Al Mohler responds to Karl Giberson

As I posted last week, Karl Giberson of Biologos apparently thought it was a good idea to write an article attacking Al Mohler over at the Huffington Post. The tone of Giberson's article, his failure to actually respond to Mohler's thesis, and his remarkably poor choice of venue are worth further conversation. However, I am happy to say that Dr. Mohler has responded in a way that will hopefully help Dr. Giberson to stay on the subject at hand: Is human evolution compatible with biblical faith?

I understand why Giberson wants to avoid that thesis. It is a monumental, indeed impossible, task to prove that a mythical Genesis record with an accompanying denial of the historicity of Adam and Eve and the Fall is compatible with biblical orthodoxy. But this seems to be the clear program for Biologos.

The article begins by demonstrating that Giberson's criticism of a statement made by Mohler in a recent address was overstated.

I have read your posting several times, and it seems that your central complaint comes down to one or possibly two sentences in my address to the 2010 Ligonier Ministries National Conference. Indeed, you provide a link to the transcript of my address that was posted at the BioLogos site. You point to this section of my address: “Darwin did not embark upon the Beagle having no preconceptions of what exactly he was looking for or having no theory of how life emerged in all of its diversity, fecundity, and specialization. Darwin left on his expedition to prove the theory of evolution.”

You complain that this was a misrepresentation of Darwin, and you answer that with considerable bombast. In your words: “Of course, Mohler may simply have made a mistake. He is, after all, a theologian and not a historian. He could have gotten this wrong idea from any number of his fellow anti-Darwinians. However, I don’t think so. In his address he read from my book Saving Darwin, in which I took some pains to correct the all-too-common misrepresentation of Darwin he presented. So, unless he was just cherry-picking ideas from my book that he wanted to assault, he should have known better. But let us bend over backwards here and give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps his only real encounter with Saving Darwin was an instruction to an assistant to ‘find something in Giberson’s book that I can ridicule in my speech.’”

No, I can assure you that my encounter with Saving Darwin comes through reading the book quite thoroughly and more than once. You are at great pains to present an understanding of Darwin that will appeal to conservative Christians who are committed to biblical Christianity. You have a great challenge in this respect, and I seriously doubt you will make much headway. You are determined to convince biblical Christians to accept evolution. I seriously doubt you will make much progress through your book.

In making my argument, I did not need to “cherry-pick” ideas from your book. Nor do I need to misrepresent Darwin and his views. I would be most interested and concerned to find that I have in any way misquoted or misrepresented you. I am confident that your larger problem with the Christian public is in being understood, rather than in being misunderstood. You are straightforward in your celebration of evolution, and you utterly fail to demonstrate how an embrace of evolution can be reconciled with biblical Christianity. Your rejection of an historical Adam and Eve is one precise point at which the Gospel of Christ is undermined, and your proposed “new and better way to understand the origins of sin” is incompatible with the Bible’s clear teaching.

The theory of evolution is incompatible with the Gospel of Jesus Christ even as it is in direct conflict with any faithful reading of the Scriptures. Darwin’s historic role in the development of evolutionary theory is central and significant, but the theological objections to evolution are not centered in the person of Darwin, but in the structure and implications of his theory of natural selection.

Mohler continues by pressing the antithesis between evolutionary theory as advanced by Biologos and biblical Christianity. He challenges Giberson's thesis that Darwin had been an orthodox Christian. Mohler shows quite clearly that Giberson has at best erred in casting Darwin as a conventional Christian believer.

And if a misrepresentation of Charles Darwin is the central issue, I must insist that it is you who offers the truly dangerous misrepresentation. In Saving Darwin, you attempt at great lengths to present Charles Darwin as a rather conventional and orthodox Christian, prior to his later loss of faith. You state that he was “born to a well-to-do British family who, despite having some unorthodox characters listed in the family Bible, raised him in the Anglican Church, educated him in an Anglican school, and put him on the train to Edinburgh to study medicine.”

This hardly seems adequate or straightforward. The “some unorthodox characters listed in the family Bible” included both his father and his paternal grandfather. His mother’s family was Unitarian in belief, rejecting the deity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity. Even as Charles Darwin was nominally involved in the Anglican Church, largely through the influence of his sister and brother-in-law after the death of his mother, his involvement and exposure appears to me largely incidental to his life. He later married a woman of Unitarian convictions as well.

It is certainly true that Charles Darwin was directed to become an Anglican clergyman by his unbelieving father, but this was a social tradition for second sons of the developing British middle class. As Randal Keynes, Darwin’s own great-great-grandson explains, “His idea was to become a country parson, caring for his parishioners but living for natural history.” And, as the authoritative biographers Adrian Desmond and James Moore recount, “Dr. Darwin, a confirmed freethinker, was sensible and shrewd. He had only to look around him, recall the vicarages he had visited, [and] ponder the country parsons he entertained at home. One did not have to be a believer to see that an aimless son with a penchant for field sports would fit in nicely. Was the church not a haven for dullards and dawdlers, the last resort of spendthrifts? What calling but the highest for those whose sense of calling was nil?”

