Yes, the President's position on abortion does matter

It is certainly an incovenient truth for many that the President's position on abortion has a significant impact on the practice of abortion in the United States.

In an excellent article at First Thoughts Joe Carter writes,

What if I told you the only significant influence the President has on the economy is in selecting the Chairman of the Federal Reserve?

While the role of the president in managing the economy is often overstated, most serious voters would rightly dismiss such a narrow claim as absurd. Yet how often do we hear the similarly daft assertion that the only significant role the president plays in advancing the pro-life agenda is nominating Supreme Court justices?

The fact is that the president has a limited but substantial and broad-based role in protecting life and defending the most vulnerable in society. Since this week is both the first anniversary of the Obama presidency and the thirty-seventh anniversary of Roe v. Wade, it’s a prime time to provide a remember five of the reasons why it matters that we elect pro-life presidents:

1. Preserving the Pro-Life Riders — Each year pro-life provisions or “riders” are attached to the annual appropriations bills, preventing public funds from supporting abortions, abortion providers, or abortion promoters. The pro-life riders are attached to funding legislation and typically come up in the appropriations process or Department of Defense reauthorizations. As AdvanceUSA notes, under President Ronald Reagan and the first President Bush, federal regulations were clearly written to prevent recipients of Title X funds from referring for abortions or combining family planning services with abortion services (i.e., working at the same location).

Examples of pro-life riders include:

•The Dickey-Wicker provision which prohibits federal funding for research that harms or destroys human embryos.
•The Kemp-Kasten Amendment which prevents funding from going to those who support or participate in a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.
•The Hyde-Weldon provision which offers conscience protections for health care entities that refuse to provide or encourage abortions. It requires federal funds to be withheld from any state that discriminates against a hospital, insurance provider, or individual doctors and nurses for refusing to participate in abortion.
•The Mexico City Policy, first enacted by Ronald Reagan and later reinstated by George W. Bush, which prohibits USAID (foreign aid) money from going to any organizations that promote or perform abortions. Obama was in office three days before overturning the policy.
•Other provisions that are more specific include bans on funding for: abortions for federal prisoners, abortion in the District of Columbia, abortions through the Federal Employee Health Benefits program, abortions through Peace Corp, and abortion through the international HIV/AIDS bill.

A pro-life president can threaten to use the veto—as George W. Bush often did—to prevent the removal of such riders. Obama, however, would almost certainly veto any legislation that included these pro-life provisions.

Read the entire article HERE.

Greg Beale on Inerrancy (2)

The following is part two of Martin Downes' interview with Greg Beale on biblical inerrancy:

Part 2: Dealing with denials and criticisms of the doctrine of inerrancy

What are some of the consequences of denying inerrancy?

Ultimately, if you hold just to limited infallibility (for example, just the theological and soteric doctrines are inspired, not the other parts of the Bible), what can happen is that one ends up choosing what is inspired and trustworthy. What is infallible is different for different interpreters, and so one can end up making a Bible within the Bible for oneself. That is problematic. Someone might say that there are not a lot of errors, just a few. Well that is up to the ‘error’ decider. For some it may be more, for others less, but that way you don’t end up with a fully inspired Bible.

I should address the typical objection that it is irrelevant to hold that the Scriptures were inspired in the original autographs, since we no longer have them. However, if
we didn’t have originally inspired autographs who knows how many errors we could have? And when did the Bible become inspired if they were not inspired in the originals? We are left with even more problems if we don’t affirm a view of the inspiration of the original manuscripts. Furthermore, why do textual criticism if there was not an inspired original? Textual criticism is based on the fact that there was an original and that we are trying to get back to it.

Some people are concerned about the New Testament because there are corruptions in the manuscripts, which of course there are. But, in terms of the textual problems that we have, the really serious ones probably equal only one percent of the whole New Testament. Someone has compared this to the department of weights and measures in Washington D. C. Apparently, they have the perfect ruler there and the perfect foot. Carpenters around the country have rulers also. They are not as perfect as the one in Washington but they are very near it. To all intents and purposes we can say ‘thus saith the Lord’.

If we are preaching from a text of which there is serious doubt about what the original said, then we have to acknowledge that, just as we have to acknowledge that there may be interpretative problems with some texts that maybe Augustine, Luther, Calvin and Hodge disagreed over. In fact, if we had the original autographs it wouldn’t solve most of our problems. Most of our problems are theological and interpretive, not textual.

The doctrine of inerrancy has been criticized as “‘practically worthless’ because it requires so much qualifying. Andrew McGowan has recently questioned it on those grounds. Is it a fair criticism?

You may be referring to his comments about the Chicago Statement on inerrancy. I do think it is important to make qualifications. All that is to say is that the Scripture is inerrant from the angle of God’s intention through the human authors. If numbers are given in one text, and in parallel texts they are not exactly the same, is that an error? Well it depends on the intention of each particular author. One may be approximating and the other may not be. Some will say that is a qualification and that this qualification is a good example of inerrancy dying the death of a thousand qualifications. I don’t think so.

Even those who hold to a broad view of inspiration, for example the infallibilists, will point to intention, even though they limit that intention to soteric issues or theological issues and not historical ones. I feel very happy with the qualifications that the Chicago Statement makes and I don’t think that those qualifications qualify inerrancy in a way that it ‘dies the death of a thousand qualifications’! In this connection, intriguingly, it is very striking, astonishing really, that Andrew McGowan’s book has hardly any exegesis in it.

Another objection to inerrancy is that it is really a nineteenth-century invention that was forged in the conflict with liberal theology and higher criticism. How do you respond to that claim?

What tells the tale on that are some of the articles and books that have been written that deal with the doctrine of Scripture in the apostolic fathers, the church fathers, the medieval period, the Reformation, and on up to the 1700s. The language used of Scripture throughout the history of the Church is the language of perfection, of not making mistakes, of not making errors and other synonymous terms. John Hannah has edited the book Inerrancy and the Church, in which there are several articles, beginning with the church fathers, that show that the doctrine of inerrancy is traceable long before the nineteenth century.

It is also a typical response to say that inerrancy arose from the Enlightenment, especially as this pertains to the use of reason in understanding Scripture. The response to this has to be the same as with the above discussion of the view of inspiration held throughout Church history.

From Risking the Truth

Full Confidence

The church will always be harassed by those who deny the full truthfulness and trustworthiness of the Bible as God's Word. That is not new. What is new however are the number of so-called evangelicals who accuse the Bible of errors, contradictions, and inconsistencies. Fortunately however God has given the church those who are clearly and confidently articulating why it is we can have full confidence in the Bible.

