of Constantine, a fraudulent document written in the eighth century alleging that the Emperor Constantine had given vast territories to the pope.

Valla proved, beyond dispute, that the document contained non-classical Latin usages and anachronistic terms. He therefore concluded that the document was the work of a medieval forger whose "monstrous impudence" was exposed by the "stupidity of his language." The expose of the Donation was not intended by Valla to have the devastating force that Protestants attributed to it. He only demonstrated in a careful and scholarly way what others had long suspected.

Using the most rudimentary textual analysis and historical logic, Valla proved that the document was filled with such anachronistic terms as fief, and made references that were meaningless in the fourth century. The proof that it was an invention seriously weakened the foundations of papal claims to temporal authority. In the same dispassionate way Valla also pointed out errors in the Latin Vulgate, still the authorized version of the Bible for the Roman Catholic Church. Valla's work exemplifies the application of critical scholarship to old and almost sacred writings, as well as the new secular spirit of the Renaissance.

Such discoveries did not make Valla any less loyal to the church, nor did they prevent his faithful fulfillment of the office of Apostolic Secretary in Rome under Nicholas V. He revered the literal teachings of the Pauline Epistles. In his "Notes on the New Testament" he applied his knowledge to uncovering the true meaning to the letters which he believed had been obscured in the Vulgate Biblical edition.

Valla's discovery of the forgery lead to an increased interest in classical collectibles. It had now been shown that the way to discern the truth was to carefully examine the remnants of antiquity and one had to possess these to examine them.

The influences of Valla can be seen in the works of Erasmus who after reading Valla's "Notes on the New Testament" became convinced that nothing was more important than divesting the New Testament of its transcription errors. This in turn lead to Luther's crucial conclusions concerning the literal biblical meaning of penance.

My Recent Time in Holland

2010-06-30T12:03:00.000-04:00

My recent trip to Holland was roughly what I expected. People were warm and kind. I must say that I was not expecting the great beauty of the conference center where we met for the meeting of academics from the Free University of Amsterdam (below is a little pic of a Dutch home in Doorn where the conference center is located).

Another thing I expected was a good dose of liberal views regarding Scripture. Exposure to this view came not only during the actual meetings I was attending but also during breaks and meals in which I had the opportunity to talk with different people.

One such conversation happened during my first lunch at the center, called Hydepark. I was sitting with a group of ministers who were there to attend sessions on counseling. A woman said to me, "I'm a minister." Without my asking more, she continued, "And we don't treat the Bible as history, but as a source to inspire our search for meaning in our inner being." She said, "And I don't like evangelicals." Wasn't sure if I should have gotten up and moved to another seat at that point. Undaunted, I just said, "Really?" She said, "You look surprised." "Not really," I replied, "Just curious." She asked, "What would I be called in America?" My silent thought was, "Heretic." But instead, I responded, "Likely Unitarian or Unity church." "Oh, are there a lot of those in America?" she asked. "Not really, but enough," I said.

That evening at dinner I ate with a minister and PhD in theology who was leading a group of ministerial students in Holland. He told me of how the topic had come up earlier that day among the students regarding whether or not Jesus really walked on water. He said, "Many don't believe it happened. But some do and others think maybe it happened." I said, "Well what do you think? Did it happen, not happen, or maybe happen?" He said, "Maybe. But fundamentally it doesn't matter if it really happened. All that matters is the message the text is trying to convey: that Jesus is great." [In liberal circles there is a difference between historical truth and "religious" truth. As long as one thinks the take away value of a bible passage has religious significance, why bother with history?] He went to say, "I'm not going to start a fight in my church over whether or not the stories in the Bible really happened."

Let me share just one reason why it is important that we see the Bible for what it is: real history. Our sins are real. The consequences of our sins are real. And Jesus taught hell as a real place. Esoteric ideas about God are fine just as long as sin, guilt, and damnation are esoteric. Such is not the case. So how can one think one is dealing with concrete problems with abstract solutions? Real problems demand real solutions. Historical problems demand historical solutions. This is why God came in a real body, lived a real and perfect life, died a real death for our sins, and rose from the dead in real time and space. History for history. Reality for reality.

I feel badly for those who think less of God but more of themselves. And I pray that those whom God has as his remnant in European countries will continue to proclaim the truth of the gospel in fulfillment of the Great Commission.

How Great Thou Art?? What Do You Think?

2010-06-15T07:21:00.000-04:00

Tillich and Ethics

2010-05-31T18:03:00.000-04:00

The struggle to find a satisfactory resolution between authority and freedom remains an uphill battle for contemporary Christian ethics. Paul Tillich (1886-1965) was highly influenced by existentialist themes, most notably Schelling, but also Kierkegaard and Heidegger. But he was also a foundationalist. By this, his dogmatics is based on a type of ontological-metaphysical “realism.” Tillich’s realism is of a sort that sees God as virtually synonymous with Being itself (otherwise the Ultimate, the Absolute, the Unconditional). All of his dogmatic and ethical formulations are thus based in metaphysics of Being. God is the a priori of all thinking, feeling, and acting. He addressed the problem of doubt and anxiety saying that to overcome these things requires one to make the necessary choices and to commit oneself to the “courage to be.”

Problematically, Tillich’s ontological authority is incapable of establishing its own criteria. The “Ultimate” is purely Tillich’s symbolic way of speaking of the existential abyss of reality, which is meaninglessness. It cannot be said to exist in any ordinary sense of the word. Because the Ultimate cannot be spoken of directly, it becomes an extension of pure subjectivity; of indeterminate autonomy. The Unconditioned opens up to us only in the most mystical sense of “breakthrough,” which is “a special and extraordinary manifestation which removes the veil from something which is hidden in a special and extraordinary way.” Only when one seizes or grasps existentially the Ultimate, does one “breakthrough” to revelation. “Revelation is the breakthrough of the Unconditioned to the conditioned.” We can speak of revelation as our decisive concern, “because it is the ground of our being.”

Since Tillich, postliberals and postmoderns in the West have rejected systems of foundationalism that look for ontological substantiation. In distinguishing the non-foundationalism spirit of postmodernism from the older modernism, James A. Reimer, says “that we have come to recognize that there are numerous rationalities (each one intratextually coherent), and consequently, numerous understanding of ethics (virtue, goodness, justice, etc.).” Representative of the postliberal ethic, influenced by Karl Barth, is Yale theologian, David H. Kelsey, who, clarifies the central idea of non-foundationalism. “Thus Scripture is not the starting-point for theology. Indeed, a theological system does not consist of ‘one long over-arching argument’ resting on any starting-point, whether religious experience or religions text, but rather is a set of several different families of argument which, taken as a whole might be looked at in a quasi-aesthetic way as solicitation of mind and imagination to look at Christianity in a certain way.’” This secular form of postmodernism in framed in theological language that rejects any ultimate, objective reference point for the ground of ethics. What is left is a “quasi-aesthetic way as solicitation of mind and imagination” —basically content-less, philosophical air that fails to anchor itself to real authority and is proud of it.

Art That Pleases God

2010-05-15T08:22:00.000-04:00

Question: Is it possible to do art that "pleases" God and not be a Christian?

Christianity and Literature

2010-05-07T07:47:00.002-04:00

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is unquestionably the greatest writer in the world of English literature. A committed Christian, Shakespeare used biblical themes as the foundation of many of his greatest literary ideas. The Christian impact on his work is documented by Ernest Marshall Howe’s Spiritual Values in Shakespeare, and in Dr. George Morrison’s Christ in Shakespeare. In Hamlet, the writer builds on a theme from Psalm 8: “What is man, that Thou dost take thought of him? And the son of man, that Thou dost care for him? Yet Thou hast made him a little lower than God, and dost crown him with glory and majesty,” to write:

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In form and moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a God!”

Shakespeare articulated his belief in Jesus Christ in his last will and testament:

I commend my soul into the hands of God my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing through the only merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour, to be made partaker of life everlasting; and my body to the earth, whereof it is made. [Quoted in Herbert Lockyer, The Man Who Changed the World, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1966), p. 355]

T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) is considered by many to be the most gifted writer of the 20th century. He had an enormous impact on contemporary literature. Eliot was converted to Christianity in the late 1930s, and began to reflect thoroughly Christian views in his works, most notably in Ash Wednesday (1930), The Rock (1934), and his play, Murder in the Cathedral (1935), based on the 12th-century martyrdom of Thomas Becket. Eliot's fame as a playwright dates from the successful production of The Cocktail Party (1949), which explored the theme of salvation in the context of a modern social gathering. Other dramatic presentations of religious and moral themes are The Confidential Clerk (1954) and The Elder Statesman (1958). In 1948, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Space does not permit for me to list all the great writers who created their literature around scriptural motifs, such as John Bunyan, Dante, Milton, John Donne, Hans Christian Anderson, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Amy Carmichael, C. S. Lewis, Flannery O’Conner, G. K. Chesterton, and Leo Tolstoy.