Of far greater concern is your tendency to appear to agree with some of Darwin’s complaints against biblical Christianity. You claim that he “boarded the Beagle with his childhood Christian faith intact,” but then add, “although he had begun to wonder about the historicity of the more fanciful Old Testament stories, like the Tower of Babel.” This is insignificant? Are we to understand that you, too, see that biblical account as “fanciful”? You explain that Darwin, “like most thoughtful believers,” began to distance himself from the doctrine of hell — a doctrine you describe as “a secondary doctrine that even many conservatives reject.”

If your intention in Saving Darwin is to show “how to be a Christian and believe in evolution,” what you have actually succeeded in doing is to show how much doctrine Christianity has to surrender in order to accommodate itself to evolution. In doing this, you and your colleagues at BioLogos are actually doing us all a great service. You are showing us what the acceptance of evolution actually costs, in terms of theological concessions.

I stand by my address in full, and only wish I had been able to address these issues at even greater length in that context. I plan to do that over the next few months. I greatly regret that you have committed yourself to a cause that I can see as incompatible with the Scripture and destructive to the Christian faith.

I look forward to Dr. Mohler's continued interaction with the theories flying about at Biologos. I hope that their contributors will show better judgement in their responses that has been so far demonstrated by Dr. Giberson.

D.A. Carson on Hell...

How can God be loving yet send people to hell? from A Passion for Life on Vimeo.

D.A. Carson on Suffering and Evil...

How can God allow suffering and evil in the world? from A Passion for Life on Vimeo.

It's not about me...

Birds of a Feather

I noticed over the weekend that Biologos is attacking Al Mohler (once again). This is no surprise since Dr. Mohler is taking them to task for their efforts to rid the church of the doctrine of the Scripture's inerrancy. What interested me about this latest attack against Mohler, authored by Karl Giberson, was two-fold. First Dr. Giberson is almost apoplectic in his anger against Mohler. Secondly, the complaint was published in the left-wing and aggressively secular Huffington Post. But as I reflected further I concluded that it makes perfect sense for the Biologos folks to publish at the Huffington Post. What is more, it makes perfect sense for the folks at the Huffinton Post to eagerly publish the thoughts of Biologos contributors. It seems that the Huffington Post has a better understanding of the implications of Biologos' program for the historic Christian faith than does Biologos.

Over at Pyromaniacs, Phil Johnson has written a fuller reflection on this issue.

To paraphrase one of my Facebook friends: Even if they really do believe the abusive ad hominem argument they are making against Al Mohler, that's an interesting strategy. Let's air our differences at this bastion of secular humanism, and we'll invite some of the giants of discernment over at Huffpo to sort it out for us in their combox.

Dr. Karl Giberson, vice president of BioLogos, wrote the Huffington piece. The case he makes against Dr. Mohler has basically one point. Here it is: In his Ligonier lecture, Dr. Mohler claimed that Charles Darwin had a pretty good idea about what kind of "evidence" he was looking for before he ever boarded the Beagle; he was already sympathetic to evolutionary theory, and he was already hostile to biblical authority.

Not so, Dr. Giberson says. Darwin was a devout Christian and a creationist when he first set off on the Beagle. Giberson claims Darwin's very first doubts about the reliability of Scripture-as-history came as he collected his samples and observed and analyzed the biological evidence. Dr. Giberson evidently would have us believe Darwin was a typical evangelical until an honest inquiry into the scientific evidence forced him to take a more enlightened position.

I'm admittedly no Darwin scholar, but I do know for a fact that the only version of "Christianity" he ever adhered to was by no means evangelical. He was a product of that Unitarian intellectualism that dominated the established church in Georgian times. According to an 1887 article by Robert Schindler (published in Charles Spurgeon's magazine, The Sword and the Trowel):

If anyone wishes to know where the tadpole of Darwinism was hatched, we could point him to the pew of the old chapel in High Street, Shrewsbury, where Mr. Darwin, his father, and we believe his father's father, received their religious training. The chapel was built for Mr. Talents, an ejected minister [i.e., a Puritan who dissented from the established church order]; but for very many years full-blown Socinianism has been taught there. (Emphasis added.)

Furthermore, Darwin was enthralled with natural theology and (like BioLogos) held the truth-claims of Scripture to be less reliable and less authoritative than "scientific proofs." That was what prompted his interest in science to begun with. And—as Dr. Giberson himself notes in an earlier open letter to Dr. Mohler—"[Darwin] was a devotee of William Paley."

Perhaps the most succinct summary of William Paley's religious convictions comes to us from Sir Leslie Stephen, a younger contemporary of Paley's. Stephen was a respected English author and an Anglican clergyman. He described William Paley as "Socinian in all but name."

Given BioLogos's own theological trajectory (I'm thinking particularly their dismissive attitude toward key doctrines like biblical authority and original sin), they may not recognize Socinianism—or its close cousins, Unitarianism, Deism, and theological liberalism—as anti-Christian worldviews. But Dr. Mohler certainly understands that those ideas are hostile to Scripture and antithetical to every major stream of historic Christian faith.