I am excited about the Full Confidence conference taking place at Church of the Saviour the weekend of September 24-26, 2010.

From Westminster Seminary:

Change is inevitable. And when the unpredictability of tomorrow consumes our hearts, with insatiable tyranny, it devours any sense of stability, confidence, and peace. A violent and merciless master, change relentlessly erodes the very things to which we cling for confidence and assurance.

But there is good news, indeed, great news. Into that tumultuous world, God has spoken. His unbreakable words yield strength, hope and stability, and as the very words of God, Scripture grants us full confidence for today, tomorrow...forever.

Westminster Theological Seminary's conviction is that this revealed, self-attesting Word of God must ground and shape all human thought, and that this Word, centered on Jesus Christ the Eternal and Incarnate Word, bears absolute authority in defining, understanding and defending all issues of life in a changing world.

The Inescapable Evil of Abortion

All abortion providers know that what they do is an act of destruction. Try as they might they cannot escape the truth that abortion is homicide. What is more, abortion is homicide against the weakest and most vulnerable members of the human family. It is the most heartless of heartless actions. It is the cruelest of cruel acts.

In an outstanding article in the Weekly Standard David Daleiden and Jon A. Shields explore the reasons why so many abortionists are turning pro-life.

In the aftermath of Roe v. Wade, second-trimester abortions were usually performed by saline injection. The doctor simply replaced the amniotic fluid in the patient’s uterus with a saline solution and induced labor, leaving it to nurses to dispose of the expelled fetus. That changed in the late 1970s, when “dilation and evacuation” (D&E) emerged as a safer method. Today D&E is the most common second-trimester procedure. It has been performed millions of times in the United States.

But although D&E is better for the patient, it brings emotional distress for the abortionist, who, after inserting laminaria that cause the cervix to dilate, must dismember and remove the fetus with forceps. One early study, by abortionists Warren Hern and Billie Corrigan, found that although all of their staff members “approved of second trimester abortion in principle,” there “were few positive comments about D&E itself.” Reactions included “shock, dismay, amazement, disgust, fear, and sadness.” A more ambitious study published the following year, in the September 1979 issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, confirmed Hern and Corrigan’s findings. It found “strong emotional reactions during or following the procedures and occasional disquieting dreams."...

(Pro-choice advocates also falsely insist that second-trimester abortions are confined almost exclusively to tragic “hard” cases such as fetal malformation. Yet a review of the literature in the April 2009 issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology found that most abortions performed after the first trimester are sought for the same reasons as first-trimester abortions, they’re just delayed. This reality only intensifies the guilt pangs of abortion providers.)

Theologians and philosophers call it Natural Law. Those who dismember babies in their mother's wombs cannot not know it is a heinous act. Daleiden and Shields quote Paul Jarrett who stopped performing abortions. The moment that ended it for him happened after he aborted a baby at 14 weeks of gestation: “As I brought out the rib cage, I looked and saw a tiny, beating heart,” he would recall. “And when I found the head of the baby, I looked squarely in the face of another human being—a human being that I just killed.”

The article also makes reference to a former employee of notorious late-term abortionist George Tiller.

Handling fetal remains can be especially difficult in late-term clinics. Until George Tiller was assassinated by a pro-life radical last summer, his clinic in Wichita specialized in third-trimester abortions. To handle the large volume of biological waste Tiller had a crematorium on the premises. One day when hauling a heavy container of fetal waste, Tiller asked his secretary, Luhra Tivis, to assist him. She found the experience devastating. The “most horrible thing,” Tivis later recounted, was that she “could smell those babies burning.” Tivis, a former NOW activist, soon left her secretarial position at the clinic to volunteer for Operation Rescue, a radical pro-life organization.

One of the most important (perhaps the most important) developments in turning hearts away from this dastardly procedure has been the advance in ultrasound technology.

The most recent example is Abby Johnson, the former director of Dallas-area Planned Parenthood. After watching, via ultrasound, an embryo “crumple” as it was suctioned out of its mother’s womb, Johnson reported a “conversion in my heart.” Likewise, Joan Appleton was the head nurse at a large abortion facility in Falls Church, Virginia, and a NOW activist. Appleton performed thousands of abortions with aplomb until a single ultrasound-assisted abortion rattled her. As Appleton remembers, “I was watching the screen. I saw the baby pull away. I saw the baby open his mouth. .  .  . After the procedure I was shaking, literally.”

The most famous abortion provider to be converted by ultrasound technology, decades ago, is Bernard Nathanson, cofounder of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, the original NARAL. In the early 1970s, Nathanson was the largest abortion provider in the Western world. By his own reckoning he performed more than 60,000 abortions, including one on his own child. Nathanson’s exit from the industry was slow and tortured. In Aborting America (1979), he expressed anxiety over the possibility that he was complicit in a great evil. He was especially troubled by ultrasound images. When he finally left his profession for pro-life activism, he produced The Silent Scream (1984), a documentary of an ultrasound abortion that showed the fetus scrambling vainly to escape dismemberment.

Read the entire article HERE.

Please pray that the God of grace would break the hearts of those who perform abortions and the politicians who champion their cause.

Planting life in the midst of death

John Ensor is a great leader in the pro-life movement and author of one of my "must reads" - The Great Work of the Gospel

God's Story or My Story?

Once again the seemingly ever present Brian McLaren is poised to present something as new which is actually just a retread of ideas that tend to cling to the outer banks of Christianity like so much flotsam.

To be a Christian – in the West, at least, since the fifth or sixth century or so – has required one to believe that the Bible presents one very specific story line, a story line by which we assess all of history, all of human experience, all of our own experience. Most of us know the story line implicitly, subconsciously, even though it has never been made explicit for us. We begin our quest for a new kind of Christian faith by questioning this story line.

-Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith (forthcoming February 9, 2010)

In contrast to McLaren's non-innovations is the timeless story line of God's redemptive acts in history to save for Himself a people.

Does our worship focus on the historical drama of the Triune God? Are we being constantly directed outside of our inner experience and our own felt needs to the real newsmaker in history? Is our corporate or private worship centered on “human will or exertion” or “on God, who has mercy” (Romans 9:16)? Is the main point trying to see how God fits into our existing plotline or to hear God tell us how we fit into his unfolding drama of redemption? Like the Old Testament feasts, the great events celebrated by Christians have to do with God’s mighty acts: the Son becoming flesh (Christmas), the crucifixion (Good Friday) and resurrection (Easter), Christ’s exaltation to the right of the Father (Ascension Day), and the sending of the Spirit (Pentecost). There is no room in the Christian calendar for celebrating our own works.

