"If I profess, with the loudest voice and clearest exposition, every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battle field besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point."
Desiring God has published an article by Nick Roen entitled "Is It Sin to Experience Same-Sex Attraction?" Roen believes there is a distinction between experiencing temptation and engaging in sin. I believe this is a helpful and, most importantly, biblical distinction. Our Lord was tempted in every way as are we yet without sin. Certainly, since we are fallen and "groaning" (Rom 8) we know what it is for temptation to give way to lust which then gives birth to evil deeds. But this does not change the fact that being tempted is not the same thing as being carried away by our lusts. Indeed, to equate the experience of temptation with sinful lusts and evil deeds is to place a burden upon our brothers and sisters that Scripture does not. Nowadays, when we talk about incest, we tend to think of child sexual abuse. That's how we use the term in the repressed-memory debate and in abortion legislation. When politicians such as President Obama make exceptions in abortion laws for "rape and incest," they're using the terms synonymously, except that in the incest scenario, the rapist is your dad.Read the entire article HERE.
But you can't prosecute Epstein under that theory. According to news reports, his daughter is 24, and their affair began in 2006. That makes her an adult. Furthermore, police say the sex appears to have been consensual. Four years ago, Ohio's Supreme Court upheld the incest conviction of Paul Lowe, a former sheriff's deputy, for what the court called "consensual sex with his 22-year-old stepdaughter." And last month, a 27-year-old Florida woman was sentenced to five years of probation for sex with her father. Clearly, we're prosecuting people for incest regardless of age or consent.
At this point, liberals tend to throw up their hands. If both parties are consenting adults and the genetic rationale is bogus, why should the law get involved? Incest may seem icky, but that's what people said about homosexuality, too. It's all private conduct. To which conservatives reply: We told you so. We warned you that if laws against homosexuality were struck down, laws against polygamy and incest would follow. And now you're proving us right.
This article is a very interesting window into the sexual confusions that lie at the heart of our age. To his credit, Saletan gets the conservative argument basically right:Read Mohler's entire article HERE.
The conservative view is that all sexual deviance—homosexuality, polyamory, adultery, bestiality, incest—violates the natural order. Families depend on moral structure: Mom, Dad, kids. When you confound that structure—when Dad sleeps with a man, Dad sleeps with another woman, or Mom sleeps with Grandpa—the family falls apart. Kids need clear roles and relationships. Without this, they get disoriented. Mess with the family, and you mess up the kids.
That’s a pretty fair summary. Of course, the Christian argument goes much deeper than the merely conservative argument, affirming the fact that, with exacting precision, God has spoken to the sinfulness of such behaviors — specifically condemning both homosexuality and incest. In other words, Christians move the question from mere wrongfulness to sinfulness and place all issues of sin within the biblical account of sin and redemption.
It is extremely revealing that, for many of our fellow citizens, incest may merely “seem icky.” And yet, all around us are folks who, with a straight face, deny the inevitability of this slippery slope.
I've written a post over at Ref21 concerning the Phil Robertson flap. Specifically I seek to distinguish between our reactions to same sex attraction and homosexual acts. I also seek to defend the "yuck factor" as a legitimate response to homosexual acts.As I have read the many commentaries offered by various evangelicals on the Phil Robertson flap I cannot help but wonder if some of the discussion confuses categories. Some, while in sympathy with Robertson's view that homosexuality is sin, are scandalized by his, shall we say, "earthy language." Same sex attraction requires more sensitivity and nuance, we are told. It is a complicated matter. And indeed it is. But same sex attraction is not what Mr. Robertson was addressing. He was addressing the specific sin of homosexual acts which is a related but different category from same sex attraction. We have brothers and sisters in Christ who, while struggling with same sex attraction, persevere faithfully in God-honoring chastity recognizing that homosexuality is a sin. The church ought to be a place where these saints can be honest about their particular area of temptation so that they can be spurred on toward love and good deeds. You know, just like those saints who struggle with lustful thoughts, dishonesty, pride, disobedience to parents, greed, anger, gluttony, etc.