In other words, Dr. Mohler undoubtedly disagrees with Dr. Giberson's assessment of Darwin. As difficult as this may be for Dr. Giberson to receive and as hurtful as it may be to his academic ego, Dr. Mohler no doubt found Dr. Giberson's book Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution unpersuasive.

Read the entire post HERE.

Sunday's Sermon

Sunday's message was the final in our series, What Jesus Says to the Church. It is entitled "A Deadly Kind of Warmth" and is based on Jesus' words to the church of Laodicea (Revelation 3:14-22). You can listen to or download it HERE.

RIP: Michael Been (1950-2010)

The Pastor: Shepherd, Therapist, or CEO?

"The pastor is the Manager of resources, financial and personal – no wonder the MBA may be more appealing than the MDiv. Note, however, that this picture of leadership is taken from other social institutions. The Israelites wanted a king like the other nations; we evangelicals want managers of megachurches to be like the megacorporations of our age. On the institutional level, the pastor is a professional manager of organizations. On the individual level, ministers function as Therapists, applying psychological technology to individuals. The Manager and the Therapist are the dominant social paradigms for leadership in our times: the question is, to what extent should the Church follow suit?"

- Kevin Vanhoozer

Where the battle rages...

"If I profess, with the loudest voice and clearest exposition, every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battle field besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point."

- Martin Luther

"Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Ministry"

Protestants are not Roman Catholics. Pretty profound eh? But one important distinction is that Protestants know that the call to vocational ministry is not a sacrament. While there are unique responsibilities and blessings to being one who preaches, the call to preach does not provide a spiritual advantage over the masses, so to speak. One of the great contributions of the Protestant Reformers and, later, the Puritans was the value and, yes, sanctity of all work. It was a re-discovery that all work, whether preaching or washing dishes could and should be done for the glory of God.

That said, the work of the preacher is clearly not for everyone. Beyond a clear calling from God upon his life to preach the Word there are certain competencies which the preacher ought to possess if he is to be a blessing to the people of God. This is not to say that the preacher must be one who is brimming with a plethora of skills. He does not have to be a particularly gifted administrator, a "cultural architect" (There is a pastor in L.A. who uses this as a title), or particularly good looking (In my case that is self-evident). But it seems clear that if God is going to entrust his dearly loved people to the care of an under shepherd then that man will be able to do a few things well.

Over at Ref21 Carl Trueman reflects on some of the skills that Martin Luther said a preacher must possess. In this first posting, Dr. Trueman mentions the first five of those skills.

In Table Talk 2580, Luther outlines the qualifications of a good preacher in a way that is refreshingly practical. I will deal briefly with the first five marks today, the last four tomorrow.

The first five are: ability to teach; possession of a good head; eloquence; clarity of speech; and a good memory. The list is interesting because it focuses first on practicalities, things often lost in the romantic spiritual notions of ministry we often have. In short, the person should be able to think and speak clearly, two traits which are often intimately connected. It seems like common sense, but these basic elements are often neglected by churches, seminaries, sessions, elder boards, presbyteries and classes. To put it bluntly: if you cannot put a decent, clear sentence into English and speak it in a way that others can understand, you are not called to the ministry, no matter how much that inner voice tells you that God is calling you to preach, or your mum tells you you'd make a wonderful pastor.

That does not mean that you cannot be of great use to the church; but clarity of mind and speech are absolutely basic, just as important as godly zeal and sense of call (internal and external), for the office of preacher. We need to be careful that we do not over-spiritualize the call: just as someone with St Vitus' Dance should never be allowed to be a brain surgeon, so the one who cannot speak with coherence and confidence should not be in a pulpit.

The task for the church is thus twofold: to create a culture which reflects the Pauline culture where to desire to be an elder is a good thing, elders are honoured, and elders who teach are considered worthy of double honour; but also to avoid the kind of Protestant sacerdotalism where many think the only way of being of true value is to hold ordained office. That requires church officers to be true servants of the people; and to have the courage to tell someone who cannot teach that, however powerful the inner call, they are not called to be a teacher. Not an easy balance; and the latter in particular might prove tough in a culture where it is considered self-evident that every member has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of ministry.

But, as usual, Luther got it right.

Clark Pinnock - A Modern Parable?

Clark Pinnock died on Sunday at the age of seventy-three. Dr. Pinnock was a theologian who stirred up no small amount of controversy during his life. Early in his career Pinnock was a conservative of the fundamentalist sort. A strong advocate for the Bible's inerrancy, Dr. Pinnock (a Canadian) was influential in warning Southern Baptists about their slide into theological liberalism. During his tenure at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary he taught young pastors to have confidence in the full trustworthiness of God's Word even writing an influential book A Defense of Biblical Infallibility (1967). He thus became instrumental in the conservative resurgence in the SBC.

However, Clark Pinnock ultimately retreated from almost every theological tenet he once contended for so valiantly. He retreated from his Calvinistic convictions and embraced Arminianism. He came to believe that if man were to be truly free then God must not be truly sovereign. In time, Pinnock became the unacknowledged leader of the "Openness of God" movement which teaches that God possesses no foreknowledge of future events. What is more, Openness theology, not surprisingly, holds that God has no sovereignty over those events that are yet to come. The future is...open.