-Michael Horton, The Gospel Driven Life: Being Good News People in a Bad News World

HT: John Starke

Needed - A Good Doctrine of Scripture...

"To me, God is..."

"God told me..."

"What does this verse mean to you?"

"I'm into God not doctrine."

"God speaks to me through the mountains."

In a day when the evangelical church is saturated with intuitive, mystical, and otherwise breezy approaches to spirituality the need for a robust doctrine of and confidence in the Word of God is as needed as ever.

I am looking forward to getting my copy of the newest book from Ligonier - Sola Scriptura.

Contributors include Michael Horton, R.C. Sproul, John MacArthur, Derek Thomas, Sinclair Ferguson, and James White.

The following is a review from Monergism:

Anyone who has even the most basic awareness of Reformation history will know that the Latin phrase sola scriptura means “scripture alone,” and that it is a foundational dividing point between Roman Catholic and Protestant theologies. But what exactly did the Reformers understand sola scriptura to mean, in what ways is it different from the Roman understanding of authority, and more importantly, how is the doctrine of the Reformers faring in modern Protestantism? The cast of Protestant contributors to Reformation Trust's recent reprint, Sola Scriptura: The Protestant Position on the Bible, have done a tremendous job of answering those questions. The result is not just a book that Roman Catholics would do well to read if they sincerely want to understand where Protestants are coming from – it is also, and perhaps even more fundamentally, a book that modern Protestants would do well to read if they sincerely want to know whether or not they may appropriately consider themselves the heirs of the Protestant Reformation at all. The excellent selection of contributors – Joel Beeke, R. C. Sproul, Sinclair Ferguson, James White, among others – is enough to warrant a presupposition of capable and stimulating writing, and in this expectation they have not failed to disappoint.

In his foreword, Michael Horton immediately affirms a point which will be well substantiated throughout the remainder of the book: “While this book has the Roman Catholic Church's view of scripture in mind when it asserts Protestantism's position, it is Protestantism that this book is trying to reach as much as Rome. We contributors lament that Rome is so aggressive in its error, yes, but we equally lament that Protestantism is so passive in its capitulation.... But this book is not simply a lamentation; it is a way forward”. Perhaps, more than any other characteristic, that is what makes the book valuable. As an apologetic aid to Rome, it will doubtless have some value; but as a way forward for unknowingly errant Protestants, its value is apt to be much, much greater.

As there are only seven chapters in the book, and each contributes to the topic in a unique and vital way, it will perhaps not be out of place to give a brief summary to potential readers: the first chapter, by W. Robert Godfrey, is a foundational overview of what is meant by sola scriptura and how it differs from Roman teaching, together with a helpful analysis of some of the ways in which Catholics and Protestants may inadvertently talk past one another, and a cursory description of the testimony of the scriptures about themselves.

In the second chapter, James White gives a hugely helpful overview of the doctrine of sola scriptura in early Church history, providing along the way some clarification and context for a few of the mis-contextualized quotes from the fathers that are often slung about on both sides of the debate.

Next, R. C. Sproul takes on the whole topic of canonicity, refuting the claim of the Roman Church to have authoritatively determined the canon and addressing the question of the Apocrypha.

Derek H. W. Thomas then examines the nature of divine authority, and makes a solid case for grounding all spiritual authority in the very Word of God, above any other power.

John MacArthur contributes a chapter focused on the sufficiency and perspicuity of scriptures, dealing specifically with Catholic teaching on the inherent insufficiency of the unmediated Word, but producing along the way some material very germane to many modern Protestants whose practice likewise implies some essential insufficiency in the Word of God.

Sinclair Ferguson then delves into a discussion of the interplay between tradition and scripture in the Roman Church which is very notable for tracing out recent but little-known developments within the attitudes and perspectives of some of her outstanding thinkers and scholars.

And finally, in the Puritan-like fashion that I've come to expect from him, Joel R. Beeke, together with Ray B. Lanning, makes all of the sound theology developed throughout the book richly devotional and intensely practical. This chapter, above all others, is geared specifically toward modern Protestants, and should be read by everyone claiming the legacy of the Reformers. These two contributors do not just show what sola scriptura is intellectually, they also trace out minutely and accurately the appropriate way to respond to that doctrine, and motivate the believer to follow those instructions with a rich array of immense spiritual blessings doubtless to follow.

That overview should give any potential reader a basic feel for the focus and emphases of the book which may serve to set it apart from other similar publications. For anyone feeling the need or confronted with the opportunity to engage Roman Catholics in dialogue on the topic, it will doubtless prove to be very helpful in providing some instruction as to what the issues really are, how the points may be argued from scripture, and thanks to James White, how the Church fathers may be brought into the mix (an area in which the average Protestant will likely feel much more poorly equipped than many Catholics); and for any Protestant feeling the emptiness inherent in so much of Protestantism today, in spite of the schmoozy productions and slick entertainment within the Evangelical Church at large, the immoveable and certain foundation of the holy scriptures alone for all of life and worship, faith and practice, will be driven home with what I trust will be a liberating and soberly joyful forcefulness.

Greg Beale on Inerrancy

From an interview with Greg Beale in Martin Downes' very helpful book Risking the Truth:

Part 1: The Exegetical Foundations of Inerrancy

Why do you believe the Bible, as originally given, is not only inspired but also inerrant?

What are some of the principle exegetical foundations of inerrancy?

As I mentioned, I believe that the concept of inerrancy is in Scripture. The syllogism that I referred to is found in some parts of the Bible, even though McGowan says that there is no evidence of such an exegetical syllogism but that it is an assumption imposed on the Scriptures.

You can, however, see this syllogism in the book of Revelation. I began to reflect on this when McGowan issued this challenge. Part of what I am now going to summarize can also be found partly in my commentary on Revelation. The key texts are Revelation 3:14 , 21:5, and 22:6.

In Revelation 3:14 Christ introduces Himself and says He is ‘the Amen, the faithful and true witness’. Now, it is acknowledged by most commentators that the Amen comes from Isaiah 65:16. This is the only place in Scripture where ‘Amen’ is a name. And it is a name for God. He is the ‘Amen’, and He is called the ‘Amen’ twice there in Isaiah 65:16. Christ expands that into ‘the Amen, the faithful and true witness’. That extension by the way is found in different LXX versions of Isaiah 65:16 and so there is already a precedent for expanding ‘Amen’ in the way Jesus Himself does in Revelation 3:14.