Homosexual acts, however, do not merit such sensitivity and nuance (nor does lying, coveting, murder, etc). The Scripture's condemnation of such acts is clear. But God's book of nature is just as clear. Paul appeals to natural revelation in Romans one where homosexual acts are described as self-evidently unnatural. We live among people who reject outright the Biblical prohibition against such acts. That much is clear. But, as Paul points out, these same folks have exchanged in favor of a lie God's truth revealed in the natural world as well. It is a knowledge that is clear enough to render them without excuse. Is this not what Phil Robertson was pointing out? Could it be that his words were just too clear for the more sophisticated among us?
There is an inescapable "yuck factor" to homosexual acts that ought not be diminished by Christians. I'm not talking about juvenile snickering. I'm talking about a mature disgust generated by acts that have gone desperately awry of what is natural. Any medical doctor worth his salt will tell you the sorts of destruction done to the bodies of homosexuals. I would suggest that the greater ignorance is to be silent to such physical realities rather than pointing them out.
It seems to me that some of the condemnation of Phil Robertson coming from evangelicals has the aroma of cultural elitism. That is, a faith that is expressed in very ordinary and "un-nuanced" ways tends be sneered at by those Christians who prefer their cappuccinos be crafted by free range baristas (Okay, that was just a little cheap shot but I've got to keep your interest). My point is that those of us who have attended seminary and enjoy coffee from independent coffee shops need to remember that the Faith we embrace goes to the unschooled and uncouth. It is a faith for duck hunters, children, stock brokers, middle school dropouts, physicists and those who love the pancakes at Cracker Barrel. If that is embarrassing to some of my fellow evangelicals then perhaps Christian Science may provide a bit more insulation from the ruffians of Munroe, Louisiana.
So, here is what I am reading on this cold Christmas Eve morning - A Theology of Luke & Acts by Darrell Bock.
Carl Trueman, Todd Pruitt, and Aimee Byrd are back at it, and doing what they do best: tear down your preconceived notions and build up Gospel truths in their place. This time they take on Christmas, and discuss the utter amazing truth of Jesus' incarnation. The trio try their best to cover this hugely important topic in a short amount of time. How do we understand the connection between Jesus' humanity and his deity? What are some good resources in helping to understand this doctrine? What's Carl's favorite Christmas song?
For decades, Ligonier Ministries has been producing excellent resources for that space between Seminary and Sunday School. Their latest is an upgrade to their RefNet site. It's called RefNet 2.0 and functions as a "24 hour Christian internet radio." 
What mechanism is in place to protect and build up the unity of the visible church if congregationalism is accepted? False teaching destroys unity, but the mechanism for dealing with false teaching under congregational ecclesiology is left to the congregation itself. Particular congregations need the protection of other congregations, just as pastors need the protection and (sometimes) discipline of other pastors. It's good that my congregation can appeal to my presbytery if my teaching becomes suspect and the elders and I refuse to see my problem. That other elders can have authority over matters of doctrine in our church is our strength, not a weakness—for they may provide a more objective assessment of the problem in question (Prov. 11:14).Read the entire article HERE.
Moreover, in many congregational churches it's entirely possible for the Calvinistic minister to leave, only to be replaced by an Arminian one. Presbyterians have mechanisms for preventing such a drastic shift. I've learned a lot from my congregational friend Hunter Powell (the leading scholar of Puritan ecclesiology today), such as how much the Congregationalists needed the state to regulate true religion in the hope of achieving ecclesiastical unity. With today's separation of church and state, however, congregationalists have no such recourse for establishing wider church unity. And so one of the flaws of congregational ecclesiology is its crass independency and inability to regulate true religion on wide scale. Presbyterianism has a better mechanism in place to deal with false religion and establish true religion (such as the Westminster Confession of Faith).
Guy Waters observes, "Presbyterianism is essential to the well-being (bene esse) but not to the essence (esse) of the church. Non-acceptance of Presbyterianism is, therefore, no barrier to receiving a non-Presbyterian person as a Christian, or a non-Presbyterian church as a true branch of the church, provided that he in fact holds fast the only Head of the church, Jesus Christ." Thus, in the PCA we welcome any who are Christians as a regular member in our church, even if they are an anti-paedobaptist. If someone belongs to Christ we have no grounds for barring him or her from visible communion in Christ's body. Our desire for unity—objectified in our terms for membership—is our glory and Christ's glory (John 17:20-22), and this glory is best realized in the form of government known as Presbyterianism.