Pinnock would come to deny the necessity of faith in Christ if one was to be saved. He denied the imputed righteousness of Christ, the doctrine of Christ's substitutionary atonement, and the historic doctrine of hell and God's judgement. But it all began with denying the doctrine for which he once fought: the Bible's inerrancy. After abandoning inerrancy, Pinnock called upon evangelicals to not seek coalescence around inerrancy but instead to look to the doctrine of Jesus' atoning sacrifice as that which provides evangelical unity. Certainly, the doctrine of Christ's atoning work on the cross is central not only to our faith but our unity as well. But of course, if you follow the theological evolution of Clark Pinnock it was not long before he began to deny Christ's blood atonement. Once the inerrancy of God's Word is denied then it is usually not long before other doctrines are tossed into the dustbin. If inerrancy is abandoned for not being "intellectually satisfying" then can Christ's deity, virgin birth, atonement, and resurrection last long? For Clark Pinnock the answer was an unfortunate "no."

Certainly our condolences go to Dr. Pinnocks friends and family. He died of Alzheimer's which is a sad end for such an intelligent man or any man for that matter.

According to Dr. Pinnock's theology, God did not know that he would contract this terrible disease. What is more, God had no control over the circumstances. He could only watch and hope for the best along with Clark's friends and family. What a sad and pathetic god. But for Pinnock, Greg Boyd and the other advocates of Openness Theology, we can only be assured of God's goodness if He is completely unresponsible for the unpleasant things that come our way. It is as if they have said, "You can believe that God is good so long as you believe he is incompetent."

What a sad distortion of the God who reveals Himself in Scripture. He declares the end from the beginning (Isa. 46:10). He is the God who works all things according to the counsel of His will (Eph 1:11). God is sovereign over the weather. He is sovereign over his enemies. He is sovereign over cancer cells and earthquakes. He is sovereign over the salvation of his people. And God is sovereign over the number of our days. What a comfort these truths could have been for Clark Pinnock in his later days.

You can read a wonderful article on Clark Pinnock by Russell Moore HERE.

Also, you can read a more sobering assessment of Pinnock by Scott Clark HERE.

Themelios

The latest issue of Themelios is now available. You can read in PDF or HTML.

1. Carl Trueman Minority Report: Not in the Public Interest

2. Fred G. Zaspel B. B. Warfield on Creation and Evolution

3. Denny Burk Why Evangelicals Should Ignore Brian McLaren: How the New Testament Requires Evangelicals to Render a Judgment on the Moral Status of Homosexuality

4. Biblical Theology and the Ancient Near East: A Symposium on Jeffrey J. Niehaus, Ancient Near Eastern Themes in Biblical Theology
1.Stephen Dempster A Member of the Family or a Stranger? A Review Article of Jeffrey J. Niehaus, Ancient Near Eastern Themes in Biblical Theology
2.William Edgar Parallels, Real or Imagined? A Review Article of Jeffrey J. Niehaus, Ancient Near Eastern Themes in Biblical Theology
3.Jeffrey J. Niehaus How to Write—and How Not to Write—a Review: An Appreciative Response to Reviews of Ancient Near Eastern Themes in Biblical Theology by Dempster and Edgar

5. D. A. Carson Pastoral Pensées: Motivations to Appeal to in Our Hearers When We Preach for Conversion

6. Book Reviews
1.Old Testament 3 reviews
2.New Testament 24 reviews
3.history and historical theology 6 reviews
4.systematic theology and bioethics 15 reviews
5.ethics and pastoralia 8 reviews
6.missions and culture 3 reviews

Can the Bible be Trusted?

In an article posted today, Al Mohler observes that the battle over the Bible's inerrancy is heating up once again. Since 1995 and the publication of Inspiration and Incarnation by Pete Enns the new battle over inerrancy has moved well within the "big tent" of evangelicalism. Kenton Sparks' book God's Word in Human Words added fuel to the fire by accusing Scripture of not only historical and cosmological errors but theological and moral errors as well.

Mohler writes:

God’s Word in Human Words is an erudite book with a comprehensive argument. Kenton Sparks does not misunderstand the evangelical doctrine of biblical inerrancy — he understands it and sees it as intellectually disastrous. “So like any other book,” he asserts, “the Bible appears to be a historically and culturally contingent text and, because of that, it reflects the diverse viewpoints of different people who lived in different times and places.” But a contingent text bears all the errors of its contingent authors, and Sparks fully realizes this.

The serialized articles by Sparks appear at the BioLogos Web site, a site with one clear agenda — to move evangelicals toward a full embrace of evolutionary theory. In this context, Sparks understands that the affirmation of biblical inerrancy presents a huge obstacle to the embrace of evolution. The “evidential threshold” has been crossed, he insists, and the Bible has come up short. The biblical writers were simply trapped within the limits of their own ancient cosmology and observations.

But Sparks presses far beyond this argument, accusing the Bible of presenting immoral teachings, citing “biblical texts that strike us as down-right sinister or evil.” The Bible, he suggests, “exhibits all the telltale signs of having been written by finite, fallen human beings who erred in the ways that human beings usually err.”