How to Overturn Obama'care

2010-04-26T14:57:00.001-04:00

In 1450, the resistance movement that had been led by Joan of Arc became once again a live issue for all France, when Rouen, the city of her bogus trial for heresy, was liberated by French forces. A re-examination of Joan's trial, which would ultimately lead to her complete exoneration, was undertaken. The process of Joan's retrial and exoneration—which was a public process that engaged the entire population of France—created the preconditions for the founding of the modern French nation under Louis XI.

On February 15, 1450, Charles VII requested that the Canon of Rouen Cathedral report what occurred during the trial. An initial inquiry was held in March, and witnesses were heard. The process of Papal examination of the legal travesty of Joan's trial was begun in 1451, when Pope Nicholas V sent the Papal legate Guillaume d'Estouville to seek peace in France after a renewed English invasion in March of 1450.

D'Estouville conferred with the King in February of 1452, and arrived in Rouen in April. On May 2 the first official Church inquiry was opened. Further inquiries quickly followed, and the decision for a complete review of the entire trial proceedings was reached by July, with the newly appointed French Inquisitor Jean Bréhal was ordered to review all the records and summon the appropriate expert panels. D'Estouville was made Archbishop of Rouen in April of 1453, but the process of retrial was slowed by the shock felt throughout Europe with the fall of Constantinople to the Turks on May 29.

On June 11, 1455, Pope Calixtus, in office a mere two months, accepted a petition from Joan's mother for a full Papal exoneration. Hearings were held all over France, at Notre Dame of Paris in November of 1455, in Rouen in December, in January and February of 1456 in Domremy, Joan's birthplace, and Vaucouleurs, where she initially presented her mission to the local military commmand. Inquiries were resumed in Rouen, Orléans, and Paris from February 16 through March 16, where nobles, churchmen, and common laborers were all called before the Church to testify about what they knew of Joan and of the accusations raised at the 1431 trial. Throughout May, churches throughout France were plastered with posters calling for any witnesses to come forward.

By June 2 of 1456, all evidence had been officially accepted by the Church court, and on June 24 notices were posted on churches in Rouen asking for objections. The official verdict was rendered on July 7. Joan was officially exonerated. The town of Orléans declared July 27 an official holiday to celebrate.

The exoneration of Joan of Arc is an extraordinary example of how a popular uprising led to the overturning of a judicial travesty and created the basis for establishing a nation committed to a higher, universal concept of justice, as Louis XI eloquently outlines in his Rosebush of War.

Never underestimate the power of the people. If, and when, WE THE PEOPLE decide to take back our nation from the unfettered expansion of big government and its intrusive policies; from the dictates of unprincipled men and women who choose to ram their agendas down our throats without the consent of the governed, no man, no, weapon, no institution will be able to stand in our way.

Long Before Hitler

2010-04-21T19:33:00.001-04:00

In their attempt to explain the widespread horrors of the Black Death, medieval Christian communities looked for scapegoats. As at the time of the crusades, the Jews were blamed for poisoning wells and hence spreading the plague. This selection by a contemporary chronicler, written in 1349, gives an account of how Christians in the town of Strasbourg in the Holy Roman Empire dealt with their Jewish community. It is apparent that financial gain was also an important factor in killing the Jews.

The following is from Jacob von Konigshofen, "The Cremation of the Strasbourg Jews."

In the year 1349 there occurred the greatest epidemic that ever happened. Death went from one end of the earth to the other.... And from what this epidemic came, all wise teachers and physicians could only say that it was God's will.... This epidemic also came to Strasbourg in the summer of the above mentioned year, and it is estimated that about sixteen thousand people died.

In the matter of this plague the Jews throughout the world were reviled and accused in all lands of having caused it through the poison which they are said to have put into the water and the wells that is what they were accused of and for this reason the Jews were burnt all the way from the Mediterranean into Germany....

[The account then goes on to discuss the situation of the Jews in the city of Strasbourg.]

On Saturday . . . they burnt the Jews on a wooden platform in their cemetery. There were about two thousand people of them. Those who wanted to baptize themselves were spared. [Some say that about a thousand accepted baptism.] Many small children were taken out of the fire and baptized against the will of their fathers and mothers. And everything that was owed to the Jews was cancelled, and the Jews had to surrender all pledges and notes that they had taken for debts. The council, however, took the cash that the Jews possessed and divided it among the working-men proportionately. The money was indeed the thing that killed the Jews. If they had been poor and if the feudal lords had not been in debt to them, they would not have been burnt....

Thus were the Jews burnt at Strasbourg, and in the same year in all the cities of the Rhine, whether Free Cities or Imperial Cities or cities belonging to the lords. In some towns they burnt the Jews after a trial, in others, without a trial. In some cities the Jews themselves set fire to their houses and cremated them selves.

It was decided in Strasbourg that no Jew should enter the city for a hundred years, but before twenty years had passed, the council and magistrates agreed that they ought to admit the Jews again into the city for twenty years. And so the Jews came back again to Strasbourg in the year 1368 after the birth of our Lord.

Devotio Moderna

2010-04-14T11:50:00.003-04:00

The Crucifixion Scene from Matthias Grunewald's "Isenheim Altarpiece." The altarpiece was painted during the second decade of the C16th for the chapel of the Order of St. Anthony at Isenheim, the monastic house of which was a hospital run by the monks. In one of the most horrifying depictions of the Crucifixion in Western art, Grunewald addresses the agonies of the terminally ill by incorporating them within the sufferings of Christ and, therefore, within the divine order of Fall and grace. When opened, the Altarpiece reveals scenes of annunciation, Christ child, and Resurrection (view shown left) The themes of sickness, sin, death, and healing are continued here as elements of memento mori meditation are included within the picture. Thus a green, demonic figure appears behind the head of the cello-playing angel and, in counter-point, the infant Jesus has just been bathed (a symbol of baptism), is wrapped in cloth that recalls the Crucifixion scene, and plays with a string of prayer beads interspersed with fragments of coral (a symbol of Christ's blood). The violent pitiableness of Christ's sufferings express a devotional interest found also in the Devotio Moderna.

Devotio Moderna ("modern devotion") refers to a movement for the renewal of the spiritual life that began in Holland during the late C14th and was influential in Germany, France, and parts of Italy. Both Catholic and Protestant reform initiatives reflect the influence of theological emphases found in the Devotio Moderna. These include an appeal to the original simplicity of Christian faith in a "golden age" now evidently lost; a call to clergy for a truly holy life; a valuing of the interior life with a corresponding lack of stress on the Church's institutionalized aids to salvation; criticism of formalized acts of piety together with any naive reliance on the external aspects of religion; an insistence that the knowledge of God lay open to scholar and illiterate peasant alike; a soteriological urgency in the face of both human sinfulness and the ubiquitous reality of death; intense and emotional meditation to the suffering of Christ; an interpretation of the Eucharist that stresses the sacrament as mediator of an intimate relationship with Christ. You should be able to spot roots of these features in both Augustine and Bernard of Clairvaux, and also their influence on Erasmus.

The classic text of the movement is St. Thomas a Kempis' The Imitation of Christ, but the principal founder of the movement was Geert de Groote (1340-84). Groote - who was never ordained priest - became a missionary preacher in the diocese of Utrecht but had his license withdrawn because of the vehemence of his criticisms of ecclesiastical abuses. The Devotio Moderna was successful amongst laity and found institutional expression in the Brethren of the Common Life: associations of laity and non-monastic priests who were called to practice a disciplined life within their existing callings. The monastic form of the movement was found principally amongst the Windesheim Canons, a community founded in 1387 under the direction of Florentius Radewijns.

from Noteworthy Sayings of Master Geert

A man ought never to become anxious over any worldly thing. He who acts upon what he knows deserves to know much more, and he who does not act even upon what he knows deserves to become blinder still.

It is a great thing when a man proves obedient in matters that are contrary and difficult: This is true obedience.

In all things and before all people, seek to humble yourself, especially in the heart but also outwardly before the brothers.

It is the highest of all learning to know that one knows nothing.

The more a man perceives how far short he is of perfection, the closer he is to it.

The beginning of vainglory is to please one's self.

A man never stands better revealed than when he receives praise.

Seek ever to observe and conceive something good about another.

So often as we inordinately desire something beyond God himself, we become unfaithful fornicators, whence the Prophet says: It is good for me to cling to God.

We ought to be vigorous in prayer and not easily brought to a halt. Nor should we imagine that God does not want to hear us; rather, even when we feel put off, we should not despair. The weak-spirited Temptation lurks in everything in this world, even if a man does not perceive it.

The greatest temptation is not to be tempted: When a man discovers in himself something that needs to be cut off, then he is in good standing. When an evil suggestion comes upon you, think what you would ask your companions, and then the devil will stand confused.

Always put more hope in eternal glory than fear in hell.

Let every person beware lest his behavior scandalize others, and so let him study to correct his ways and to conduct himself uprightly everywhere that others may be edified.

With whatever thoughts a man goes to sleep, he will also rise, so it is useful to pray and to read a few psalms on retiring.

Moderate confusion suffered here forestalls eternal confusion before God and all the saints.

Study to please and to fear him alone who truly knows you and all that you are.

