Why Jim Wallis is wrong about the government "shutdown"

Jim Wallis, a leading light in the religious left, has released a YouTube video calling the "shutdown" of the federal government unbiblical. He is wrong. Wallis employs the very same tactics he has publically deplored when used by Christian conservatives.

Take time to read the following two pieces responding to Wallis:
1. It's Not Theology, It's Ideology by James Rogers
2. Jim Wallis on the Shutdown: It's Unbiblical by Joe Carter

Carl Trueman on the Real Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

Carl Trueman's article in the latest Nine Marks Journal is well worth the read.

We live in strange times. Hardly a year goes by without some conference on the future of the evangelical church somewhere having at least one speaker, or sometimes even a slate of speakers, who arguably represent precisely the kind of theology that has emptied pews, castrated preaching, and disemboweled commitment to the gospel.

I saw a flyer for just such a conference recently, honoring a great evangelical thinker and critic, where one of the keynote speakers represented precisely the kind of slippery theology which the honoree had devoted his life to debunking. Strange times, indeed.

What is going on? Why this craven need for acceptability by the wider world?

WHY DO EVANGELICAL ACADEMICS CRAVE WORLDLY ACCEPTANCE?

I suspect there are a number of reasons for this problem. First, the context of evangelicalism lends itself to just such confusion. Evangelicalism really does not understand what it is. Is it a movement based on an experience (the new birth), or on theological commitments, or on parachurch institutions? Yet here's the rub: The first (experience) will degenerate into mere subjective mysticism if not connected to the second (theological commitments). The second is now highly disputed among evangelicals, who cannot even agree on the answer to Pilate's question, "What is truth?" And the third (parachurch institutions) too often either forms part of the problem of defining the second, or, in the USA in particular, becomes less a ministry and more a vehicle for a cult of personality, vulnerable to the kind of criticism made by Eric Hoffer, who said that every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and ends up as a racket. Evangelicalism is a sorry mess, neither pure nor simple.

Second, if a movement does not understand what it is, then it cannot make any really satisfactory determination on who belongs and who does not. The boundaries of a movement are ultimately revealed by the person who comes closest to belonging but who nonetheless does not. Arius is a good early church example. As high and exalted as was his view of Christ, he could still only regard Christ as a creature and not fully God. The boundary was drawn and he was outside of it. Combine the problems of defining evangelical identity with the current cultural penchant for not excluding anybody and you have a heady recipe for total disaster. Say nice things about Jesus, have a warm feeling in your heart when somebody lights a candle, and be kind to your grandmother and—hey presto!—you belong; you too can be an evangelical. Thus we have deniers of penal substitution, of any meaningful notion of biblical authority, of the uniqueness of Christ for salvation, of justification by grace through faith, of the particularity of salvation. No matter: just stress that Jesus was a jolly good bloke, mouth a few orthodox sounding phrases, speak with a bit of engaging passion, and you too can get a membership pass and a speaking gig. And, if the conferences I mentioned above are anything to go by, we fall for such ruses every time.

Third, there would seem to be a pervasive evangelical inferiority complex. This means that, while we do not wish to exclude anybody, we dread being excluded ourselves. Indeed, for the evangelical academic, in a world so ill-defined, it is always tempting to cut just a few more corners, or keep shtum on just a couple of rather embarrassing doctrinal commitments, in order to have just that little bit more influence, that slightly bigger platform, in the outside world. This is particularly the temptation of evangelical biblical scholars and systematicians whose wider guilds are so utterly unsympathetic to the kind of supernaturalism and old-fashioned truth claims upon which their church constituencies are largely built. In so doing, we kid ourselves that we are doing the Lord's work, that, somehow, because we have articles published in this journal or by that press, we are really making real
headway into the unbelieving culture of the theological academy. Not that these things are not good and worthy—I do such things myself—but we must be careful that we do not confuse professional academic achievement with building up the saints or scoring a point for the kingdom.