We have here an identification Christology. Christ is Yahweh. It is a wonderful Christological text. He says ‘the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God’ (the latter phrase probably coming out of Isaiah 65:17 which says, ‘Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth.’ Jesus’ resurrection is the beginning of that new creation).

So now Christ is speaking, and He is ‘faithful and true’. Therefore He can be depended upon in His oral Word. But this oral Word is inscripturated here, and so it too can be depended upon. Especially since it ends with, ‘He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches’ in 3:22. These are the words of Christ and they are the words of the Spirit, which John has been commanded to ‘write’. But at this point let us be satisfied merely to say that Christ’s oral Word here is faithful because He is seen as a faithful witness.

His character is faithful and true, therefore as God was called the ‘Amen, the faithful and true’ (putting the different Septuagintal traditions of Isaiah 65:16 together), Christ identifies Himself as ‘the Amen, the faithful and true witness’. His witness is faithful and true, and what He says is faithful and true. Very intriguingly, in Revelation 21:5 we have this statement: ‘He who sits on the throne says, “Behold, I’m making all things new.”’ Here we have the new creation again, and He says, ‘Write, for these words are faithful and true.’

Here we have a development from 3:14, but it still has in mind Isaiah 65:16. But now, notice, this is not Christ who is faithful and true. What is happening here is that, what was true of Yahweh and Jesus – that their character is faithful and true –is now being taken and applied to written scriptural form in the same way as it was to their oral Word. That is, God (or Christ) is saying that His ‘faithful and true’ oral Word is extended to the written Word. ‘Behold, I’m making all things new’, and He said ‘write this down for these words are faithful and true’.

So we see the extension of God’s character, Christ’s character, to His witness and oral Word in chapter 3. And now John is commanded to write this word down in scriptural form in chapter 21. The faithful and true character of the oral Word is extended to the written form.

In 22:6 we see the same thing. We read, ‘These words are faithful and true.’ He is probably not just referring to the Revelation 21:1–22:5 vision but to the whole book. ‘These words are faithful and true.’ Again the whole book is categorized in this way. This is found in one other place. In 19:9 we read ‘Then the angel said to me, “Write: ‘Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!’”And he added, “These are true words of God.”’He is commanded to write. Why? Because what has been spoken as true has been extended to the written form.
Only two verses later, Christ is again referred to as ‘faithful and true’.

Now some might say, as they have in fact said to me, ‘well there is a little room for slippage here. Yes, God is telling John to write these things down because the oral Word is “faithful and true,” but maybe he could have slipped a little bit and just a bit of inaccuracy could have crept in when he tried to record it.’ But, in fact, we know that John was a prophet, and we know that God views the whole book in its written form as prophetic. This is apparent from the well-known verses of Revelation 22:18-19, ‘I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues which are written in this book. And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life.’ And, likewise, remember that in chapter three, in the letters, at the end they are seen as the words of the Spirit, yet John was commanded to write.

So with this extension what we have here in Revelation is the syllogism. God and Christ are seen as faithful and true, therefore their oral Word is faithful and true, and because of this their Word is to be put down in written form, and this too is faithful and true. The word ‘inerrant’ is not used but certainly the notion is that God and Christ being ‘faithful and true’ includes that their witness not contain any untruth or error. Thus, the concept of inerrancy is likely expressed here.

HT: Martin Downes

The Incredible Shrinking Pulpit

From Al Mohler:

Preaching has fallen on hard times. So suggests a report out of Durham University's College of Preachers. The British university's CODEC research center, which aims to explore "the interfaces between the Bible, the digital environment and contemporary culture," conducted the study to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the College of Preachers. The report is not very encouraging.

As Ruth Gledhill of The Times [London] reports, "Sermons, history shows, can be among the most revolutionary forms of human speech. From John Calvin to Billy Graham, preaching has had the power to topple princes, to set nation against nation, to inspire campaigners to change the world and impel people to begin life anew."

Indeed, preaching is the central act of Christian worship, but its great aim reaches far above merely changing the world. The preaching of the Word of God is the chief means by which God conforms Christians to the image of Christ. Rightly understood, true Christian preaching is not aimed only at this earthly life, but is the means whereby God prepares his people for eternity.

Yet, you wouldn't know this if you judged the importance of preaching by its place in many of today's congregations. Gledhill observes, "In many churches this most vibrant of moments has withered to little more than 20 minutes of tired droning that serves only to pad out the gap between hymns and lunch."

The withering of preaching is not uniform in all congregations and denominations. Evangelicals were most enthusiastic about preaching, while others registered less appreciation for the preached Word. Interestingly, Gledhill reports that "Baptists and Catholics were also more enthusiastic about the Bible being mentioned in sermons than were Anglicans and Methodists."

The Anglicans also expressed a desire to be entertained, rather then educated. The Rev. Kate Bruce, Fellow in Preaching and Communication at the CODEC center, said that "in a culture which values entertainment and likes stand-up, over a quarter [of respondents] said they want preaching to be entertaining, too."

Read the entire article HERE.

Pro-Baby

From Marvin Olasky of World Magazine:

A Gallup poll in 1972 showed 66 percent of Americans opposing abortion legalization. That year Detroit newspapers heavily supported a Michigan referendum to establish abortion on demand through the first five months of pregnancy, but 61 percent of Michigan voters said no. In North Dakota, 77 percent of voters turned down a similar referendum. Nevertheless, in 1973 seven U.S. Supreme Court justices imposed their beliefs on the nation.

Over time, top-down pressures have an effect on popular sentiment. That's why Moody, the evangelical magazine, asked in 1980 whether evangelicals had been co-opted: "We've organized no protest. . . . The Catholics have called abortion 'The
Silent Holocaust.' The deeper horror is the silence of the evangelical"...

Overall, we have optimism this year, but it's tethered to a brutal realization. The May 1980 issue of Moody magazine (which ceased publication in 2003) noted that 8 million American babies had been aborted since 1973. Now the butcher's bill is more than 50 million.

We need more bottom-up pressure and the ultimate top-down one: God changing the hearts of leaders and all of us.