Suppose you were to please all and displease God; to what end? Turn your heart therefore away from all creaturely things, even with great force. Turn it so that you may perfectly vanquish yourself, and raise your heart ever on high to God, as the Prophet says: "My eyes are ever upon the Lord" (Ps 122:2).

Women in Medieval Thought Not Created in the Image of God

2010-04-07T15:41:00.004-04:00

Whether a nun or wife of an aristocrat, townsman, or peasant, a woman in the Middle Ages was considered inferior to a man and by nature subject to a man's authority. Although there are a number of examples of strong women who flew in the face of such an attitude, church teachings also reinforced these notions. These two selections are from Gratian, the twelfth-century jurist who wrote the first systematic work on canon law, and Thomas Aquinas, the well-known scholastic theologian of the thirteenth century.

Gratian writes in Decretum,

The image of God is in man and it is one. Women were drawn from man, who has God's jurisdiction as if he were God's vicar, because he has the image of the one God. Therefore woman is not made in God's image.

In his Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas says,

As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of woman comes from a defect in the active force or from some material indisposition, or even from some external influence....

The image of God, in its principal signification, namely the intellectual nature, is found both in man and in woman. Hence after the words, "To the image of God He created him," it is added, "Male and female He created them." Moreover it is said "them" in the plural ... lest it should be thought that both sexes were united in one individual. But in a secondary sense the image of God is found in man, and not in woman: for man is the beginning and end of woman; as God is the beginning and end of every creature. (italics added)

We can be glad that Christ had a higher view of women. Both men and women are created in God's image.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them (Gen. 1:27, italics added).

My Take on Healthcare and Statism

2010-03-30T09:32:00.000-04:00

“The conflict between Rome and the [early] Church is really a microcosm of a larger struggle that both predates the first century and has lasted to our day. It is the story of men and their quest to be like God that is as old as the pre-cosmic warfare between God and the devil. In the temporal realm the struggle takes shape in the form of earthly potentates that claim all dominion in heaven and in the earth. The Empire is said to be the source of salvation and the government to be the great protector and provider of its people. It can deliver because the Emperor is God. But herein lies the challenge to the Church. Because the Emperor is said to be God, there must be no others. Kyrios Christus must bow to Kyrios Caesar, or else. The history of Rome . . . demonstrates that autocratic rulers and their bureaucracies that reject the God of the Bible become utopian in outlook. What they require is not merely the right to rule, but unlimited power and jurisdiction in the lives of their people . . . . The messianic nature of godless government creates conditions whereby it is virtually impossible for Christians to stay out of politics.” (John Barber, The Road from Eden, pp. 27–28)

Can God Do Anthing?

2010-03-17T17:41:00.007-04:00

In the nominalistic tradition of William of Ockham (1288-1348) we encounter a fine distinction between potentia absoluta (God's absolute power) and potentia ordinata (God's ordinary power). The distinction is complex. Simply put, God's absolute power suggests that God can do whatever he wants, even what he has not willed; even what he does not chose to do. In its extreme form this idea has given rise to the old question in theology, “Can God make a stone he himself cannot lift?”

By God's ordinate power we refer to God’s power to do things he chooses to do. God's ordinate power suggests that God has in some sense limited his absolute power; he restricts it so he is sure to manage the world and to remain faithful to his promises. After all, if God's absolute power is totally absolute with no restrictions, he might change his mind and do something "absolutely" wacky (no pun intended). He just might condemn the Virgin Mary and save Judas!

For the sake of argument let us assume the principle that God has purposely limited himself and his covenant promises to his attribute of faithfulness. How do we keep God from becoming a servant to his own attribute of faithfulness under the structure of this theology? If the potentia absoluta is limited by the potentia ordinata, then who made this choice? God. But when did God make this choice? Was there ever a time when the power of God was total? It had to be for God to be in a position to choose to make his absolute power limited by his ordinate power. But if at some unknown time God did so freely chose to limit his absolute power to his ordinate power and potentia ordinata represents what we mean by saying “God can manage all things” then who or what manages the management?

There are serious points here. Has God, in order to make certain that he remains faithful to his choices purposefully handcuffed himself to the armchair of his ordinate power? And why did God believe this necessary? Does he not trust himself? If not, then what does this say about his faithfulness even under the constraint of his ordinate power? Moreover, were we to assume that God acts only from the limitations set by his ordinate power are we at last willing to say that nothing God does appears contradictory to us? And most importantly, what is a self-limited God? How do we call this God “Lord” in the purest sense? Theologically, it is impossible to escape the free reign of God’s absolute power. As John M. Frame states, “Scripture teaches that God’s power is not exhausted in history, that God is able to do many things that he does not choose to do.” (John M. Frame, The Doctrine of God. 523).

On the other hand, Frame consents to God’s ordinate power, BUT only insofar as it is taken to mean that for God to be consistent within himself he must be consistent with his creatures and with his plan. In other words, if all of nature were a jigsaw puzzle, God is always putting it together. But the pieces of the puzzle are not contingent on the fact that they are made by the events and thoughts of others, but the pieces of the puzzle are manufactured by him. So God freely limits himself by what he knows about Bill’s thoughts, but God foreordained Bill’s thoughts and therefore God’s own response in time to his thoughts. So if Frame were to use the nominalistic language of ordinate power it would not be in accord with the idea that makes God’s actions consequent to contingency. Rather, he would keep the language within the structure of God’s immutability and abiding plan. So on potentia ordinata he says, “God cannot simply do anything. He cannot do something that contradicts his nature . . . he cannot include one thing in his plan that contradicts another” (Ibid., 149).

God Still Provides

2010-03-16T15:26:00.001-04:00

What did Abraham say to Isaac after their computer crashed? "God will provide the RAM."

The brief bit of levity is intended for a serious point. If Jehovah Jireh provided the lamb in the thicket to spare Isaac, and provided far more: his only begotten Son to spare us from the calamity of our sins, then what is God not willing to provide those who love him and walk in his kingdom power? What worry controls your heart this day? Are you afraid that you will run out of time before God acts on your prayer? As in the case of the original Abraham and Isaac, God always waits til the last second to intervene. He tests us that way. But he is always faithful never to test us beyond what we are able to endure (1 Cor. 10:13).

Bill Maher is Not a Sinner

2010-03-11T08:41:00.001-05:00

Bill Maher, a standup comedian, talk show host, political commentator and atheist, and who set out to mock God in his movie, Religulous, said during an interview on cable TV last night, "I'm not a sinner." That would put him in rather rare company, along with the only person who truly never sinned, Jesus Christ. But of course Maher prefers not to be in the company of Jesus Christ. So it would appear that Maher has backed himself into a corner. Is he sinless like Jesus or not? If not, then perhaps he should embrace Jesus' teaching that the heart is full of sin (Mark 7:21-23), a problem which only faith on Christ can cure (John 14:6). But if he is just like Jesus; he is sinless, then maybe he can perform the miracle MSNBC needs to bring its ratings up to those of FOX.

God's Sovereignty and the Joy of the Lord

2010-03-03T15:52:00.003-05:00

A leading theme of Philippians is joy. “Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord” (Phil. 3:1. See also 4:4). In 3:1-11, the cross and the resurrection of Jesus has made it possible for Paul to experience joy in three areas of his redemption: self-denial, justification, and sanctification.

He finds joy in the denial of his linage, nationality, pedigree, education, and social status in order that he might embrace Christ. His practice of Judaism could only produce a “blameless” life (Phil. 3:6; a life in which no man can point the finger at you and find fault), while knowing “Christ Jesus my Lord” (v. 8) has produced a righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.

He has joy in justification for he recognizes that despite his unfitness for heaven due to his sin, the Lord has fulfilled the requirements of the Law, including its curse; all of which is credited to Paul on the basis of faith, which itself is a gift of God (Phil. 3:9).

And he has joy in sanctification. For he acknowledges that just as he is wretched before God in his justification, dependent upon him for grace, so also he is wretched before God in his sanctification, dependent also upon him for grace. So it is not difficult for Paul to live the Christian life. Nay, it is impossible! Just as it is impossible to cause one’s own spiritual rebirth, it is impossible to cause one’s own sanctification leading to holiness. It is all by grace. Where I am going to get the strength to overcome sin, to live fully for Christ, to find the courage for evangelism? The answer is not to resolve to try harder. To do so is to set up one’s own competition and no one who is in a ring fighting an opponent has time for joy. It the knowledge that the Lord has accomplished our justification, and is sovereignly accomplishing even our sanctification, that prompts our joy in him.

In what specific context does Paul know the joy of the Lord? In suffering (Phil. 3:10)! But if all Paul knows is the “fellowship of his suffering,” then there is no basis for joy. For without the historical fact of the resurrection we are of all men most to be pitied. Rather it is only in light of the power of the resurrection that the fellowship of his sufferings is not merely bearable, but a springboard for joy. The knowledge that the Lord is in control of human history helps us say that “momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison” (1 Cor. 4:17).