It remains true (as James Barr pointed out years ago) that evangelical academics are generally respected in the academy only at precisely those points where they are least evangelical. There is a difference between academic or scholarly respectability and intellectual integrity. For a Christian, the latter depends upon the approval of God and is rooted in fidelity to his revealed Word; it does not always mean the same thing as playing by the rules of scholarly guild...

Years ago, Mark Noll wrote a book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, in which he argued that the scandal was that there was no such thing. When it comes to evangelical scholars and scholarship, I disagree: the scandal is not that there is no mind; it is that these days there is precious little evangel.

Read the entire article HERE.

Nine Marks Journal

The Jan/Feb edition of the Nine Marks Journal is not online (pdf).

The theme of this edition is "The Mindset of the New Evangelical Liberalism." This is a timely subject indeed. There are some outstanding articles here and I encourage you to take time to read and reflect.

Michael Lawrence - How to become a liberal without attending Harvard Divinity School

Carl Trueman - The Real Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

Al Mohler - Air Conditioning Hell: How Liberalism Happens

Phil Johnson - The Neo-Liberal Stealth Offensive

J. Mack Stiles - What's Happening to InterVarsity?

Jonathan Leeman - Is the God of the Missional Gospel Too Small?

When Evangelicalism is no longer evangelical...

Good article (part one of a series) by Martin Downes on the (almost) 20th anniversary of Robert Brow's "manifesto" on "the new evangelicalism."

It is almost twenty years since Christianity Today published the article "Evangelical Megashift: Why you may not have heard about wrath, sin, and hell recently" by the Canadian theologian Robert Brow (19th February 1990, to be exact).

Twenty years is a long time. After all in Febraury 1990, here in the UK Margaret Thatcher was still the Prime Minister, and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was still several months away.

Over the next two months I will make some occassional posts on the original article, and will offer some reflections on the trajectories of what Brow called "new model" thinking. Brow claimed that this was "dividing evangelicals on a deep level." Al Mohler referred to this article, back in 1996, as a "manifesto for evangelical revision."

Indeed it is worth recalling his comments on the subtle progressiveness of this paradigm shift from old to new model thinking:

But now, almost without our recognizing it, another model has appeared...A whole generation of young people have breathed this air, making their thinking very different from that of "old-model" evangelicalism, even where there is shared commitment to Jesus as Savior and the Bible as the authoritative Word of God. This theological sea change, as has so often happened in church history, involved giving new meanings to the ever stable language of the Christian faith.

In particular Brow noted that the words hell, faith, judge, wrath, sin, church, and the title "Son of God" were all being assigned new meanings in line with "new model" thinking:

We have looked at seven key words that have radically changed focus among new model evangelicals. When these words are encountered in the Bible, their meaning is articulated with a different accent.

Many readers of Christianity Today will recognize that they have moved in some of these directions without being conscious of a model shift. And the old model can be modified and given qualifications for a time. But once three or four of the changes have occurred, our thinking is already organized around the new model.

We may still use old-model language and assume we believe as before, but our hearts are changing our minds.

Others have noted that this article was a precursor for the open theist project (although an essay by Clark Pinnock in 1986 heralded this neo-Socinian theology to the evangelical world), and a portent much of the emergent and post-evangelical theology that has influenced evangelicalism in the first decade of the 21st century.

Almost ten years ago Gary L. W. Johnson was right to say that these "new model" thinkers have not lacked "a platform to propagate their anti-Reformational views" (and that not least through the medium of Christianity Today).

Yet, back in 1990, who would have thought that we would see a suprising resurgence of the very "old model" Calvinistic thinking that the "new model" thinkers were to determined to steer evangelicals away from?

Furthermore, however you assess it, this resurgence of the New Calvinists has brought in its wake a bold proclamation and clear articulation of the very words that the evangelical megashift was busily reinterpreting.

More to come...