Check out the following articles from World:

Learning to wait Denied federal funds, abstinence educators plan next moves William McCleery

'Look after orphans' Twenty ways to become an adoption-friendly church Paul Golden

Chemical reaction The drug RU486 gives women the option of abortion in privacy Alisa Harris

Eyewitnesses Ultrasound technology is one reason more Americans are becoming pro-life Alisa Harris

Finding searchers Pregnancy centers buy Google real estate to reach abortion-minded women Emily Belz

Higher learning? Catholic colleges have become training ground for pro-abortion politicians Anne Hendershott

Life changes Anti-CPC forces alter their tactics and auditors eye Planned Parenthood Alisa Harris

Called to a cause The pro-life movement won over Marjorie Dannenfelser, and now she’s working to help it win over Congress Marvin Olasky

'It all clicked together' How one Christian volunteer found herself in the right place at the right time at a crisis pregnancy center in Texas Susan Olasky

The telltale protests The abortion issue did not die after Roe v. Wade Andrée Seu

Worship and Reality

There is spiritual danger in Paganism, and as Origen stated (and recently quoted by Pope Benedict) Paganism is defined by “Lacking feeling and reason, they are transformed into stones and wood.” In other words, Paganism flattens our perception, makes all experience virtual, dumbing down our senses. Paganism, as in the Matrix movie, is virtual, manageable, flat reality, whereas the red pill takes you down into the harsh reality of pain and suffering. Christianity opens our perception and our understanding of Reality. . . . .

Proper worship is central to our understanding of reality, the arts, and it affects everyone, Christians and non Christians. Culture is affected by how we worship God. . . .

By “proper worship,” I mean a distinctively Christological way of looking at God, the world and ourselves that is driven by understanding and experiencing God’s grace.

Makoto Fujimura - Acclaimed Artist and Christian

From an interview conducted by Stewart Lundy.

HT: Gene Veith

Sunday's Sermon

This week's message was part 26 in our series through Hebrews - "A Sacrifice Like No Other" (Hebrews 10:1-18). You can listen to or download the sermon HERE.

What Happens to "Moral Values" in the absence of God

Chai Feldblum enjoys the sound of her own voice as she waxes on about moral values...

Do we love the church?

From Reformed Forum:

Christ the Center had the pleasure of interviewing Ted Kluck, author and athlete, about his recent publication, Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion, co-authored with Kevin DeYoung and published by Moody Press. We discussed the recent wave of books, blogs, articles, and interviews calling for the rejection of the institutional church in favor of an individualistic Christianity. Ted explained that while we may experience frustration with our churches from time to time, that rejecting them is no option for the Biblical Christian. The panel also conversed about the relationship of this trend to the emerging church phenomenon, a topic Ted and Kevin DeYoung touched upon in their previous book Why We Are Not Emergent. God created the church and it cannot be so easily dispensed with.

Listen to the interview HERE.

Helping Haiti (updated)

If you would like to contribute to organizations that are helping those suffering in Haiti then check out the following links:

Samaritan's Purse

Baptist Haiti World Mission

Mission to the World

Food for the Hungry

World Vision

Cross World

Religious Liberty, the Sabbath, and the Philadelphia Eagles

J. Gresham Machen the founder of Westminster Seminary did not believe the state should run the church nor did he believe that the church should run the state. Machen, one of the greatest biblical scholars of the 20th century gave us some of the most scintillating thoughts on the role of the church within the state.

I found this gem posted by Darryl Hart over at Old Life:

In 1933, the years the Philadelphia Eagles football club started (thank you Dan Borvan), the state of Pennsylvania considered reforming its laws prohibiting commercial activity on Sunday, the Christian Sabbath, so that football players and coaches could play in the afternoon. (How would the NFL make it without violating the fourth and eighth commandments?) J. Gresham Machen, then a resident of Philadelphia, wrote a letter to Gifford Pinchot, the governor of Pennsylvania and requested the retention of the Blue Laws as they were then written.

Machen’s reasoning in this letter is instructive for what it says about a recognition and acceptance of religious diversity, a commitment to religious freedom, and the tensions within a democracy between majority rule and minority protection. Perhaps most important for two-kingdom purposes is the place of an appeal to Scripture in public debate. In this case, Machen argues not for the magistrate to enforce divine law, but for the advantages that come to everyone when the law protects the practices of some citizens.

Not to be missed is what this letter says about the fourth commandment, and that keeping the whole day holy with two services is an occasion of Christian liberty. If only the Bible speaks to all of life crowd would take up the cause of the sanctity of the Lord’s Day. (Do we see a pattern here? Two kingdoms, two services?)

Dr. Hart then includes the letter by Dr. Machen which reads in part:

Of course it is perfectly clear that in a democracy the majority should rule in this matter as in other matters. I should be the last to advocate any attempt to make people religious or even to make people ordinarily moral or decent against their will by mere legislative enactment. I should also be the last to advocate any tyrannical imposition of the convictions of a minority upon the majority. But how shall the majority will be exercised? I think that it ought to be exercised through the ordinary processes of representative government. To allow commercialized sport on Sunday in Pennsylvania will be a radical change in the whole life of our people. It is a wise provision of representative government that such radical changes should not be hastily accomplished, as might be the case by the referendum vote, but that they should be accomplished only when it is quite clear that the majority of the people really and seriously and permanently desires the change. . . .

As to the merits of the question, I could hardly find words strong enough to express what my feeling is. It does seem to me that the profoundest dangers to our entire civilization are found in the constant rush of noise and jazz and feverish activity which is one of the great faults of the American people and which is a great barrier to true efficiency as well as to the cultivation of the deeper things.

Of course, my own cultivation of a quiet Sunday is based on considerations much more fundamental than these. I am a Christian, and it is quite clear that a commercialized Sunday is inimical to the Christian religion. There are many other Christians in Pennsylvania, and because they are Christians they do not cease to be citizens. They have a right to be considered by their fellow-citizens and by the civil authorities. But the reason why they can with a good conscience be enthusiastic advocates of the Christian practice in the matter of Sunday is that they regard it as right, and as for the highest well-being of the entire State.

Read the whole thing HERE.

All Praise to the Name of the Savior Who Reigns

Interestingly, some of the best theology in music that is Christian is coming from rap. Here is Shai Linne from Philadelphia (that's right!). Men like Shai Linne and Lecrae are doing some very good work.

Shai Linne with "Spread His Fame." from Grace EV Free on Vimeo.

All praise to the name of the savior who reigns.
He’s taken our blame, embraced all our shame,
He’s raised from the grave so his fame we proclaim.
Salvation by grace through faith in his name.