The Influence of Blaise Pascal on the Art of Giorgio Morandi

2010-02-25T20:06:00.006-05:00

Due to the overt simplicity of his methods and style, Italian artist, Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964), is thought to be a precursor to Minimalism. While I do not dispute the connection, I am convinced that Pascal’s early work in geometry and his strong Christian beliefs served as a major source of inspiration for Morandi’s originality and artistic vision. As Pascal proclaimed “Let a mite be given to him [the reader]. Let him see therein an infinity of universes.” Morandi had no need to leave Bologna. Infinity was there on the Via Fondazza. It is also seen in the many paintings of his simple jars sitting on table tops, which Morandi uses as a window to the infinite, to God.

Morandi once said, “You cannot demonstrate your own greatness by remaining at one extreme, but by reaching out to both extremes at the same time, and filling the intermediate space.” Where does this idea emanate? Pascal had said many years before, “A man does not show his greatness by being at one extremity, but rather by touching both at once.”

What Happened to Metaphysics?

2010-02-19T21:18:00.025-05:00

Wolfhart Pannenberg, for one, has pointed out the suppression of metaphysics in modern theology and philosophy by the prejudices of the contemporary age.

First, the concept of God which was developed by medieval and early modern theology in close contact with classical metaphysics is in need of rather radical revision…In reassessing the classical theological doctrine of God, it would be helpful to have a critical but not entirely negative discussion of the great metaphysical tradition of philosophy, including the philosophical doctrine of God, to relate to (Wolfhart Pannenberg, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co; reprint. 1992, 23).

Why the turning away from classical metaphysics? Though Kant wanted to make room for the realm of the noumenal, his penetrating critique of reason gave credence to the emasculation of the human mind to know a thing in and of itself, thus eliminating the hope in the ability of human cognitive power to discover the ground of the world. From here two main subsequent developments, particularly in Germany, ensued. The idealist direction took root in the previously mentioned Romantic climate, in which thinkers such as Fitche, Shelling, and Hegel sought for the ontological sphere in the cognitive and imaginative realms of the human mind. Again, the construal was that of metaphysical reality revealed through; and indeed identified with, the Divine Mind of man. This made the human mind not merely a pointer to Divine reality but was that reality itself.

The second direction post-Kant was that of a deepening relativism. Dilthy, Heidegger, Lévi-Strauss, Nietzsche, Foucault, Wittgenstein, Popper, Quine, and Derrida, and others— thoroughly eradicated any grounds for certainty relative to metaphysics, opting instead for general principles, none of which, however, were absolute, timeless or were interchangeable among the varied disciplines. An unintended consequence of Kant’s Copernican revolution left the postmoderns and hyper-relativists, regardless of their area of expertise, whether it be politics, science, religion, or philosophy, all groping for a standard for verification, as none could make claim to apriority. The result was a seeking after verification as varied as the world of culture, language, class structures, and existential contexts would allow.

Both directions are similar, insofar as both operate without timeless absolutes and thus both, regardless of their distinctive emphases, are sourced in a selfish a priori. In both, man is the measure of all things. The Romanticist looks within himself to find metaphysical reality while the relativist looks within himself in search for a standard from without. In either case both have as their starting points the Self.

The result of the turn from metaphysics, especially the biblical type, is that the prevailing outlook in philosophy and theology has turned toward despair. By this we mean that modern theology not only wants to address despair, but also it is rife with the very disease it seeks to alleviate.

For example, Kierkegaard’s way of conceptualizing religion in Sickness unto Death seeks to depose the reigning concept of philosophy established in Hegel, by displaying an alternative that can lead us to what the Enlightenment called the “individual.” Kierkegaard identifies the “sickness” as the often acute sense of privation one cannot help but feel as a result of failing to discover, as Kierkegaard coined it: “that unique individual” we are called to become. The polemical areas of the work, though identifying with specificity our acute sense of privation and need, take us wide of the mark in terms of a final solution. Though Kierkegaard seeks to replace the synthetic structure of Hegel’s approach, which envisions men as “a relation” in a broadly dialectical framework, with a call to see themselves as “a relating,” which accentuates how our being is already an activity, Kierkegaard ironically argues for a dialectic of consciousness, the stages of which are a lack of awareness of despair, leading to acute awareness of such, to demonic awareness of despair. Short of demonic despair, is the opportunity of escape once “a relating” roots itself in “the power which constitutes it.” This transmutation results in faith. But for Kierkegaard faith is not something attained in the final sense then grown, but one is always on the way toward faith. The power that constitutes faith enables us to acknowledgment that we are creatures of God who provides us a fresh paradigm for self-understanding. So it is that although Kierkegaard seeks a new form in theology he ultimately builds on the shoulders of Hegel a dialectical analysis of human despair.

Where his system fails is the fact that it is grounded in the power of despair which constitutes it. So we are confronted with a circular system: the identification of despair leading to a theology which takes from despair its own cure (Reference: The Blackwell Companion to Modern Theology, ed. Gareth Jones, Wiley-Blackwell, 2004, 42-44).

Paul Tillich also exploits the culture of despair and meaninglessness, to which he calls for a Christian response. He finds this answer in the symbols of the Christian message (See Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture, London: Oxford University Press, 195, 40-51). From the existential question of the meaning of life, Tillich develops his theory of correlation, in which the theologian or pastor’s job is to articulate the symbolic meaning of the Christian message; that is, Christians symbols (e.g., Kingdom of God) so that the answer to the existential question is meaningful at the level of nature of the question (He develops the idea of correlation in his Systematic Theology, vol. 1, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951, 62).

The mutual reciprocity of existential question and theological answer via Christian symbols is what Tillich means by “correlation.” Tillich believed that the advantage to his approach was that it bypassed unasked questions, with which theology is easily absorbed (e.g., supernaturalism, angels, the omnipresence of God) and focuses on real life struggles and the quiet desperation most people feel. This, of course, requires a level of competency on the part of the theologian or pastor regarding current cultural and psychological trends, even moods predominant in the artistic, literary, and socio-political movements of the day.

However, we would be correct to question this procedure, for the terminology of symbol is insufficient to capture the power and personality of revealed truth in the Christian message. The phrase, “Kingdom of God” is not a symbol but a reality. His conception of God is not a personal being but also a symbol; in fact, God is the highest of the symbols of the Christian faith. He worried that to think of God as the highest being is to place him in the category of finitude. So God is being itself, beyond both being and existence. That God is the answer to human finitude and despair is implied by the fact that finite people can assert something meaningful about the infinite. The possibility for finitude to speak of infinitude is possible insofar as finitude participates in being itself (beyond being and existence), which means the possibility of the power of Christian symbols to intercede on behalf of the anxiety of doubt and meaninglessness and to provide a means toward true human concern with the ultimate—God.

The basic problem with Tillich’s formula is that it is contradictory: if God is beyond being and essence and we are centered in being and essence, then how can finitude participate in infinitude; indeed, how can any Christian symbol, which itself shares in finitude (the concept may be infinite but the language used to express the concept is finite), act as a mediator from despair to concern with the ultimate? Tillich recognized these problems and so he settled on the premise that the faith he called for is only possible by an act of courage, which recognizes the God beyond classical theism (God who can be spoken of in finite terms) as “the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt” (Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be, 1952; reprint, Glasgow: Collins, 1979, 183).

Tillich’s effort to save his own system fails because human courage in finite, resulting in a drift back to the human dilemma of guilt, alienation, and despair. For if there is a bridge from despair to the ultimate it must lay in the agreement of knowledge and of being. For the object of knowing must not be so distinguished from the subject of knowledge that it is impossible for it to agree with the object to which it seeks to relate, otherwise there is no true recourse to the ultimate, only a illusion of philosophy. So again, as with Kierkegaard, we are faced with a circular argument, one that seeks an answer to despair only to return us to despair (The Blackwell Companion to Modern Theology, ed. Gareth Jones, Wiley-Blackwell, 200, 372-387).

The Lighter Side

2010-02-11T14:36:00.001-05:00

Piper at a Funeral...

As a bagpiper, I play many gigs....

Recently I was asked by a funeral director to play at a grave-side service for a homeless man.

He had no family or friends, so the service was to be at a pauper's cemetery in the Rusk/Elkhart back-country. As I was not familiar with the backwoods, I got lost; and being a typical man I didn't stop for directions.

I finally arrived an hour late and saw the funeral guy had evidently gone and the hearse was nowhere in sight. There were only the diggers and crew left and they were eating lunch. I felt badly and apologized to the men for being late.

I went to the side of the grave and looked down and the vault lid was already in place. I didn't know what else to do, so I started to play. The workers put down their lunches and began to gather around. I played out my heart and soul for this man with no family and friends. I played like I've never played before for this homeless man. And as I played "Amazing Grace" the workers began to weep. They wept, I wept, we all wept together…

When I finished I packed up my bagpipes and started for my car. Though my head hung low, my heart was full. As I was opening the door to my car, I heard one of the workers say,

"Goodness, I never seen nothin' like that before...and I've been putting in septic tanks for over twenty years."

Could You Forgive the Man Who Killed Your Son?

2010-01-31T18:26:00.007-05:00

The following testimony was written by Rev. Martin Odi, an African minister whose son was murdered and the grace God gave him and his wife to forgive the killer in person. After 20 years of pastoral ministry, Martin now serves with Equipping Pastors International in East Africa. A MUST READ.