Cozying Up to Error

The debacle that is the Anglican Church in North America ought to remind us that we cannot make nice with apostasy. Those churches and denominations that were once evangelical but now have departed from biblical Christianity did not reach their sad end overnight. It begin with small compromises usually rooted in a denial of biblical inerrancy.

Al Mohler comments on the on the tragic state of the Anglican Church.

The election of a second openly-homosexual bishop in the Episcopal Church hardly came as a surprise. Given the actions of the church in its General Convention this past summer, the question was clearly not if there would be more openly-gay bishops, but when. The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles answered that question on Saturday, electing the Reverend Mary D. Glasspool of Baltimore as an assistant bishop. She is expected to be consecrated as bishop on May 15 in Los Angeles.

Ms. Glasspool was elected on the seventh ballot, winning 153 clergy votes and 203 lay votes. Her election followed the election of another woman as a fellow assistant bishop for the diocese. More significantly, her election followed the seismic events of 2003, when the Reverend V. Gene Robinson was elected bishop of New Hampshire -- the first openly-homosexual bishop in the entire Anglican world.

Bishop Robinson's election set off a cataclysm in the Anglican Communion. That worldwide body of Anglicans appealed to its American church, the Episcopal Church, to respect the concerns of other churches and to establish a moratorium on the election of openly homosexual persons as bishops and the blessing of same-sex unions.

Anglican churches in the so-called "Global South" responded to the election of Bishop Robinson with outrage and conservatives in the Episcopal Church withdrew, forming the new Anglican Church in North America [ACNA]. Over the past two years, a significant number of churches and dioceses have withdrawn from the Episcopal Church to join the new ACNA or another conservative Anglican body.

Read the entire article HERE.

Lessons from an Atheist

Christopher Hitchens has some very interesting things to say about conservative Christians based upon his experiences debating Douglas Wilson.

I haven't yet run into an argument that has made me want to change my mind. After all, a believing religious person, however brilliant or however good in debate, is compelled to stick fairly closely to a "script" that is known in advance, and known to me, too. However, I have discovered that the so-called Christian right is much less monolithic, and very much more polite and hospitable, than I would once have thought, or than most liberals believe.

AND

Wilson isn't one of those evasive Christians who mumble apologetically about how some of the Bible stories are really just "metaphors." He is willing to maintain very staunchly that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and that his sacrifice redeems our state of sin, which in turn is the outcome of our rebellion against God. He doesn't waffle when asked why God allows so much evil and suffering—of course he "allows" it since it is the inescapable state of rebellious sinners. I much prefer this sincerity to the vague and Python-esque witterings of the interfaith and ecumenical groups who barely respect their own traditions and who look upon faith as just another word for community organizing.

HT: Church Matters

The Sad Legacy of Theological Liberalism

From Banner of Truth:

'How Liberal Theology Infected Scotland' is a deeply instructive short article written by R. A. Finlayson, the late professor of Systematic Theology in the Free Church College in Edinburgh.

Finlayson attributed the nineteenth century infiltration of Liberalism into a confessional Church to wrong priorities by the leaders. He wrote:

...not content with opening three colleges, in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen...her theological students would not deem their course complete, or their standing in the Church assured, without a postgraduate course of one or more years in one of the more famous Colleges in Germany.

From that folly, the product of spiritual pride, the Free Church was to reap a bitter harvest. Germany then was the nursery of Liberal theology, which was spreading like prairie fire through the Protestant Churches of Europe.

Reading this assessment reminded me of the words of Archibald Alexander to the young Charles Hodge. Hodge has been given leave by the Seminary to spend two years studying in Europe. As well as developing his linguistic skills, Hodge would become acquainted with biblical criticism. Alexander cautioned him:

Remember that you breathe a poisoned atmosphere. If you lose the lively and deep impression of Divine truth, if you fall into scepticism or even into coldness - you will lose more than you gain from all the German professors and libraries . . .