Antinomians among the Reformed have always seen themselves as reacting in the name of free grace against a hangover of legalistic, works-based bondage in personal discipleship. Characteristically, they have affirmed, not that the Mosaic law, under which Jesus lived and which was basic to his own moral teaching, does not after all state God's true standards for human living, but that it and its sanctions have no direct relevance to us once we have closed with Christ. Distinctive to Reformed theology from its birth has been its insistence that salvation, both relationally in justification and transformationally in sanctification, is ours entirely by virture of our grace-given union with Christ in his death and resurrection -- a union that God the Holy Spirit creates and sustains. Within this biblical framework, the key error of antinomianism in all its forms has been to treat our union with Christ as involving in effect some degree of personal absorption into Christ, such that the law as a voice from God no longer speaks to us or of us directly. From this starting point, the phalanx of antinomian teachers has spread out, celebrating different aspects of the assured confidence and joy in Christ that this supposedly biblical move of muzzling the law is thought to have opened for us.
We have a church celebrity culture that actually encourages plagiarism and often refuses to admit it. Entire books are written by ghostwriters who are never mentioned. While this is seemingly acceptable in our current Christian climate, one must ask if it should be. If your name is on the front cover (and often your smiling face), and you didn't write the book but someone else did, you have questionable integrity. Honesty is not possible when you take credit for a book someone else wrote. No matter how good the content, such a book should be held suspect. This has gone on for decades now and as long as the contract is clear and the check is written all is fine...or is it? I've heard of personal stories from a ghostwriter's childhood that have been used by an author who then changed names to fit his own background and published the story as if he had the experience. This is not merely plagiarism, it is straight up lying; even if the ghostwriter is paid what the contract stipulated. Can we buy a life story for publication? Is that what we have come to? Why are some pressured to this point?
To build one's success as a Christian celebrity on lies is folly and will not be fruitful in the end. In fact fame itself is fickle and can be gone in a moment. It demands all your attention immediately just to keep your Klout score up and your blog traffic coming. The race to collect twitter followers and Facebook friends is cruel and never satisfied. When your book sells well and is featured in Barnes and Noble there is always another book that sold better and is featured at Walmart or Costco...upping the ante. When you are invited to speak at a big conference, you feel good until you realize someone else is speaking in the prime slot and you're just the warm-up act. No matter how far up you climb the ladder of fame there is always somebody's backside your are looking up at. Fame is a race that doesn't have a finish line, it just has lots of people running and falling back––and eventually out––while younger energetic people jump onto the track...until they too fall behind. No one wins in this race. That is a lot of pressure to put on someone who is already busy running a church, and many are trying to do just that.
Church happens inside a theater with plush leather stadium seats. As approximately 50 congregants trickle in — hipster dads with Sunday-morning stubble and retro eyeglasses, women in designer jeans with their hair pulled into ponytails — an extended remix of Justin Timberlake’s “Suit & Tie” thumps through the sound system. (The church embraces secular music.) The house music fades. A band in front begins a set of contemporary songs, some with vaguely spiritual lyrics. The leader of this morning’s service is 32-year-old Landon Pickering, whose title at Fellowship is global youth pastor. He is also the pastor at this branch and at the church’s downtown Dallas location. Pickering (he goes by “l_pick” on Instagram) welcomes the crowd with enthusiasm. They hand it back. Pickering has movie-star looks, tatts on his arms and speaks in a sort of urban dialect. He is also dating his boss’s eldest daughter, LeeBeth Young, 27, who works in communications and video for the church and is on hand this morning to help out.
The screen darkens. A video with better special effects than most Syfy channel shows begins. It depicts a set of bones magically being enveloped in tendons, then flesh, then skin, until a whole man — naked and ripped, but shown in chaste tight shots — stands upright. Music swells. Cross-dissolve. Ed Young is now on-screen, live, at the Grapevine church, flanked by two medical-supply skeletons. The hashtag for today’s sermon and the handles of Ed’s Twitter and Instagram accounts remain posted in the screen’s lower corner. Want to accept Christ into your life at the end of the service? Hit #32898 on your smartphone and ushers will assist. Young wears a black hoodie with shiny zippers, snug rust-colored pants and chunky lace-up black boots. Later that morning, for the 11:30 service at the mother church, he will don a new outfit: blue oxford button-down, plaid vest, jeans cuffed at the ankles and wingtips with no socks. (One of Young’s side projects is a blog he started, called pastorfashion.com.) Ahead of his arrival? An elaborate production number interpreting “Radioactive,” an end-times anthem and hit song by Las Vegas rock band Imagine Dragons. A young woman on-stage sings the apocalyptic tune while laser lights slice through a thickening mist from a fog machine. Behind her, three jumbo screens flash disturbing images of gas masks. At stagefront, two breakdancers in yellow biohazard suits contort and gyrate, and simulate drum-beating on large toxic-waste barrels.