Testimony on Forgiveness
By Rev. Martin Odi

In the past I have shared with some of you about what happened in our family in 1996. Our first born son, Bildad, who was then age 14, was maliciously poisoned by our neighbor about eight months after I had taken office as the Bishop of the PAG churches in Kumi district, an area of 2681 sq km in the northeastern part of Uganda in East Africa.

We were left with two sons. One was not even a year old and very weak as he was born pre-mature under very bad circumstances. I kept asking God “WHY?” I cried out loud and burnt with anger inside. This went on for years but I had no intention at all for revenge. However, I remained very bitter toward God and myself! I thanked God for this issue on my lips but deep down inside I wished God would revenge immediately in order to appease my anger.

Last year a long time friend of mine, Dr. Henry Krabbendam ("Dr. K"), was having a discussion with me on responses of Christians to God’s dealing with them; citing the way evangelicals tell testimonies in their churches. Many will say, “I thank God this week because I got school fees for my children.” Another will say, “I thank God I got a new car, or a good house, etc.” But Dr. K asked me “How many will say, “I thank God because I got more holiness this week?’” This was a huge challenge to me although I did not express it to him at the time.

On another occasion, last year, Jonathan Menn and I where teaching Anglican clergy in three dioceses in Uganda: Nebbi, Arua, and Busoga. Our good friend, Rev. Moses Isabirie, of the Provincial Office of CoU, led us each morning in devotions from the Book of Philemon majoring on sincere forgiveness for those who have committed major sins.

While teaching from 1 Tim. 3 on “The Qualifications of Bishops and Pastors” Jonathan said “He must be gentle and went further to talk about how the pastor must be slow to anger and forgiving. In his closing remarks he gave us homework. He said, “Can you remember any person who has done you any wrong that you must go back from here and forgive? Write down his or her name.”

Although I was teaching alongside Jonathan, I wrote the name of the guy who poisoned my son. Then I began to pray for an opportunity to meet him because he had fled away from his home in fear of me and had separated from his wife and family. However, just a week earlier his younger brother brought him back into a meeting of our clan leaders in an attempt to reconcile him with his family.

My wife Helen and I were invited to this meeting and for the first time, after 12 years, we spoke openly, but with tears to this man, and all his family, affirming to all the fact that he killed our son. We stressed to the crowd that we are now ready to forgive this man. There was untold silence in this crowd with others crying silently. We said together that we want to do this because we are BORN AGAIN!
We invited the man and a few of his relatives to our home at a later date to pray officially a blessing upon him and for his family. Our hearts were so released that day we uttered publically from the depths of our hearts that we had forgiven this man. Praise the Lord.

Now I have the answer to the WHY question of the last 12 years. This is it: God did this so that Helen and I grow in forgiveness and his holiness in order to minister to those who are, and will be, in a situation like the one recorded in 2 Corinthians 1:3-8.

“The mission of our family continues to be the salt and light of our community.” We must not revenge Bildad by killing the children of the murder’s family for the following reasons: 1) All these people are not saved (dead in sins). Killing any or all of his children would mean exchanging the living Bildad with the dead boys. 2) The worth of our son to us is not equal to the six children of this man. 3) Vengeance belongs to the Lord not to us. 4) And lastly, our public testimony has shown our community and those around it that we can win our enemies by demonstrating the love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ.

I don’t know how Helen feels but I am tremendously relieved from the burden I carried for the last 12 years. It is off my shoulders. As part of Equipping Pastors International (EPI), I teach pastors and leaders to be more like Jesus Christ. The one side of the sword of the Spirit has pierced me also. It has moved me to forgive my enemies as Christ forgave his killers on the cross. I thank God for my ministry in EPI and the mission of our Lord. Through this terrible experience I have been pierced by the Word of God and changed to be like Him. JESUS AND HIS WORD ARE ALIVE!

Despondent?

2010-01-29T08:29:00.003-05:00

Every so often we come across a text that is understood one way but when we examine it in its original context find it means something different. When preachers speak on the text, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways” (Isaiah 55:8) most draw a parallel to one of two things. One is evangelism. The preacher uses the verse to point out to non-Christians that their thinking and lives are wrong. So they need to change and go God’s way.

Another way this text is interpreted is to say that in the midst of suffering you cannot understand God, so you must resign yourself to suffer; resign yourself to the fact that God knows what he’s doing. This last way is how the text is most often used: to express that when life has turned sour it makes no sense to question God, for his thoughts and ways are so far above yours that even he wanted to tell you why you’re suffering you wouldn’t get it.

But this last interpretation is the opposite of what the text was originally meant to convey. Israel HAD resigned herself to captivity in Babylon. They thought to themselves, “There’s no way out of this mess. There’s no way we’re ever going to return home. The best thing we can do is to build a future for ourselves in this hole.”

Against this melancholy, God says, “Those may be your thoughts, but I have something else in mind. I’m thinking of your liberation and returning to you your land. You may not think this way. You may not be able to find the way back. But my thoughts are not your thoughts. My ways are not your ways. So do not resign yourself to hopelessness and despair. Do not live in spiritual paralysis, but understand that I am at work in your life to bring release.”

Are your though and ways God’s?

Little More on New Art Book

2010-01-19T19:54:00.007-05:00

Here is the cover for my little booklet, Art to the Glory of God (available in the coming weeks). You know, not only art, but also all things are to be done to God's glory, including eating and drinking (1 Corinthians 10:31). Have you considered that every time you take a sip or take a bite, you can do it to magnify the awesome God of heaven and earth? I'll bet you've heard this idea but really haven't thought it through. Nor have you thought it through to its logical conclusion: that God wants all of us...every bit of us, and that that every bit is an expression of our worship of him. If God expects something as seemingly mundane as consuming calories to be carried out to his glory, then ought we not spend more time considering how every area of our lives ought to reflect honor to his glorious name?

Please think and pray on it.

An African Responds to Obama and Abortion

2010-01-11T15:16:00.005-05:00

The following letter was written by a Ugandan pastor not long after the election of President Obama. The substance of the letter is a response to Obama's signing of a law that allows funding for the killing of innocent unborn children in foreign countries. Though months old, the letter continues to represent an essential position in our public discourse regarding abortion. This letter should be read throughout the world.

The impression in our world is still growing with the election of Obama as the first black president of the USA. Almost all people have gigantic hopes that the relations of USA and other nations will begin to change to the better; but the relation of America and the unborn children has again become very bitter.

The man we have hopes in has in less than 2 weeks in office signed a law allowing funding for killing of innocent unborn children in foreign countries! This is the man and his team who claim that they will bring peace to the Middle East and stop the killing of those who have been born, some of which are innocent while others may not be innocent. He is planning for better times in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and other parts of the world. He is looking forward to God to help him sort out these problems. When closing his inaugural speech he said: “May God bless you, God bless America” can God really bless the same hand that kills unborn babies and also tries to bring peace to these affected areas of the world? Can bitter water and sweet water come from the same spring?

For the last 50 years or more America has killed over 50 million unborn children and influenced other countries to do so in a number that is not specified.

The American hand is more brutal than the hand of Pharaoh of Egypt when Moses the servant of the Lord was born; worse than the hand of Herod when Jesus was born; worse than the hand of Nero when the church of Jesus was being born, worse than the hand of Adolph Hitler when the nation of Israel was being born. Hitler killed 6 million Jews but America has killed about 100 million children in a few decades.
They are worse than the hand of Idi Amin of Uganda against Christians; or Intarahamwe who championed genocide in Rwanda, and further worse than LRA who has killed a few hundreds of thousands in the north of Uganda.

On the judgment day when God calls out all murderers to account for their deeds, all these groups with all their schemes will stand up to give account of what they did to KILL these innocent people.

President Obama must stop heaping sins on top of the big hills of sins already created by his predecessors, but must immediately reverse what he did. This is repentance! America’s sins can no longer hide from any person including unborn children. They are tall enough for someone in the valley to see. The twin towers destroyed during 9/11 where physical images of America’s political and idolatrous sins. But God judged them in such a bitter way during the Bush’s administration. THEREFORE WE SHOULD NOT RE-BUILD THEM AGAIN.

What threat does the White House foresee from the unborn baby as it does the nuclear program of Iran or the economic program of China? If it is true that the unborn child is an enemy of America as some nations are; and Mr. Obama emphasized that he would take a diplomatic approach to win his enemies over to healthy relations with America, is killing the unborn “enemy” a diplomatic approach?

Remember that the credit crunch is the hand of the Lord shaking us and attacking our pride. Therefore the wrath of the Lord cannot rest from humiliating us if we refuse to humble ourselves on issues that are clear ethically, morally and theologically.
Just stop and think if one or both of the two little girls of Obama had been killed before they were born, how different would be the world (home) of Obama, especially now in the White House. The two little girls speak a powerful message to the largest percentage of people around the world than what Obama and Michele say; we have to discover this.

May God open our eyes to see these things very clearly and turn away from these sins!