All praise to the name of the savior who reigns.
He’s taken our blame, embraced all our shame,
He’s raised from the grave so his fame we proclaim.
Salvation by grace through faith in his name.

Jesus, the beautiful and blessed Son,
Immutable, majestic one
Who was resurrected from the grave
for the depraved.
He paved the path for some
Place faith in His passion, son
Be saved from the wrath to come.

He’s fabulous, His status is immaculate
I’m lacking the vernacular to adequately capture His glory.
Incomparable, unconquerable, all powerful, unstoppable
Absolutely phenomenal.

No obstacle He can’t navigate.
He’s God and so He fascinates.
With Him it’s impossible to exaggerate.

Lord of all continents,
Source of all consciousness,
His compliments are the consequence of His accomplishments
Every sphere of life, He’s the Lord of it
And every other power is either fraudulent or subordinate.

At first we snubbed Him,
Now His vessels of mercy love Him.
Your highest thought is infinitely unworthy of Him.
Beyond vocabulary His actions vary,
His wrath is scary
All His adversaries are imaginary.

He has no competitors.
Ask Nebuchadnezzar, bro
He’ll mess you up, have you eating grass,
You can bet He’s amazing.

He takes in blatant, flagrant vagrants, breaks them, remakes them, and shapes them
to hate sin.

Jesus!
There’s no better name!
That’ll never change and He’ll forever reign while we spread His fame.

So all praise to the name of the Savior who reigns
He’s taken our blame
Embraced all our shame
He’s raised from the grave so His fame we proclaim
Salvation by grace through faith in His name!

All praise to the name of the Savior who reigns
He’s taken our blame
Embraced all our shame
He’s raised from the grave so His fame we proclaim
Salvation by grace through faith in His name!

HT: Justin Taylor

What Danny Glover and Pat Robertson have in common...

The left wing actor Danny Glover has concluded that the earthquake in Haiti is the result of the failed climate summit in Copenhagen.

“When we see what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response, this is what happens, you know what I’m sayin’?”

Brilliant! Clearly, Mr. Glover is not a member of the Algonquin Round Table but I am betting that his comments will not receive the kind of publicity as those of the hapless Pat Robertson. After all Mr. Glover has a much more politically acceptable diety.

Sunday's Sermon

I was grateful to have Paul Tripp preach for me in the morning services last Sunday. I did however preach that evening at The Vine. The title of the message is "The Communion of Saints" and can be listened to or downloaded HERE.

Is God Judging Haiti?

As many of you already know Pat Robertson opened his mouth and more silliness fell out. Thankfully, Al Mohler has written a thoughtful and sober article on how to think biblically and mercifully about the earthquake in Haiti.

God's rule over creation involves both direct and indirect acts, but his rule is constant. The universe, even after the consequences of the Fall, still demonstrates the character of God in all its dimensions, objects, and occurrences. And yet, we have no right to claim that we know why a disaster like the earthquake in Haiti happened at just that place and at just that moment.

The arrogance of human presumption is a real and present danger. We can trace the effects of a drunk driver to a car accident, but we cannot trace the effects of voodoo to an earthquake -- at least not so directly. Will God judge Haiti for its spiritual darkness? Of course. Is the judgment of God something we can claim to understand in this sense -- in the present? No, we are not given that knowledge. Jesus himself warned his disciples against this kind of presumption...

The earthquake in Haiti, like every other earthly disaster, reminds us that creation groans under the weight of sin and the judgment of God. This is true for every cell in our bodies, even as it is for the crust of the earth at every point on the globe. The entire cosmos awaits the revelation of the glory of the coming Lord. Creation cries out for the hope of the New Creation.

In other words, the earthquake reminds us that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only real message of hope. The cross of Christ declares that Jesus loves Haiti -- and the Haitian people are the objects of his love. Christ would have us show the Haitian nation his love, and share his Gospel. In the midst of this unspeakable tragedy, Christ would have us rush to aid the suffering people of Haiti, and rush to tell the Haitian people of his love, his cross, and salvation in his name alone.

Everything about the tragedy in Haiti points to our need for redemption. This tragedy may lead to a new openness to the Gospel among the Haitian people. That will be to the glory of God. In the meantime, Christ's people must do everything we can to alleviate the suffering, bind up the wounded, and comfort the grieving. If Christ's people are called to do this, how can we say that God hates Haiti?

If you have any doubts about this, take your Bible and turn to John 3:16. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. That is God's message to Haiti.

Read the entire article HERE.

Evangelicals: Putting the "Fun" back in "Funeral"

Contemporary evangelicals don't do death well. After all, it's negative. And that seems to be the one great sin for contemporary Christians. And so evangelicalism has a host of euphamisms for such negative words as "sin," "wrath," and, the worst of all, "death."

Craig Parton has a great article in the latest issue of Modern Reformation:

If we are anything, we are a culture of entertainment and denial that has sanitized dying and death and put it in a world hopefully far, far away. Sadness, if prolonged or of a disturbing depth, is to be diagnosed and medicated. Even sadness that might, God forbid, lead to repentance.

And entertainment is the mother's milk from which today's evangelical celebrations gladly feed. We want our funerals to mirror our church services and our church services to mirror our virtual lives--fun, interesting, enlightening, moving, and upbeat. Whether it is faithful to Christ and his Word is, well, nice if you can actually pull that off and stay cool, but it is not obligatory. If your religious life is fun, interesting, enlightening, moving, and upbeat, then it is clearly faithful to Christ and his Word.

The church used to pay less heed to the impacts of secular culture on its people--in fact, the church was culture. The church's fights were more with the sinful flesh and with the devil. The world, or culture, and Christianity were nearly synonymous, and in many ways secular Greek culture provided support and a springboard for the advancement of Christian intellectual and artistic life. The church also had good reason for absolute confidence in its liturgical forms grounded in the highly regulated Old Testament worship centering in the Temple. The church had particular confidence in the forms that surrounded the death of the Christian. The church knew what dying sinners must hear from her, and one was on the cusp of entering the Church Triumphant. The dying sinner needed to confess his sins and hear the words of absolution spoken by the called minister of Word and Sacrament, and the dying needed to receive the body and blood of Jesus unto the forgiveness of sins from that called servant. This was serious business not given over to talk-show hosts who might well deliver themselves rather than Jesus and him crucified to those in the throes of death.