At the start of the twentieth century a similar situation was faced by the young Gresham Machen as he studied in Marburg, Germany, under the renowned Liberal scholar Wilhelm Herrmann. Machen said that Herrmann believed hardly anything essential to Christianity. Yet here was a man who at the same time exuded an incredibly impressive piety. Although he rarely spoke of the profound spiritual struggle that he went through in Germany, one of Machen's students recalled him saying that:

. . . the great Dr. Herrman presented his position with such power I would sometimes leave his presence wondering how I could ever retain my confidence in the historical accuracy of the Gospel narratives. Then I'd go to my room, take out the Gospel of Mark and read it from beginning to end in one sitting - and my doubts would fade. I realized that the document could not possibly be the invention of the mind of a mere man.

It was a remarkable act of mercy that kept the young Charles Hodge, and the young Gresham Machen, from capitulating to the errors of their teachers. Embracing orthodoxy, and remaining orthodox, cannot ultimately be attributed to our own powers. How different would the history of Princeton have been if the poison of Liberalism had infected the blood stream of Charles Hodge. Perhaps we can see what it would have looked like by observing the influence of a notable Hebrew scholar on the other side of the Atlantic.

It ought to be kept in mind that, more often than not, theological teachers who embrace errors remain convinced that they are still orthodox. In Scotland, A. B. Davidson, who was appointed in 1863 to the Chair of Hebrew Old Testament Literature in the New College, Edinburgh, had drunk deeply at the wells of German Liberal theology. He subtly began to introduce the new theology. Finlayson notes that Davidson gave this counsel to his students:

Be careful to give this to your congregations in small doses.

A. B. Bruce, professor at the Glasgow College, is a further tragic
example of the deleterious effects of Liberal theology:

Of some others in the forefront of the movement, it can only be said that there was a breakdown in character as well as in faith, over which the veil of charity must be drawn. As sad a case as any was, perhaps, that of A. B. Bruce, because of the early promise of his work on the teaching of Christ; and yet at the end of the day one of his closest friends commented sorrowfully: 'Sandy Bruce died without a single Christian conviction.'

Read the rest of this important article HERE.

Christianity OR Liberalism

"It is not surprising then that it [Liberalism] differs from Christianity in its account of the gospel itself; it is not surprising that it presents an entirely different account of the way of salvation. Liberalism finds salvation (so far as it is willing to speak at all of “salvation”) in man; Christianity finds it in an act of God.

"The difference with regard to the way of salvation concerns, in the first place, the basis of salvation in the redeeming work of Christ. According to Christian belief, Jesus is our Saviour, not by virtue of what He said, not even by virtue of what He was, but by what He did. He is our Saviour, not because He has inspired us to live the same kind of life that He lived, but because He took upon Himself the dreadful guilt of our sins and bore it instead of us on the cross. Such is the Christian conception of the Cross of Christ. It is ridiculed as being a “subtle theory of the atonement.” In reality, it is the plain teaching of the word of God; we know absolutely nothing about an atonement that is not a vicarious atonement, for that is the only atonement of which the New Testament speaks. And this Bible doctrine is not intricate or subtle. On the contrary, though it involves mysteries, it is itself so simple that a child can understand it. ”We deserved eternal death, but the Lord Jesus, because He loved us, died instead of us on the cross” - surely there is nothing so very intricate about that. It is not the Bible doctrine of the atonement which is difficult to understand - what are really incomprehensible are the elaborate modern efforts to get rid of the Bible doctrine in the interests of human pride.

"Modern liberal preachers do indeed sometimes speak of the “atonement.” But they speak of it just as seldom as they possibly can, and one can see plainly that their hears are elsewhere than at the foot of the Cross. Indeed, at this point, as at many others, one has the feeling that traditional language is being strained to become the expression of totally alien ideas. And when the traditional phraseology has been stripped away, the essence of the modern conception of the death of Christ, though that conception appears in many forms, is fairly plain. The essence of it is that the death of Christ had an effect not upon God but only upon man. Sometimes the effect upon man is conceived of in a very simple way, Christ’s death being regarded merely as an example of self-sacrifice for us to emulate. The uniqueness of this particular example, then, can be found only in the fact that Christian sentiment, gathering around it, has made it a convenient symbol for all self-sacrifice; it puts in concrete form what would otherwise have to be expressed in colder general terms."