Rev. Martin Odi

My New Book on Art

2010-01-07T09:22:00.007-05:00

I have a new book, actually a booklet, coming out very soon. It's called Art to the Glory of God (Wifp and Stock). It is written for Christian artists who are looking for more than theory about Christianity and art. The booklet offers practical steps the artist can take to do art to the glory of God. Below is the Introduction to the booklet which will give you the general idea. I hope you will look for it when it comes out, likely in February/March.

INTRODUCTION
Years ago, I was privileged to be a student at the Yale University Institute of Sacred Music. The Institute is an interdisciplinary think-tank that is shared by the Yale Divinity School and the Yale Graduate School of Music. I attended classes in both schools. The principle focus of the Institute is to further study and dialogue on the relationship of Christianity and culture. My role at the Institute also permitted me to take courses at the department of Christianity and the Arts, where I studied art history (principally painting and architecture) and many of the underlying religious themes found in numerous art masterpieces. During my few years at the Institute, I arrived at many conclusions regarding the relationship between Christianity and culture—all of which have since matured.

One result of my deliberations over this mutual relationship is a book, which I wrote, titled, The Road From Eden: Studies in Christianity and Culture. The book has a great deal to say about many areas of society and culture, art and art history in particular. Though my formal training is in the area of music, I learned many years ago that the best place to discern the imprint of Christianity upon the forms of Western culture is found in the medium of art—painting and architecture in particular. Frankly, the history of culture is embodied in the history of art. As I have stated many times before, the student that knows little of art history knows little of cultural history.

An unexpected byproduct of The Road From Eden was a desire on my part to think more critically about what makes art great. Knowledge of art history is one thing. But knowledge of how one goes about creating a masterpiece is quite another. Truth be told, I can’t paint, sculpt; even my stick-figures leave something to be desired. Nonetheless, there came a point in my study of Christianity’s contribution to the contrasts, currents, and trends in Western culture that caused me to pause, and self-reflect, “Wait a minute, what is it about all of these magnificent creations of art that sets them on a higher plane from lesser examples? So, my interest in “what” happened in art history shifted to “how” art becomes great—the mechanics of art. This is a difficult question, certainly because there are so many different examples from art history to examine. The criteria for what makes a composition “great” has changed from epoch to epoch. But are there not some common ingredients that make great art, great?

Added to my continuing interest is a deeper question. I am a Christian. Consequently, I am ever-mindful of the fact that all that is done on this earthly globe is done before a watching God who appraises all the works of our hands. So, for this writer, the question of great art is inextricably woven into the question of how one does art that glorifies God. Now it is possible to create something that glorifies God but, according to the critic’s eye, is poorly done. On the other hand, it is feasible to create a piece of art that stands the test of time, but which glorifies man. My purpose in this brief work is to seek a synthesis of the two ideas: to offer some suggestions on how the artist can do great art that glorifies God. Beneath all of this is my enduring quest to see the Christian community become, one more, the source of magnificent, world-shaping art.

It is my earnest hope that the artist reading this booklet, whether an apprentice, or advanced, will find within its pages a true source of encouragement and some insights that can improve his craft.

The Present Culture of "Neo-Romanticism"

2009-12-17T11:17:00.006-05:00

For all of its assurance to liberate men free from their self-imposed ignorance, considered largely the result of the influence of traditional Christianity, the Enlightenment failed to provide a final solution for life. In its rational deconstruction of man and of the universe in order to create a cohesive view of specific topics, the Enlightenment was really an agenda for progress apart from the biblical revelation of God. Problematically, by locking God out of the metaphysical world, and arguing instead for a clockwork universe, so-called enlightened thinkers made God a prisoner to his own set of laws. It took Kant to seek the “der Ausgang des Menschen aus seiner selbst verschuldeten Unmundigkeit” (“the emergence of man from his self-incurred immaturity”) and to return the metaphysical world to the arena of philosophy and religious discourse. Rococo frivolity was the Enlightenment in denial—a last gasp effort to believe that science and philosophy could replace God and deliver the better life.

Thus, things began to turn slowly to a new vision of things that cultural historians refer to as the period of Romanticism. The nineteenth-century intellectual and cultural movement sought to save the Christian faith and practice that had been had been devalued by the radical theorists of the European Enlightenment. Some men found a lively faith in the Church but most saw the Church as nothing more than a narcotic masking people’s inner pain. Many therefore sought a spiritual path outside organized religion in the way of nature mysticism. In all, as Bernard Reardon has noted, people began again to yearn for the “infinite beyond”—a sentimental longing for the medieval past. Metaphysics had found a place again.

Men of the Romantic age could not tolerate the notion that all knowledge is acquired by reason for this left no room for the ego to explore, actually to create, reality. But indisposed to abandon reason altogether they made room for the human faculty of imagination. Reason ascertains the existence of facts while the imagination discerns the meaning about facts. But the imagination had the upper hand, such that Fichte could say, “All reality is produced purely by the imagination.” The real substance of imagination (for Schleiermacher it is “intuition,” for Freud it is “ego”) is therefore cognitive; but cognitive not only in the empirical sense, but to an even greater extent in the metaphysical meaning. It is through imagination that real knowledge of all things is realized.

Romanticism was thought to indicate the coming end of the enlightened idea of progress and the end of the anti-metaphysical mood in Europe. But unfortunately the new program only served to lead men further away from God. Despite’s Kant’s stress on recovering the numinous realm most men of the period sought the sacred world of salvation in the inner self—the world of feeling and subjectivity. Theirs’ was a search for the infinite in the finite.

The great Romantic poet/painter William Blake captured the Romantic preoccupation with religious introspection.

To see a world in a grain of Sand,
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.

The obsession with the inner-world of self as a vehicle for recapturing religious sentiment set off a spiritual and psychological evolutionary spiral downward. Just fifteen years after David’s The Battle of the Romans and the Sabines (1799), in which there is not a drop of blood, Francisco Goya eclipsed the austere idealization of the classical past in The Third of May 1808 (1814). The face of the Madrilenos’ martyrs now lying soaked in their own blood spoke for the new attitude in Europe. Belief in the potential of man to advance Europe on the heels of the French Revolution had turned to widespread feeling of helplessness and horror in the face of man’s inhumanity to man.

It is said that gaiety marked the late nineteenth century; indeed, a revived sense of optimism appeared before World War I. Nonetheless, beneath the surface a growing disenchantment continued to gain momentum throughout the West. Though the industrial revolution in both Europe and in America brought scientific and technological progress that made life easier, scores of people were uneasy. The gleeful world of belle epoque (beautiful age) of Paris was more and more suspected as a mere façade hiding people’s quite desperation. The growing loss of hope for the future kicked off a compliment of movements in painting that functioned as a forum for the search for meaning in the face of human forlornness. Ignited by the birth of Romanticism, there was Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Neo-Plasticism, culminating in Cubism around the start of World War I. Unfortunately the story of Modern Art is a quirk of irony. The more men wrestled with the meaning of life the more their center slipped farther into the abyss of meaninglessness.

Very soon after World War 1, Irish poet, William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), captured the human concession to hopelessness in The Second Coming.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold,
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

By the early twentieth century Munch’s The Scream (1910) became a metaphor for the outlook in the West. Munch had captured man’s greatest fear: not of death but of living. In the end, the bold period of progress promised by the Romantic worldview was not satisfied, just as the promises of progress made by the Enlightenment before it had failed.

Why did Romanticism fail? Why so much despair? The deeper men looked into themselves for meaning and for God, the more they discovered the very ugliness for which Christ died. Having discarded the historical Jesus for an extension of their inner-ego, which they called “God,” they formed a deep pit from which they could not rescue themselves. Forlornness is the unfortunate blow awaiting anyone that dares to gaze into his inner-man without the grace of God.

It has been said many times that the age in which we now live is a continuation of the radical progressives who fueled the Enlightenment. Nothing could be further from the truth. Now in the twenty-first century, we are the progenitors of Romanticism and its blending of reason and imagination. The cultural mood of the West is not conditioned by the atheism championed by Candide but by Johan Gottlob Fichte’s quest for the freeing of the cosmic consciousness.

Many Westerners, including theologians and philosophers, speak of an objective world, but only insofar as it serves as the sphere of the ego’s freedom. The real starting point of modern-day liberalism is not the encyclopedists and the philosophes but the members of the Sturm und Drang.

Contrary to popular held belief Europe is not a culture of postmodern thought, if we are to define “postmodern” as a mindset in direct opposition to religion. Rather, the postmodern mind in Europe is increasingly open to the practice of spirituality on a number of different levels. Europe, and following on its heels, America, may be post-Christian, but they are not post-religious. Far from being secular and anti-religion the future world is one in which hyper-religious movements will flourish.

The difference now, so it is said, is that metaphysics is no longer in vogue. But “biblical” metaphysics were not in vogue during the historic period of nineteenth-century Romanticism. The infinite beyond was a cover for the cosmic ego. Postmodern thinkers who claim no interest in metaphysics are merely Romantics who have now decided to come clean. I call them “Neo-Romantics.” Today, most Christian colleges, universities, and Divinity Schools in both America and Europe encourage a form of Christianity that places the radical ego at the center.