When Peter Enns and Kenton Sparks argue for an incarnational model of inspiration and biblical authority, they are continuing an argument first made long ago — among evangelicals, at least as far back as the opening salvos of the battle over biblical inerrancy. Sparks, however, takes the argument further. He understands that the incarnational model implicates Jesus. He does not resist this. Jesus, he suggests, “was a finite person who grew up in Palestine.” While asserting that he affirms the historic Christian creeds and “traditional Christian orthodoxy,” Sparks proposes that Jesus made routine errors of fact.

His conclusion: “If Jesus as a finite human being erred from time to time, there is no reason at all to suppose that Moses, Paul, [and/or] John wrote Scripture without error.”

That is a breath-taking assumption, to say the very least. But, even in its shocking audacity, it serves to reveal the clear logic of the new battle-lines over biblical inerrancy. We now confront open calls to accept and affirm that there are indeed errors in the Bible. It is demanded that we accept the fact that the human authors of the Bible often erred because of their limited knowledge and erroneous assumptions about reality. We must, it is argued, abandon the claim that the Bible is a consistent whole. Rather, we are told to accept the claims that the human authors of Scripture were just plain wrong in some texts — even in texts that define God and his ways. We are told that some texts are just “down-right sinister or evil.”

And, note clearly, we are told that we must do this in order to save Evangelicalism from an intellectual disaster.

Of course, accepting this demand amounts to a theological disaster of incalculable magnitude. Rarely has this been more apparent and undeniable. The rejection of the Bible’s inerrancy will please the evangelical revisionists, but it will rob the church of its secure knowledge that the Bible is indeed true, trustworthy and fully authoritative.

Kenton Sparks and the new evangelical revisionists are now making some of the very arguments that earlier opponents of inerrancy attempted to deny. In this sense, they offer great clarity to the current debate. Their logic is clear. They argue that the human authors of the Bible were not protected from error, and their errors are not inconsequential. We are talking about nothing less than whether the Bible truthfully reveals to us the nature, character, acts, and purposes of God.

Read the entire article HERE.

In September Church of the Saviour will be hosting an important event. It is called Full Confidence and will be held on September 24 and 25. You can register HERE for only $15.

Sunday's Sermon

Sunday's message was part 6 in our series through Revelation 2&3 - What Jesus Says to the Church. The message is entitled "The Faithful Church" (Rev 3:7-13) and can be listened to or downloaded HERE.

Are we fighting too much over doctrine?

Carl Trueman weighs in on some of the recent episodes of seeming self loathing among a few well known leaders in the Reformed community.

I have taken the liberty to highlight some portions that I believe are particularly important.

Over the last decade, it has become something of a commonplace in Reformed evangelical circles to decry the level of polemic that has historically characterised the Reformed world. From John Frame's famous critique of Machen's warrior children to more recent comments by high-profile members of the Gospel Coalition, the idea has gone abroad that there are these Reformed and evangelical doctrinalists who just live to fight. Discussing this over lunch with a pastor friend the other day, he commented to me, `You know, I'm not quite prepared to jump into this sea of self-loathing just yet.' And I think he is right. Here are some reasons why.

1. Polemic is no monopoly of the Reformed. Talk to Catholic, Orthodox, Anabaptist, and Episcopalian friends. They too have their struggles. This does not in itself make any particular polemic, or any particular polemical technique, correct; but it does rather highlight the fact that the church was born in controversy and, if her beliefs are important, there will always be such struggles. The day the polemics die out you will know that (a) Christ has returned or (b) people no longer care about doctrine and the church has ceased to exist.

2. The criticism of polemics often comes from those who enjoy the space that polemics have carved out for them and the safety that polemics provides them. Such critics are like those who use their right to freedom of speech to decry the use of armed force by police and army, not realising that the very right they enjoy in this regard is positively connected to what they are attacking. Don't tell the world that the Trinity or justification by faith are important doctrines and then lament the existence of polemics; you can only have a coalition based on the gospel because every element of that gospel has been first hammered out in the furnace of controversy and then defended in the same way. Sure, not all polemics are good polemics, in form and/or substance -- so be discriminating in your criticisms and drop the stereotypes. Failure to be so is simple ingratitude to those who have put reputations and, in the history of the church, often lives on the line for the preservation of the truth. Penning an anti-polemic polemic may help the author sleep well at night, confident that his hands are clean and his conscience clear; but he can only do so because somebody has first made the mean streets outside his house safe for women and children.

3. Closely related to point 2 is the fact that, 99 times out of a 100, a nasty controversy only ever erupts because, at an earlier point in time somebody, somewhere took the easy way out and chose to turn a blind eye to a peccadillo, moral or theological. Think of David and Adonijah, the son who rebelled. We are told in 1 Ki. 1:6 that his father had never checked his behaviour as he had grown up, surely one of the most eloquent verses in the Bible. What had presumably started with Adonijah throwing toys out of the pram or not observing a teenage curfew ended with full-scale rebellion. In my limited experience in both local churches and institutions, all of the major conflicts in which I have been involved could have been avoided if somebody at some point in the past had had the backbone -- and the love for an erring brother or sister -- to check them gently when they first showed signs of wandering. Dare I say it? It is pretty rich to criticise those involved in major polemics if those polemics actually involve cleaning up significant messes created by the fact that others failed to do what was right when the problem was much easier to address and the stakes were much lower. Anti-polemic polemicists should reflect as much about how the events of the present -- not least their development of the next generation of leaders -- will impact the church for good or for ill -- as they do on the allegedly over-polemical attitude of some. Polemics in one generation are often as much, if not more, the fault of the lack of discernment or moral leadership in the previous generation as they are of any innately combative personalities in the present.