J. Gresham Machen from Christianity And Liberalism

Consider it an honor Dr. Packer

Further evidence that the Anglican Church in Canada has lost their marbles.

This Day in History

On January 1, 1937 J. Gresham Machen died.

“Born in 1881, J. Gresham Machen grew up in an educated, well-to-do Presbyterian family in Baltimore. He majored in classics at Johns Hopkins University and graduated first in his class in 1901. He then entered the graduate program but after one year enrolled in Princeton Seminary. Following his graduation in 1905, he studied in Germany for a year then returned to Princeton Seminary as a professor of New Testament in 1906.

“Gresham Machen was known for his serious research and scholarly writing on various New Testament topics. He also became known for his defense of conservative theology, especially the authority of Scripture. After publishing Christianity and Liberalism in 1923, he became a nationally recognized figure. He maintained that liberalism was not a variety of Christianity but was instead an entirely different religion.

“‘Liberalism appeals to man’s will, while Christianity announces, first, a gracious act of God.’ He argued that historical Christianity had always been rooted in the saving acts of Christ’s death and resurrection, whereas liberal Protestantism reduced Christianity to a set of general religious principles regarding the moral teachings of Jesus.

“These beliefs caused Machen to become controversial figure both at Princeton Seminary and within his denomination, the Presbyterian Church U.S.A., as these institutions were beginning to shift toward a more liberal theological stance. Princeton’s drift into liberalism was heartbreaking for Machen, who fought hard to keep the seminary committed to the creeds of the Presbyterian Church. He pleaded with the seminary faculty to stand for ‘the full truthfulness of the Bible as the Word of God and for the vigorous defense and propagation of the Reformed or Calvinistic system of doctrine, which is the system of doctrine that the Bible teaches.’

“It was a losing battle. Princeton officially reorganized in 1929 to ensure a more inclusive theological curriculum. This left Machen and other Reformed professors worried about the lack of evangelical training for future Presbyterian ministers. In response, Machen and other Reformed faculty members left Princeton and founded Philadelphia’s Westminster Theological Seminary, an institution that would stand for theological orthodoxy and academic excellence. Gresham Machen was a professor of New Testament there until his death.

“At Westminster, Machen continued to fight liberalism within the Presbyterian Church. In 1933 he helped form the conservative Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions in order to counteract the liberalism that was infiltrating Presbyterian foreign missions. The Presbyterian General Assembly rejected this new mission board, and in 1935 Machen was tried and suspended from the ministry of the Presbyterian Church for refusing to break his ties to the Independent Board.

“Machen then played a central role in founding a new denomination, the Presbyterian Church of America (later the Orthodox Presbyterian Church), which over time continued to uphold theological orthodoxy.

“While speaking in Bismark, North Dakota, in December 1936, Machen came down with pneumonia, yet he continued preaching even though it was extremely cold and he was very sick. Finally he was hospitalized. When a friend visited him New Year’s Eve, Machen told him about a vision of heaven he had in the hospital: “Sam, it was glorious, it was glorious.” He died the next day on January 1, 1937.”

*From "The One Year Christian History" by E. Michael and Sharon Rusten


Some good books by and about J. Gresham Machen:
Defending the Faith by D.G. Hart
J. Gresham Machen by Stephen Nichols
The Biblical View of Man by J. Gresham Machen
Christianity and Liberalism by J. Gresham Machen
The Origins of Paul’s Religion by J. Gresham Machen
The Virgin Birth of Christ by J. Gresham Machen