Despite the claim that all theological reflection ought to begin with Jesus of Nazareth, I cannot help but think that some theologians make this claim out of their own individual social, political, and cultural awareness. Today, theological ideas are so unpretentiously expressed in familiar language interwoven with the common biblical vernacular, God-speak, and spiritual insights that the agnostic, radical underpinnings of religious viewpoints are ignored.

If in fact the West (and also Africa and Asia), is not post-religious, but post-Christian, then people are hungry for answers of a religious nature. This means that Protestant theology must do better. The Christian theologian must see this hunger as the urgency of the moment and address it biblically: according to the true hope and promise of cultural and social progress that only Jesus can deliver. But one thing will not work: biblical and theological answers that are cut from the same scrap of cloth that is soaked in the despair of the age, whereby the best we can do is to muster “the courage to be.” The need of the hour is for the Church to take its place in the culture; to take a prophetic stand and to call nations to a “lively hope” (1 Pet. 1:3); to faith and obedience; to a life with Jesus that Paul distills as “faith working itself out through love” (Gal. 5:6).

Athiest Thinks Africa Needs God

2009-12-14T17:00:00.004-05:00

TimesOnline December 27, 2008

by Matthew Parris...

Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it's Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean. I went to see this work.

It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I've been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I've been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.

Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.

I used to avoid this truth by applauding - as you can - the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It's a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.

But this doesn't fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.

First, then, the observation. We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village. In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers. The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world - a directness in their dealings with others - that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall.

At 24, travelling by land across the continent reinforced this impression. From Algiers to Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Central African Republic, then right through the Congo to Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya, four student friends and I drove our old Land Rover to Nairobi.

We slept under the stars, so it was important as we reached the more populated and lawless parts of the sub-Sahara that every day we find somewhere safe by nightfall. Often near a mission.

Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had not become more deferential towards strangers - in some ways less so - but more open.

This time in Malawi it was the same. I met no missionaries. You do not encounter missionaries in the lobbies of expensive hotels discussing development strategy documents, as you do with the big NGOs. But instead I noticed that a handful of the most impressive African members of the Pump Aid team (largely from Zimbabwe) were, privately, strong Christians. “Privately” because the charity is entirely secular and I never heard any of its team so much as mention religion while working in the villages. But I picked up the Christian references in our conversations. One, I saw, was studying a devotional textbook in the car. One, on Sunday, went off to church at dawn for a two-hour service.

It would suit me to believe that their honesty, diligence and optimism in their work was unconnected with personal faith. Their work was secular, but surely affected by what they were. What they were was, in turn, influenced by a conception of man's place in the Universe that Christianity had taught.

There's long been a fashion among Western academic sociologists for placing tribal value systems within a ring fence, beyond critiques founded in our own culture: “theirs” and therefore best for “them”; authentic and of intrinsically equal worth to ours.

I don't follow this. I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and that it suppresses individuality. People think collectively; first in terms of the community, extended family and tribe. This rural-traditional mindset feeds into the “big man” and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole idea of loyal opposition.

Anxiety - fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things - strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won't take the initiative, won't take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.

How can I, as someone with a foot in both camps, explain? When the philosophical tourist moves from one world view to another he finds - at the very moment of passing into the new - that he loses the language to describe the landscape to the old. But let me try an example: the answer given by Sir Edmund Hillary to the question: Why climb the mountain? “Because it's there,” he said.

To the rural African mind, this is an explanation of why one would not climb the mountain. It's... well, there. Just there. Why interfere? Nothing to be done about it, or with it. Hillary's further explanation - that nobody else had climbed it - would stand as a second reason for passivity.

Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.

Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.

And I'm afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.

The Need for the Biblical World and Life View to Reform African Culture

2009-12-01T08:07:00.005-05:00

I have a new article on The Road From Eden that offers a modest vision for the reform of African culture. Obviously, it offers only a part of what is needed. But check out the article at my website. You can link to it just to the right of this post or go to www.roadfromeden.com It is under Culture/Articles. A partial excerpt from the article is below...

Religious pluralism is endemic to African traditional religion (ATR). It animates the social and cultural conditions not only of African religion but also of many cultural forms throughout the continent. More specifically, religious pluralism is having a direct effect on the ways in which Christianity is understood and practiced in most areas of Africa. It is the worldview of religious pluralism that must be challenged in order for biblical Christianity to emerge and take hold of Africa.

This challenge cannot be addressed by a narrow evangelistic model but by a rigorous biblical theology focused on the teaching of the Christian world and life view. With the firm rooting of biblical theology, the Christian worldview can supplant the prevailing pluralistic worldview of ATR. Adding more converts into a system that is systemically pluralistic in its understanding of life is not helpful.

Contrary to the tenants of religious pluralism (all roads lead to God) there is need for a wholesale renaissance in many African’s thinking that can provide fertile soil for the growth of a true understanding of the uniqueness of Christ and of his salvation and transform African life.

What are the particular ramifications of religious pluralism in African nations struggling to define an African expression of Christianity? How can biblical Christianity address the problem of religious pluralism and help bring true and lasting reformation to Africa? I will address these questions under three headings: 1) The problem of African religious pluralism; 2) The five sources of religious pluralism in Africa; 3) The Christian answer for African religious pluralism.

John Frame's Festschrift

2009-11-18T20:03:00.005-05:00

Speaking the Truth in Love: the Theology of John M. Frame is now available. I must say that it is a true blessing to participate by contributing a chapter to this volume. My contribution is titled, "John Frame's Theology in the Present Cultural Context."

One reason why my involvement is meaningful to me is because there are three people who have influenced my ministry the most over the past 25 years. When I mention the three names, many people are stunned that one of them is John Frame. The other two, by the way, are the late Jack Miller, and Henry Krabbendam.

Now here's a real secret that I rarely tell anyone. Behind all three of these men is yet another figure who has influenced me even more than these; in fact, he did much to guide the thought of the three men mentioned above. He is Cornelius Van Til.

But focusing on the three, I would say that it is John Frame who did the most to fashion the way in which I think about ministry (Dr. Miller helped to put in me a zeal for evangelism and missions, and Dr. Krabbendam shaped the way in which I look for truth in the Bible).

John is not even aware of how he influenced me (of course, if he reads my chapter he may get a hint). It all started when he walked up to a group of us students who were sitting around getting to know each other, and asked, "What are you guys talking about?" One fellow responded, "We're discussing Cornelius Van Til." John said, "Everything Van Til ever said can be boiled down to two ideas: that all men undeniably know the truth. And that the only way to approach them is to pull the rug right out from under them."

I'll never forget that moment. Suddenly, everything came together. Graduating college with a music degree, and with no formal training in theology, made me quite nervous about attending Westminster Theological Seminary. It all seemed so overwhelming. But John's words were the perfect "hat rack" if you will, that helped me to place everything I was being exposed to, and rapidly, in its place.

From that moment, I began to see everything in my theological education in the light of his distilled interpretation of Van Til. Once I graduated seminary, and to this day, everything I have ever done in the ministry--whether preaching, teaching, evangelism, radio broadcasting, and writing, has been guided by the facts that all men know the truth but suppress it in their hearts (Romans 1).

Is it not amazing how just a few words meant in passing can have a lifelong impact on the life of a student? So it is with this recollection that I am more than glad to have participated in the "Fest."

Traditional Wordview Categories

2009-11-18T15:09:00.010-05:00

“A biblical Worldview is seeing the world the way God sees it. It is thinking God’s thoughts after him in all areas of life” (Earth Restored, 2002).

As those of you who have read my book Earth Restored know, I do not typically treat the topic of Christian worldview according to philosophical categories, as is typically the case in many Christian colleges. However, this is not to say that we cannot learn a great deal from the traditional categories. The following offers a list of the traditional worldview elements and their implications for our cultural debate, much of which follows the thinking of Ronald Nash.

Epistemology: “The branch of philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge, its presuppositions and foundations, and its extent and validity.”

Secular humanism claims that the basis for knowledge is autonomous reason.

The God Christians believe in is the God who has revealed himself in the Old and New Testaments. The Christian faith is a revealed-religion. Ronald Nash says that Christianity’s “touchstone proposition” is that “Human beings and the universe in which they reside are the creation of the God who has revealed himself in Scripture. The basic presupposition of the Christian world-view is the existence of the God revealed in Scripture.” The foundation of the Christian faith is the authority than the living God, not human speculation and vain autonomy. Carl Henry correctly observes, “All merely human affirmations about God curl into a question mark. We cannot spy out the secrets of God by obtrusive curiosity. …Apart from God's initiative, God’s act, God's revelation, no confident basis exists for God-talk. …If we are authorized to say anything at all about the living God, it is only because of God's initiative and revelation. God's disclosure alone can transform our wavering questions concerning ultimate reality into confident exclamations!”

Metaphysics: “The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value.”

Metaphysics deals with ultimate reality and questions such as “What is the meaning of existence? Of life? Is the existence of the universe a brute fact? Is the universe eternal? Secularism holds there is no ultimate meaning to life beyond the grave.

The Christian response is that God did create the whole universe out of nothing (ex nihilo) and that God is a free and eternal being. Christians affirm that the universe and all that is in it finds its ultimate meaning and purpose in God.