The church also recognized the important humanity connected to the grieving and sadness that surrounds dying and death. The Scriptures are replete with examples of courageous men weeping over death (the grief of Job over his personal Armageddon, the grief of David over the death of his child, the grief of Jesus over Lazarus). Indeed, Psalm 6 tells us David wept all night over his sins. This affirmation of the masculinity of grieving and the proper place for sadness (both in the death of a loved one or in repentant sorrow for sin) has now been replaced by the "celebration of life" that eliminates the dead body, the casket, the burial, and the sadness and grieving that once accompanied death. The church's romanticizing of death is a consequence of its substitution of the Man of Sorrows with a Teenager of Fun. This is another reason why men don't waste their time coming to our churches. When you sentimentalize death and make it "fun," skeptics will find something else to do on Sunday. If this Jesus can't deliver at death's portal, he surely is not worth consulting on the issues of this life. '

Read the entire article HERE.

Abortion and Social Justice

As I have written many times before, abortion is not just one issue among many other equally important issues. It is a foundational ethical issue. To be "pro-choice" concerning abortion is to betray a fundamental flaw in one's moral reasoning. It is also to strip all meaning from the notion of social justice.

Chuck Colson weighs in on the connection between social justice and the dignity of human life:

This month marks a tragic date: the 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, when our “robed masters”—the Supreme Court—discovered a constitutional right to kill innocent babies waiting to be born.

The good news is that polls reveal that Americans are more pro-life than ever. The bad news is the culture of death is making ominous inroads on many other fronts.

A few months ago, as most of you know, theologian Timothy George, Princeton scholar Robby George, and I co-authored a document called the Manhattan Declaration. Two hundred Christian leaders and hundreds of thousands of lay people have signed it online. Some younger evangelicals, however, demurred. Why limit the agenda to life, family, and religious liberty, they asked. What about social justice and the environment?

What these well-meaning folks fail to realize is that a strong pro-life commitment is absolutely essential for social justice. For 34 years I’ve gone into America’s prisons to witness to the most marginalized among us, precisely because I believe every human being is made in God’s image. When I walk through the vile-smelling cell blocks, I don’t see tattooed inmates; I see children of God.

There is no social justice, you see, without respect for the innate dignity of each human being created in God’s image.

Many of us will learn this truth afresh should any of these health care bills pass. They all contain provisions which will result in medical services being rationed. Decisions historically made between doctor and patient, and maybe clergy, will now be made by government bureaucrats.

Under the bill’s provisions, prescribed treatments of Medicare patients must be approved by a government commission. Medicare is publicly funded. So the government decides which services it will pay for and which it won’t. Older Americans will be hardest hit.

Imagine you’re 85 with a chronic heart condition and you experience renal failure. Should you receive dialysis? Who decides?

If we don’t have a consistent ethic about the sanctity of human life, decisions will not be made on the basis of what care we need, but on what the government can afford. Patients will be judged, not by their innate worth, but by their perceived value to society. Do the elderly and infirm have a right to life—or a duty to die?

Read the entire article HERE.

Brothers, We Are Not Directors

It seems that Erwin Raphael McManus has added director of commercials to his uber-cool persona. McManus is the pastor (although he doesn't seem to like that title) of Mosaic, an uber-cool church in Los Angeles. McManus has produced and Mosaic is sponsoring a commercial in a Doritos contest. The winning commercial will be broadcast during the Super Bowl. It's all so, well, cool. Of course it begs some pretty major questions about the purpose of the church, the role of the pastor, and the necessity of the Gospel.

Phil Johnson comments:

McManus's current project is further removed from the proclamation of the gospel than anything you'll ever see from Osteen—and that's saying something. McManus is shilling for an entry in Doritos® "Crash the Superbowl" contest. It's an utterly tasteless commercial called "Casket." ("A guy stages his own funeral just to munch Doritos and watch football undisturbed—in a casket.") McManus himself produced the commercial for the Doritos® contest and Mosaic is "sponsoring" it. They won a spot among the six finalists (out of 4,000 entries)—and tickets to the Super Bowl. The top prizewinner will be chosen by popular vote. So McManus has removed every vestige of his own website and replaced it with an appeal for votes. He's Twittering pleas for votes on a fairly regular basis, too.

He is convinced this is the work of God: "It's a miracle and a divine comedy that we've made it this far," he told USA Today. "I think it's God's sense of humor."

Rick Warren is ecstatic about the prestige and potential $$$ a win would bring McManus. He Tweeted: "My guy Erwin McManus (Mosiac Church) created a Doritos Superbowl Ad! Church could win $! VOTE 4 him!"

Our friend Paul Edwards's Twitter feed, as usual, was more on target: "Majority of Christians will laugh rather than weep at @erwinmcmanus 's commercial because the gospel is no longer central in our thinking."...

Publicity is not the same thing as evangelism. Fad-chasing isn't "missional." You're not "reaching" people in any meaningful sense at all if the gospel is not the center and the main substance of your message to the world.

Read the entire post HERE.

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?

What does Social Justice mean?

Good stuff from Kevin DeYoung that echo my sentiments:

I’d like to make a modest proposal for Christians of all theological and political persuasions: don’t use the term “social justice” without explanation.

The term is unassailable to some and arouses suspicion in others. For many Christians, social justice encompasses everything good we should be doing in the world, from hunger relief to serving the poor to combating sex trafficking. But the phrase is also used to support more debatable matters like specific health care legislation, minimum wage increases, or reducing carbon emissions. If something can be included as a “social justice” issue then no one can oppose said issue, because who in their right mind favors social injustice?

But what are we actually talking about when we advocate social justice?

John Goldingay, in his book on Old Testament ethics, highlights the problem:

The notion of social justice is a hazy one. It resembles words such as community, intimacy, and relational, warm words whose meaning may seem self-evident and which we assume are obviously biblical categories, when actually they are rather undefined and culture relative.

After discussing the origin of the phrase “social justice” in nineteenth century Roman Catholic thought, Goldingay explains how the phrase came to be used subsequently.

“Social justice” then implies the idea of a “just society,” one in which different individuals and groups in society get a “fair share” of its benefits. But Christians disagree about what constitutes a just society and how we achieve it (for instance, how far by governmental intervention to effect income redistribution and how far by market forces and the encouragement of philanthropy)…The meaning of the phrase social justice has become opaque over the years as it has become a buzz expression (Israel’s Life, 500).