How sufficient is God's Word? Do the charismatic gifts have a place in the church today? Carl Trueman and Todd Pruitt are joined via satellite by the Pyromaniacs themselves - Dan Phillips and Frank Turk. The group discusses the cessationism of the charismatic gifts. God has given us all we need in his own, true, infallible word. Listen to the Mortification of Spin to hear their insights on this hotly debated topic.
Carl Trueman offers some necessary food for thought related to a recent dustup on the Janet Mefford show. For those of you who do not know, Janet Mefford recently interviewed Mark Driscoll on her syndicated radio program and it got a bit heated. Miss Mefford took Driscoll to task over large passages in his new book that she identifies as plagiarized from Dr. Peter Jones. I don't know if it is true or not. I do know that Janet Mefford is no dummy and she was quite specific with her charges. And while I was cringing when I first listened to the program, it was later revealed that Driscoll's people requested that Miss Mefford interview him about his new book. That changed everything in my mind. However, there are some who have come to Pastor Driscoll's defense. And this, Trueman argues, raises some serious concerns about the lack of accountability among the celebrities of evangelicalism.The Mefferd-Driscoll controversy points to another aspect of celebrity culture: celebrities are routinely allowed to behave in ways which would not be tolerated in ordinary mortals. For example, being drunk on the job and hurling abuse at an employer would make one unemployable in the real world. Not for Charlie Sheen. A conviction for rape would be enough to have you characterized as a monster in the real world who had forfeited the right to sympathetic media exposure. Not for Mike Tyson or Roman Polanski (just ask that champion of women's rights, Whoopi Goldberg). In short, normal rules do not apply to celebrities in the same way as they do to others.Read the entire post HERE.
The same is true in the celebritydrome of the evangelical subculture. Driscoll is a classic case in point. For example, he has claimed that God gives him explicit images of the sexual sins of other people. He has embraced prosperity teacher and denier of the Trinity, T. D. Jakes, as a brother. He has written an explicit book on sex. Most recently, he engaged in a cringe-inducing publicity stunt unworthy of a spoiled teenager. For most of us, any one of these things would have ended in church discipline and (in the Jakes' case) removal from office. Yet in all of this, the fan base and those with a vested interest in capitalizing on his success grant him free pass after free pass.
Last night I recorded a discussion with Adrian Warnock on cessationism. It will be available this coming Saturday — Premier Christian radio site will stream live on Saturday at 9:30am ET or 2:30pm UK.These are precisely my questions when I hear people claim, "God said to me," or "I felt God telling me..." Is Scripture not clear and sufficient? Has God promised to add to his authoritative and unerring word, a less authoritative, unclear, and possibly erring word?
As I hope the discussion will make clear, I know and understand that responsible continuationists affirm the doctrine of sola Scriptura. What I do not yet know, despite repeated questioning, is why they do.
My trouble is this. I have no category in my mind for prophecy lite, or Word of God kinda, or deutero-God-said.
If Henry Smith says, “God said x, y, and z to me,” that claim is either true or false. If it true, then what is the distinction in authoritative status between what God said to Henry Smith and what God said to Jeremiah? What possible basis could I have for taking one of them less seriously?
It is a serious question, and while I believe we had a robust and charitable discussion, I don’t believe it was addressed.
During
that sojourn I came to the conviction that the entire project of “big tent”
evangelicalism is failing. Whereas broad evangelicalism used to mean John
Stott, now it encompasses Rob Bell, Brian McLaren, and Gregory Boyd. The tent
pegs of evangelicalism’s big tent have been moved out too far. It can no longer
support the weight of its own contradictions. 