Secular humanism posits evolutionary theory or the earth as a “brute fact.”

Christian worldview understands that God is and that He is the source of all existence. The Westminster Confession of Faith states, “There is but one only, living, and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions; immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute; working all things according to the counsel of His own immutable and most righteous will, for His own glory most loving gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him; and withal, most just, and terrible in His judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty.”

Anthropology: “The scientific study of the origin, the behavior, and the physical, social, and cultural development of humans.”

The Christian worldview should include a number of important beliefs about human beings. “Are human beings free? Are human beings only bodies or material beings? Do they have a soul? What is the soul and how is it related to the body? Is death the end of personal existence?” Humanism says that man is a “cunning animal.” A product of the lower species.

Quoting William J. Abraham, Nash considers what the Christian worldview believes about human beings. Abraham states: “Human beings are made in the image of God, and their fate depends on their relationship with God...and they will be judged in accordance with how they respond to him. This judgment begins now but finally takes place beyond death in a life to come. Christians furthermore offer a diagnosis of what is wrong with the world. Fundamentally, they say our problems are spiritual: we need to be made anew by God. Human beings have misused their freedom; they are in a state of rebellion against God; they are sinners. These conclusions lead to a set of solutions to this ill. As one might expect, the fundamental solution is again spiritual… [I]n Jesus of Nazareth God has intervened to save and remake mankind. Each individual needs to respond to this and to become part of Christ's body, the church, where they are to grow in grace and become more like Christ. This in turn generates a certain vision of the future. In the coming of Jesus, God has inaugurated his kingdom, but it will be consummated at some unspecified time in the future when Christ returns.” Christianity answers the questions of human origin, purpose and destiny from the Bible. It offers a realistic analysis of human suffering and how man’s fallen condition can be restored.

Ethics: “The study of the general nature of morals and of the specific moral choices to be made by a person; moral philosophy.”

Christian ethics addresses the questions posed by Francis Shaeffer, “How then shall we live?” Everyday unbelievers appear to live moral lives. But ethics as a worldview factor is more concerned with the basis of our actions and their relationship to God. Further, Christian ethics asks “Are moral laws the same for all human beings? Is morality totally subjective or is there an objective dimension to moral laws that means their truth is independent of our preferences and desires?” Secular humanism bases moral choice in situational ethics or communal deference. We defer our choice to the well-being of others, saying, “If it doesn’t hurt anyone, it’s OK.”

The Christian worldview claims why and how one “ought” to live; what conduct is permissible or impermissible. Christians claim that it is God’s good, righteous and holy character revealed in his laws, rules and principles that are the ground for our behavior and even our thoughts. The unbeliever, regardless of how ethical he or she may appear, lives by personal preference, autonomous reason, and cultural convention. It is important to note that everyone has a worldview: some foundation for his or her view of things. Not every worldview, however, reflects God’s truth.

Substitutionary Atonement

2009-11-13T08:19:00.006-05:00

"We are drifted so far that some 'evangelicals' can call penal substitution divine child abuse."--William Mackenzie, Director, Christian Focus Publications.

See Full Speech at Desiring God

The Plight of East African Children

2009-11-10T19:56:00.005-05:00

I have written a short piece titled, "The Plight of East African Children in the Light of 2 Kings 2:1-7." It appears on my website, www.roadfromeden.com which you can link to on this site.

The piece interacts with several articles in a major Ugandan newspaper called The New Vision, as well as some statistics relevant to the children of Uganda. I read the newspaper while flying from Entebbe to Amsterdam on my way home to the States.

I freely admit that the article does not do justice to the whole of the problem facing the children of East Africa, but it may offer you a brief bit of insight into a root cause of the problem.

I plan on several more such articles dealing with East African culture and society.

Please read it when you get a chance and feel free to offer some feedback.

Have Christians Lost the Culture War on ESPA

2009-11-04T08:06:00.004-05:00

The Evangelical Political Scholars Association homepage is this month highlighting my recent presentation at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church: "Have Christians Lost the Culture War?"

EPSA exists to facilitate a professional network of evangelical scholars interested in exploring the questions that underlie political life. You can share your thoughts on my speech by visiting the ESPA website at http://epsa.tkc.edu/

In case you are interested, above is a rendering of John Locke, a bit of a political thinker himself.

Into Africa

2009-10-28T19:43:00.022-04:00

I have returned from Kenya and Uganda, where for one week I ministered to a group of pastors in Kenya and a group of Bishops in Uganda. I was traveling with Equipping Pastors International (EPI). Being a cultural historian and theologian of culture, I must say that the experience was personally stimulating and instructive.

There are many aspects of East Africa culture that are worthy of report, issues that I will try to take up in an article or two on my website, www.roadfromeden.com. However, here I will mention just one observations from my trip regarding the cultural situation in this troubled region of the world.

Uganda won its liberty from Great Britain in 1962, followed closely by Kenya in 1963. Liberty is a priceless treasure, but unless individuals and nations know how to handle liberty, it can quickly turn into a prison, manifesting great religious, tribal, and political abuse. Such is the case with these two nations, it seems to me. Being an American, with a decidedly American outlook, I was careful not to present myself to Africans as if I had the answers to their problems. So I spent a great deal of time listening to them and observing.

Time and again, and this is especially the case regarding Uganda, I heard how African culture runs on money. Graft, greed, and malfeasance are the name of the game. You pay to play. These sins are the inevitable result of covetousness, an issue taken up by the 10th Commandment, but also a commandment that sums up the first nine commandments. Lying, stealing, worshiping other gods -- it all boils down to one thing: coveting something that does not belong to you.

Forget what you have heard, that AIDS is "the" national pandemic in Africa. AIDS is a problem to be sure. However, beneath the surface lurks an even deadlier disease. The real pandemic in this beautiful continent, and its many nations, is covetousness: the lust for what people do not have, and the willingness to do whatever it takes to get it. The spiritual problem is the underlying cause of the physical problems that are rife in the nations I was privileged to visit.

The amazing thing about it is that both Kenya and Uganda are rich. The natural resources are there and are plentiful. The work force is there and is plentiful. The God of heaven and earth is there and is plentiful. What do others have worth taking by means of bribe or theft that they cannot earn by their own hard work and with God's abundant blessing? I have never seen a place so capable of natural production yet so marred by bareness and brokenness.

I visited Kibera, Kenya where the third worst slum in the world is to be found. Kibari is 3.3 kilometers in size and is home to 70,000 people! There is no electricity. No decent water. Not even squat latrines. The people place their refuse in plastic bags and hurl them into a field. The ground and the air is rife with plaques of all sorts. I had my picture taken in front of Kibera (see pic above). Moments later, a young boy named Roberto approached me, and shook my hand. He is 10 years old. His pastor standing nearby, said to me, "He has our national pandemic." I asked, "What is that?" He replied, "HIV." I felt it an honor to meet young Roberto, and my prayers are with him.

But I go back to my original thought. How can it be that 70,000 people (and incidentally, about 80 percent of Kenyans live in these terrible conditions), live in slums like this suffering everything from Malaria to AIDS, while it is patently obvious that the resources are available to help, and to help with so many other problems facing the people of East Africa? The U.N is attempting to help. Oxfam is trying. Many organizations are busy. But the problem is that the vast majority of monies that enter these countries meant for the the poor and the destitute go right into the pockets of leaders bent, not on helping their people, but on elicit gain.

So Kenya and Uganda are free. But are they? Hope that East African pastors, political leaders, and more, will understand and teach a simple principle taught many years ago in the Bible: that should we gain our liberty, we ought not to use it as an opportunity for the flesh (Galatians 5:13). Rather, God makes us free in order that we might serve others, to bear their own burdens (Galatians 6:2).

Join me in prayer for these two nations.

A Taste of Heaven?

2009-10-06T19:32:00.008-04:00

On Fox news, Shepherd Smith first drew out attention to a new phenomenon, if you choose to call it that, in which people are now eating hamburger, laden with cheese, and whatever, and putting it all between a sliced, Crispy Cream doughnut. Some years ago, it was Aristotle who mentioned the need for "balance" in all things. But the issue is really not one "balance" but of glorifying God in all that we do, in this case, our bodies, the temple of the Holy Spirit.

It may appear as a small thing, but to apply the claims of Christ to our ever-dissolving culture, we must not overlook a single thing. Is putting a hamburger between a doughnut (see the video above and you'll gain a better sense of how hedonistically wacko this idea is) too small a thing for a Christian response? We live in a culture of pleasure, and one that is forever discovering news ways to seek it, even in the most cavalier and indeed stupid ways. The hamburger/doughnut combo is the equivalent of skateboarding down a rail-banister. It may be new, thrilling, and in some sense exotic, but in the end dangerous and mindless, insofar as it produces nothing more than a sense of an Art-Nouveau form of sensual pleasure. Even the Epicureans had more sense than this. If Christians are to bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, as part of our grand cultural mandate, let's not feel it beneath us to have something constructive to say about something even as far-fetched and ill-advised as a greasy hamburger on an even greasier doughnut.