4. Finally, I simply don't recognise the pictures drawn by the Reformed evangelical critics of Reformed evangelical polemicists. The problem is they build grand cases about general types on very limited access to evidence. When particular figures are dismissed as being polemically minded, relentlessly aggressive etc, it is possible that, on occasion, the criticism is true. More often, however, it is built upon reading a few pages of a blog or a book or a magazine; or listening to one lecture or public statement; worse still, it is based on hostile witness of some kind. For most of us who write and speak in the public forum, that speaking and writing is just a small part of our lives. More important for us is being in church both ends on a Sunday, encouraging our pastor, helping with the Sunday School or the nursery or the church cleaning rota, connecting with other members in church when their basement is flooded or they need help, having an open office policy so students can wander in at any time to talk about a problem, striving to be better husbands and dads. Sure, we can fight when we think it is necessary; and yes, certainly, as sinners, we sometimes fight when it isn't necessary or in an inappropriate way, and, as with all sin, we need to be challenged on that and repent -- believe me, my wife, my own `Katie' is quite capable of tearing me off a strip on that score; but that is just a small part of our Christian lives -- a necessary one, for all the reasons given above -- but a small one.

So, please, let's bin this sad, misguided self-loathing on the polemic front. We must repent where necessary, where we have crossed the line; but, just as necessary, we must fight where we see the truth is at stake. We should be grateful for the truth that polemics have preserved so that we have a gospel to proclaim; and we should not allow a misguided commitment to being nice to allow us, in effect, to dump huge problems on the next generation by running up a massive theological and moral deficit in the church of the present.

Polemics against polemics have a role to play in provoking self-reflection; and, let's face it, they sound pretty cool and attractive in the current cultural climate; but they are, ironically, parasitic on polemic and polemicists; and, moreover, when they witness to, and help promote, self-loathing, they should be abandoned as serving no good purpose.

SPOT. ON.

Good Theology Resources...

One of the things I want to do with this blog is provide excellent resources for the Christian lay person. Take time to peruse the "Biblical Studies/Theology" and "Audio" sections of this blog. Some of the newer links in this section are:

Ligonier Collections

Reclaiming the Mind

Theological FAQs

Third Millennium Ministries

Also, check out the following outstanding (and free!) audio resources:

Covenant Seminary

Faith by Hearing

The Gospel Coalition

Monergism

Westminster Seminary iTunes U

Is there a difference between election and predestination?

Kevin DeYoung on the distinction between election and predestination:

The terms election and predestination are often used interchangeably, both referring to God’s gracious decree whereby he chooses some for eternal life. In Romans 8:30 Paul speaks of those whom God has predestined, called, justified, and (in the end) glorified. In 8:33 Paul references “the elect,” apparently a synonym for the predestined ones described a few verses earlier.

A sharp distinction between the two words is not warranted from Scripture, but if there is a distinction to be made, predestination is the general term for God’s sovereign ordaining, while election is the specific term for God choosing us in Christ before the foundation of the world. That is, predestination is the broader category of which election is the smaller subset. Calvin defined predestination as “God’s eternal decree, by which he compacted with himself what he willed to become of each man…Therefore, as any man has been created to one or the other of these ends, we speak of him as predestined to life or to death” (Inst. III.xxi.5). For Calvin, predestination encompasses the entire eternal decree. Election and reprobation, then, represent two different aspects of the decree. The Canons of Dort Article 1 makes the same distinctions.

This delineation is not without merit. The “elect” is always a positive designation in Scripture (e.g., Matt. 24:31; Titus 1:1), suggesting that election implies eternal life (though Rom 9:11 may be an exception to this rule). Predestination, on the other hand, can be used more broadly. Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and people of Israel, did to Jesus what God’s “plan had predestined to take place” (Acts 4:27-28). Indeed, all of our days are written in God’s book before one of them comes to pass (Psalm 139:16 ). Every form of prosperity and affliction comes to us not by chance, but from God’s fatherly hand (Heidelberg Catechism Q/A 27). Or as Augustine put it, “The will of God is the necessity of all things.”

Does this mean we are “predestined” to marry so-and-so or take a certain job? In one sense, looking back at God’s providential care, we can say “Yes, that’s was God’s plan for my life.” And yet this notion of divine superintendence is not meant to undercut personal initiative and responsibility. Everything happens after the counsel of God’s will (Eph. 1:11), but this is no excuse to neglect the use of means, nor is it a reason to think every decision we make is automatically pleasing to God. God’s sovereign unalterable will of decree is not be confused with his violable will of desire.