In A Conflict of Visions, Thomas Sowell explains the difference between the constrained and unconstrained view of justice. In the unconstrained view justice is a result so that wherever people don’t get “their fair share” or don’t have as much as others there is injustice. If Goldingay is correct, most people assume this unconstrained view when they speak of social justice. For example, the RCA (my denomination) in one of its official study materials includes a glossary which defines justice as “The fair, moral, and impartial treatment of all persons, especially in law. Includes concepts of right relationships and equitable distribution of resources.” By this definition the inequality of opportunities, income, or outcomes is considered an injustice, a situation that in and of itself is sinful, implicates all (or most) of us in society, and demands immediate redress. In the unconstrained vision, the society has a lump of resources and if they are not shared roughly equally, then we do not have social justice.

In the constrained vision, by contrast, justice is a process where people are treated fairly (the first half of the RCA definition). The goal here is not forced redistribution; no one distributed the resources in the first place and no one is wise enough to allocate them for the good of everyone. Justice, in this vision, is upheld through the rule of law, a fair court system, and equitable treatment of all persons regardless of natural diversity. This doesn’t mean that in the constrained vision we shouldn’t care for the poor or that we simply shrug our shoulders and say “oh well” when we see people struggling through life with far fewer opportunities and resources than the rest of us. The Christian must be generous and should care about suffering and the disadvantaged. But in the constrained vision, this care is a matter of compassion, charity, and love, not automatically an issue of justice.

I happen to think the constrained view of justice fits the biblical definition better. But arguing one way or the other is not the point of this post. This is only a “modest proposal” after all. I simply want Christians to be more careful and more precise with their language. We don’t all mean the same thing by social justice. So when we use the term we should explain it and take pains to demonstrate why our conception of social justice is supported by Scripture. However we use the phrase “social justice” we should be slow to insist that any Christian who disagrees with our policy solution is obviously a spiritual miscreant.

“Social justice” in common parlance is often ill-defined warm fuzzy. Careful exegesis is needed if we are to unfold what the Bible means by justice instead of assuming a definition that we may or may not all agree on. And that means more than an appeal to broad themes like “God cares for the poor.” Yes, we all see that. But who is responsible to care for the poor? And how? And does it matter where they are or how they got there? I don’t mean those as rhetorical questions. They are real questions that evangelicals need to consider more carefully. At the very least it would be good to recognize that using an ambiguous phrase like “social justice” to rally for our cause or defend our side without helping each side know what the other is really talking about is not terribly helpful.

Coming to Church of the Saviour in September...

From Westminster Seminary:

Change is inevitable. And when the unpredictability of tomorrow consumes our hearts, with insatiable tyranny, it devours any sense of stability, confidence, and peace. A violent and merciless master, change relentlessly erodes the very things to which we cling for confidence and assurance.

But there is good news, indeed, great news. Into that tumultuous world, God has spoken. His unbreakable words yield strength, hope and stability, and as the very words of God, Scripture grants us full confidence for today, tomorrow...forever.

Westminster Theological Seminary's conviction is that this revealed, self-attesting Word of God must ground and shape all human thought, and that this Word, centered on Jesus Christ the Eternal and Incarnate Word, bears absolute authority in defining, understanding and defending all issues of life in a changing world.

This is the need of the hour - a fresh word on the revealed Word.

Please make plans to participate at one of the 2010 Full Confidence Conferences led by Westminster faculty, and hosted by churches and WTS alumni and friends in cities throughout the United States.

The Full Confidence Conference for the Philadelphia area will be held at Church of the Saviour September 24-26, 2010.

When Fools Make Films...

Oliver Stone is at it again. He has already manufactured an historical fantasy regarding the assassination of JFK. He has cast two serial murderers as sympathetic figures. He has villainized George W. Bush. This time he is going to make a film that will correct other historical misconceptions we might have. Specifically he will help us to the see the warm fuzzy side of Hitler and Stalin. I'm assuming their current bad reputation is the result of a Republican conspiracy.

"Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and it's been used cheaply," he said. Then he mentioned the S word. "Stalin has a complete other story. Not to paint him as a hero, but to tell a more factual representation. He fought the German war machine more than any person."

Stone told the Television Critics Association that "we can't judge people as only 'bad' or 'good'. [Hitler] is the product of a series of actions. It's cause and effect. People in America don't know the connection between WWI and WWII."

From an article in the Guardian

Words as the means by which God relates to His people

Modern evangelicals are an experiential lot. We promise a "personal relationship with God" but don't do a very good job of explaining exactly what that means. In fact almost everything in the neo-evangelical cafeteria of spirituality seems to be tagged as "personal." What is demanded is a spiritual experience; something that is tactile and sensual. We are like the Israelites of old who, while Moses was on the mountain receiving more words from God, demanded an up-close-and-personal kind of God.

But God has made us to be a primarily auditory people. He is not to be seen by His people (and certainly not touched!). God creates, judges, delivers, and saves by the power of His word. He reveals himself by his word. We do not intuit God's redemptive plan in Jesus Christ. It is knowledge that must be understood by way of explanation. For a church milieu that poo-poo's words and preaching and doctrine this is a timely reminder.

Do you want to know God? Then know His Word. Do you want a "personal relationship" with God? Then relate to Him through His living Word. Do you want to "experience" God? Then drink deeply from His Word, the means by which He offers Himself to us. Do want to experience the power of God? Then explain and proclaim the gospel, the power of God unto salvation.

From Carl Trueman:

To put the biblical matter in a nutshell, language in the Bible is the basis of interpersonal relationships. Creation, of course, is a highly mysterious event, but it is significant that the Bible uses the language of speech to express the creative activity of God. In Genesis 1 and 2, God is the one who converses, speaks, within himself, and the act of creation arises out of precisely this kind of interpersonal conversation between the members of the Trinity. Then, in the Garden of Eden, God's relationship with Adam is expressed via the medium of language. It is how God defines the nature and limits of the relationship, and, after the Fall, it is how God confronts Adam and Eve with their sin. The same pattern is repeated throughout the whole Bible in both testaments: whether it is command or promise, the two basic aspects of the divine-human relationship with men and women, to limit it, to move it forward: he speaks to Noah, to Abraham, to Samuel, to David and so on. Indeed, God's use of language is a basic element which allows the encounter between God and humanity to be considered as a personal relationship...

[L]anguage was divinely gifted not primarily to provide a basis for culture, but rather to facilitate intelligible communion between man and God and communication of the truth...The kind of salvation which the Christian God offers demands words, whether of promise or command, in order to define and delimit the nature of his relationship with his creatures.

From The Wages of Spin (pp. 46-47, 52)

J.I. Packer on Theological Training

HT: Justin Taylor