Includes contributions from Michael A. G. Haykin, Paul Helm, Lee Gatiss, Carl R. Trueman, Paul R. Williamson, J. Alec Motyer, Thomas R. Schreiner, Donald Macleod, Robert Letham, Stephen J. Wellum, Henri A. G. Blocher, Sinclair B. Ferguson, John Piper, and more.“I cannot imagine that this book could have been published twenty-five years ago: there were not at that time enough well-informed theologians working in the Reformed heritage to produce a volume of such clarity and competence. Whatever side you hold in this debate, henceforth you dare not venture into the discussion without thoughtfully reading this book, which, mercifully, makes argument by stereotype and reductionism a great deal more difficult. Above all, this book will elicit adoration as its readers ponder afresh what Jesus achieved on the cross.”
There is a palpable sense of confusion—and sometimes even embarrassment—with regard to so-called limited atonement today, pointing to the need for thoughtful engagement with this controversial doctrine.
Incorporating contributions from a host of respected theologians, From Heaven He Came and Sought Her stands as the first comprehensive resource on definite atonement as it examines the issue from historical, biblical, theological, and pastoral perspectives.
Offering scholarly insights for those seeking a thorough and well-researched discussion, this book will encourage charitable conversations as it winsomely defends this foundational tenet of Reformed theology.
The next scene of our story occurred last month at the University of Mississippi, where 125 persons, including freshman students in a theater appreciation course, sat through a production of The Laramie Project. About 20 of the students were freshman football players probably taking the course after being told they could pass it easily: You just have to go sit in a theater, what could be hard about that?Read the entire story HERE.
Apparently, given the particular play, it was hard. Students became restless. Two New York Times investigative reporters learned about “giggling, inappropriate coughing and burping,” and the possible use of a derogatory term for homosexuals. One 20-year-old, Ashley Kozich, wisely said, “It was a bunch of teenage boys being stupid.”
But no one could leave it at that. Officials came to the theater and told the athletes to apologize, but Ole Miss theater department head Rene Pulliam said they did not seem to “understand what they were apologizing for.” Then the university’s “Bias Incident Response Team” swung into action and said students who attended the play should attend an “educational session.”
With Mississippi Chancellor Dan Jones warning that disciplinary action could range from a public apology to expulsion, the students showed up and learned to keep their thoughts to themselves or—better yet—not have any negative thoughts about homosexuality in the first place. Val Ross, assistant dean of students for multicultural affairs, announced that “students will have multiple opportunities to acknowledge and celebrate LGBTQ groups on campus.” It looks like EDHE 105, a freshman-level class that introduces Old Miss freshmen to college life, will also include more propaganda.
One Way Love? But it’s not just a problem of perception. It’s also a problem of theology and emphasis. I like reading the early Church Fathers, the Reformers, the Puritans and 19th Century Scottish theologians. Maybe I am not reading them right, but I don’t see any of them writing in the general and sweeping terms that the grace-lit books do. Maybe I need the second blessing before I get really grasp what they are saying! But some of the statements just don’t make biblical sense to me. For example:
“Grace is love that has nothing to do with you, the beloved. It has everything and only to do with the lover.” Try as I might I just don’t get that. Of course Gods love for me has something to do with me! Of course Gods love for me is not only to do with him. The Son of God loved me and gave himself for me! I know I don’t deserve it, but there is no need to mangle the English language and render it meaningless. Whilst such sound bites might sound as though they magnify grace, I think they are superficial, trite and ultimately undermine the whole teaching about grace.
Grace -Complaints? “Grace doesn’t make demands. It just gives. And from our vantage point it always gives to the wrong person.” Again this does not really make sense to me. Is not take up your cross and follow me a demand? Go sell all that you have and give to the poor, is that not a demand? If you love me you will keep my commands? And is it always the case that grace gives to the wrong person? I honestly don’t think that God giving grace to so many of the people in St Peters is giving to the wrong person; except insofar as I am an old fashioned Scottish Calvinist who believes in total depravity and that no-one is the ‘right’ person for grace. That’s kind of the point. There is none righteous, no not one. If I believe that, why would I ever look and say “Lord, you are giving grace to the wrong person”?!I encourage you to read the entire review. There is much worth considering.