"A man's decision about pornography is a decision about his soul"

Thanks to Justin Taylor for posting a link to an important address by Al Mohler to the male students of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. You can download the audio HERE or read the manuscript HERE.

Mohler first considers the man of sexual integrity:

The first picture is of a man who has set himself toward a commitment to sexual purity, and is living in sexual integrity with his wife. In order to fulfill his wife’s rightful expectations and to maximize their mutual pleasure in the marriage bed, he is careful to live, to talk, to lead, and to love in such a way that his wife finds her fulfillment in giving herself to him in love. The sex act then becomes a fulfillment of their entire relationship, not an isolated physical act that is merely incidental to their love for each other. Neither uses sex as means of manipulation, neither is inordinately focused merely on self-centered personal pleasure, and both give themselves to each other in unapologetic and unhindered sexual passion. In this picture, there is no shame. Before God, this man can be confident that he is fulfilling his responsibilities both as a male and as a man. He is directing his sexuality, his sex drive, and his physical embodiment toward the one-flesh relationship that is the perfect paradigm of God’s intention in creation.

Next, Mohler considers a very different kind of man:

This man lives alone, or at least in a context other than holy marriage. Directed inwardly rather than outwardly, his sex drive has become an engine for lust and self-gratification. Pornography is the essence of his sexual interest and arousal. Rather than taking satisfaction in his wife, he looks at dirty pictures in order to be rewarded with sexual arousal that comes without responsibility, expectation, or demand. Arrayed before him are a seemingly endless variety of naked women, sexual images of explicit carnality, and a cornucopia of perversions intended to seduce the imagination and corrupt the soul.

This man need not be concerned with his physical appearance, his personal hygiene, or his moral character in the eyes of a wife. Without this structure an accountability, he is free to take his sexual pleasure without regard for his unshaved face, his slothfulness, his halitosis, his body odor, and his physical appearance. He faces no requirement of personal respect, and no eyes gaze upon him in order to evaluate the seriousness and worthiness of his sexual desire. Instead, his eyes roam across the images of unblinking faces, leering at women who make no demands upon him, who never speak back, and who can never say no. There is no exchange of respect, no exchange of love, and nothing more than the using of women as sex objects for his individual and inverted sexual pleasure.

By logical consequence, he achieves sexual gratification at the expense of women who have been used and abused as commodified sex objects. He may imagine a sex act as he fulfills his physical pleasure, but he almost certainly does not imagine what it would mean to be responsible for this woman as husband and accountable to her as mate. He can sit in his soiled underwear, belching the remnants of last night’s pizza, and engage in a pattern of one-handed sexual satisfaction while he “surfs the net” and forfeits his soul.

In conclusion:

These two pictures of male sexuality are deliberately intended to drive home the point that every man must decide who he will be, whom he will serve, and how he will love. In the end, a man’s decision about pornography is a decision about his soul, a decision about his marriage, a decision about his wife, and a decision about God.

Pornography is a slander against the goodness of God’s creation and a corruption of this good gift God has given his creatures out of his own self-giving love. To abuse this gift is to weaken, not only the institution of marriage, but the fabric of civilization itself. To choose lust over love is to debase humanity and to worship the false god Priapus in the most brazen form of modern idolatry.

A Christian response to the normalization of homosexuality

It feels a bit hopeless at times. We are, in the words of one commentator, a "70/30 country." That is, we are a country where the majority of citizens (70%) are being ruled by an ideological minority (30%). These ruling elites mock, among other things, biblical sexual ethics. The most recent and public example of this is the overturning of Proposition Eight in California, the law declaring that the state will only recognize marriage between a man and a woman. The law was declared unconstitutional by an openly homosexual judge whose "findings of fact" were nothing more than cliched pro-homosexual bigotry.

That said, what is the church of Jesus Christ to do? It is true that we live south of heaven and should not be surprised by the continuing fruits of our fallen-ness. What is more, the kingdom of Christ is still not of this world. Those Christians on the political left and right should remember this. It is not our mandate to build God's kingdom on earth. And yet, when the laws of the land stand in open mockery of God's law Christians should not shrug it off as nothing more than a reminder that we live in a fallen world. This is true of course, but the redeemed people of God are to live as holy leaven in this fallen world. Jesus taught us to pray, "your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." And, of course, one day this will come to pass. Until then we live in the shadow lands.

I was helped by a recent post by Kevin Deyoung. In it, DeYoung offers a list of suggestions for Christian action in a culture where the normalization of homosexuality seem inevitable.

1. We should not disengage. It’s tempting to say “We’re going to lose this one. So let’s just try to love people and not put up a fight” But laws do have consequences. Seeking the peace of the city means we defend marriage because we believe it is for the common good. We need thoughtful, winsome Christians engaging with this issue on television, in print, in the academy, in the arts, and in politics and law.

2. Pastors need to teach on sexuality, preferably in the regular course of expositional preaching. A special series on sex is needed at times, but that can look like special pleading. It’s better for congregations to develop a biblical view of sexuality as they go through Ephesians, 1 Corinthians, Genesis, and the Gospels (yes, Jesus did talk about homosexuality; see Mark 7:21).

3. We should assume that there are people in our churches right now struggling with same gender attraction. Leaders need to verbalize this (not specific names obviously) in sermon application and in pastoral prayers. We need to convey that the church is a safe place for those fighting this temptation. Second to Jesus Christ and his gospel, those struggling with same gender attraction need gospel community more than anything else.

4. Youth groups need to talk frankly about sex and sexual identity. The public school teachers I talk to tell me that teenagers are more and more likely to experiment with their sexuality. They’ll choose to be gay for a season just because they can. These issues will only become more prevalent.

5. We must not be afraid to talk about homosexuality. Don’t be silenced by Christians calling for umpteen more years of dialogue or those who say you need at least one gay friend before you can open your mouth. The Bible speaks openly about sexuality and we must not be embarrassed to open God’s word. BUT when we do speak we must do so with broken hearts not bulging veins. A calm spirit and a broken heart are keys to not being tuned out immediately.

6. Preaching and discipleship must exhort Christians to flee all kinds of sins. If churches take sin seriously and address specific sins all the time, it will be less jarring when homosexuality is brought up.

7. We must accept that no matter how hard we try, some people will conclude we are bigots, homophobes, and neanderthals for thinking homosexuality is wrong. Our goal must not be to stop people from viewing us in this way. We can’t control perceptions. Our goal is that those ugly perceptions do not match reality.

8. We need some of our best theological writers and thinkers to explore the nitty-gritty issues that perplex Christian families affected by homosexuality. How should Christian families relate to loved ones who are gay? If your homosexual friend gets “married” should you attend the ceremony? Should families welcome their relative’s partner in the house? In the same room together overnight? How should parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles talk about these issues with younger children? What should a Christian do if he or she is put together with a homosexual roommate in college? These are just some of the very practical questions that pastors and families need help considering.

9. No gay jokes. None. It doesn’t help our witness and they’re not funny. Plus, the more we laugh at sin the more it gets normalized.

10. We must be prepared to suffer. We must not revile when reviled. We must choose to love those who work at cross-purposes to God’s ways. We must be willing to be called names, discriminated against, or worse.

11. We must put away “hate the sin, love the sinner” and put homosexuality in the context of the Bible’s metanarrative of creation, fall, redemption, re-creation. This is one issue just screaming for the bigger picture.

12. We must be people of hope not despair. We know the Lord and he knows us. This is not the worst crisis in the history of mankind. Homosexuality is sinful, but God specializes in sin. Look at what he’s done with us.

Republocrat

One of the reasons I like hanging out with Carl Trueman is that he seems to have a reckless disregard for his reputation. What I mean is that he cares more about being truthful than he does about being liked.

I'm looking forward to the release of Carl's latest book, Republocrat: Confessions of a Liberal Conservative published by P&R. The video below is an interview with Carl from the fellas at Christ the Center. Incidentally, Carl will be preaching at Church of the Saviour on September 5.




Endorsements of Republocrat:
“As Carl Trueman points out in his witty, provocative, and deeply well-informed way, the alliance of conservative Christianity with conservative (neoliberal) politics is a circumstance of our own context in U.S. politics—neither historically nor logically necessary. Tie the faith too closely to right-wing politics, and it’s no wonder that younger Christians think they have to check out of orthodoxy when they move left of center politically. Regardless of one’s own views, this book will delight, frustrate, and encourage healthy dis- cussions that we have needed to have for a long time.”
- Michael Horton, J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics, Westminster Seminary California

“The disturbing alliance of conservative theology and right-wing politics is faced head-on in this timely and brave treatment by renowned historical-theologian and social commentator Carl Trueman. Even if readers disagree with Dr. Trueman’s conclusions, the sharpness of his critique should disturb the most entrenched political consciousness, particularly if the foundations of convic- tion are shown to have little or no biblical support. Writing in a predictably provocative and forthright manner, Trueman pulls few, if any, punches. Republocrat is a timely and robust assessment of a vitally important issue and a cri de coeur for a reappraisal of the conservative church’s current political alliance.”
- Derek W. H. Thomas, John E. Richards Professor of Theology, Reformed Theological Seminary

“What we really have here is a lonely thinker who longs for the truth of a better city that he cannot find on either side of the Atlantic. He lampoons the cherished political idols that dominate our political landscape. I couldn’t suppress chortles of laughter, alongside shocks of disdain and disagreement, all the while admiring Trueman’s unmasking of the well-camouflaged foolishness on all points of the political spectrum. This histo- rian-turned-pundit, with all the force of a prizefighter’s left jab and right hook, leaves the left, right, and center (or centre) reel- ing on the ropes. Therefore, I heartily recommend that you read this book, but you do so at your own peril. Its intensity, as well as its pointed, provocative, and persuasive prose, will force you to look at the Vanity Fair of politics from a pilgrim’s per- spective. It’s just possible that you, too, will begin to yearn for a better city.”
- Peter Lillback, President of the Providence Forum

I appreciate Dr. Lillback's observation. In addition to sounding the alarm about the uneasy wedding of religion with conservative politics, Carl is also no friend of the "religious left." In fact I know of few people who are as perceptive about the problems of the alliance between religion and leftist politics as Carl Trueman.