Westminster Weekend

My wife and I are fortunate enough to be in Bedford, PA attending Westminster Weekend. A few of Westminster's faculty will be speaking on the full trustworthiness of Scripture. I'm very thankful to be here. It's being held at the beautiful and historic Bedford Springs Hotel. Guys, if you're looking for a great place to bring your wife for a weekend away then check this place out! I can see the golf course from my room.

Carl Trueman on Puritan Spirituality

I have a deep appreciation for the Puritans. They have been misunderstood and maligned. In recent decades however the Puritans have experienced a resurgence. They were not nearly the killjoys that they have often been portrayed to be. Certainly they were people of their time and cared deeply about holiness. They were also a sober minded lot. After all, living in 17th century Europe tended to acquaint one at a young age with the reliaties of life and death. Nevertheless, the Puritans left behind a spiritual legacy that is both biblical and passionate.

Check out these three messages by Carl Trueman on the spirituality of the Puritans.

"Remarkable Faith in the Midst of Regrettable Tragedy"

Check out Dr. Julius Kim's chapel message delivered at Westminster Seminary.

The Necessity of Controversy

From Martin Downes:

What happens when controversy rears its head and cracks in our unity appear?

Theological controversies invariably reveal that there are significant differences that people hold to on matters of doctrine, whilst the quarrelling parties both claim to stand for the orthodox position as understood both biblically and historically.

The long term wrangling over what constitutes essential evangelical doctrines is a case in point. Can you be evangelical and deny inerrancy, or justification by faith alone, or penal substitutionary atonement, or God's exhaustive foreknowledge, or the necessity of faith in Jesus Christ for salvation, or eternal conscious torment in hell?

When an individual, or a party, wants to use the term evangelical but includes in that term views that are fundamentally opposed to beliefs directly essential to, or necessarily undergirding, an evangelical position then controversy is inevitable.

For controversy not to result would be the effect of an unstated but controlling theological principle that renders all doctrines essential to an evangelical position negotiable and effectively non-essential. That unstated position would itself show that a compromise on essential truths had already been made.

Even though controversy is inevitable is it desirable? The answer must be yes. For without controversy whatever unity that exists is as solid as the mist on an Autumn morning. It is merely a numbers and influence game, a fantasy and not a reality.

How can you stand for a unity that doesn't solidly exist upon matters of belief? Not only does the emporer have no clothes, but the empire is invisible too.

What is the point in having an agreed statement of essential beliefs that no one really adheres to because no one is willing to enforce it? If we have any concern for the truth we would surely want it to be made clear rather than being obscured by fog of meaningless ambiguous phrases.

Controversy, however, as most of us fear, can quickly become an ugly business. We can rapidly move the emphasis from what is right, to ourselves being right, or being seen to be right. Patient listening, charitable interpretation, and a desire for unity can be soon lost.

We are on a knife edge as we deal with these matters. Truth must not be traded, sounds words must not be emptied of their meaning, and compromise must not be the master of integrity. Desperate prayers for wisdom are to be top of the agenda, and we must think our way through these matters seeking understanding, light and clarity.

Perhaps this fear is what lies at the root of an unwillingness to engage in controversy even when there is an irreconcilable disagreement on matters of truth and error. We see the fraying tempers, the soured relationships, the carrying of tales and exaggerations, and we rightly feel that we want no part of that.

At this point we must distinguish between matters of orthopraxy in relation to the truth (the Pauline imperative to "hold fast" and "follow the pattern of sound words") and in matters of godly integrity (just read everything that Paul says to Timothy and Titus about how to be godly in the thick of a theological fight). We must distinguish between these two areas, and we must practice the truth in both of them without compromise.

Obedience in holding to the truth, and obedience in the practice of the truth, go hand in hand. But when error reaches a crescendo in the form of a false gospel then I must not think that bad attitudes among those who hold to the truth can be equated with the danger posed by heresy (Gal. 1:8-10).

That should not make me go easy on sins of bearing false witness, or pride (2 Tim. 2:24-26). The King is not honoured when I behave like this. But I would rather eat wholesome food served by a grumpy waitress than a meal laced with poison served by a seemingly sweet natured chef.

One of the benefits of controversy is the progress made from confusion to clarity. Luther made the following observations on the matter:

If heresies and offenses come, Christendom will only profit thereby, for they make Christians to read diligently the Holy Writ and ponder the same with industry...Thus through heretics and offenses we are kept alert and stouthearted and amid wrangles and battles understand God's word better than before.

William Cunningham's words are a fitting summary:

The uses of theological controversy are, to expose error, and to produce and diffuse clear and correct opinions upon all points of doctrine.

It is the church's imperative duty to aim at these objects, and controversy seems to be as indispensable with a view to the second as to the first of them. But it is an evil and an abuse, when the exposure of error is made to serve as a substitute for the realization and application of what is admitted to be true.

"The Reformers and the doctrine of assurance" in The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation, p. 148

The Parent's Vanishing Authority

From Al Mohler:

Literary critic Lionel Trilling once referred to "the dark and bloody crossroads where literature and politics meet." In reality, almost all literature is political in some sense. Oddly enough, the most explicitly subversive literature is often presented to the very youngest among us -- our children. Far too many parents seem not to notice.

In "The Defiant Ones," a recent essay published in the New Yorker, Daniel Zalewski argues that picture books for children now reflect a world turned upside down in terms of the relationship between parent and child. As he explains, in the newest picture books for children, the kids are solidly in charge.

In this sense, the books we read to our children reflect the cultural values of our age. Inescapably, these narratives for children reveal far more than a storyline. Indeed, the books tell us more than we may want to know about the tenor of our times.

And Zalewski explains:

Like the novel or the sitcom, the picture book records shifts in domestic life: newspaper-burrowing fathers have been replaced by eager, if bumbling, diaper-changers. Similarly, the stern disciplinarians of the past—in Robert McCloskey books, parents instruct children not to cry—have largely vanished. The parents in today’s stories suffer the same diminution in authority felt by the parents reading them aloud (an hour past bedtime). The typical adult in a contemporary picture book is harried and befuddled, scurrying to fulfill a child’s wishes and then hesitantly drawing the line.

Read the entire article HERE.

Photos

The pulpit at Christ Church in Philadelphia. If you've never taken the tour it is well worth checking out. When construction was completed it was the tallest building in the U.S. for 57 years.

Reformation Reading - Martin Luther

Read about Martin Luther. He was a fascinating man. A good novelist could not have dreamed up a more interesting character.

Here are few books on Martin Luther well worth reading:

The Reformation: How a Monk and a Mallet Changed the World by Stephen Nichols

Martin Luther: A Guided Tour of His Life and Thought by Stephen Nichols

Here I Stand by Roland Bainton

Luther: Man Between God and the Devil by Heiko Oberman

The Genius of Luther's Theology by Kolb & Arand

Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther Donald McKim ed.

"Luther's Theology of the Cross"

On October 31, 1517 Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses on the door of the castle church at Wittenberg.

Reflecting on Martin Luther's "theology of the cross" Carl Trueman writes:

The "theologians of glory,"...are those who build their theology in the light of what they expect God to be like—and, surprise, surprise, they make God to look something like themselves. The "theologians of the cross," however, are those who build their theology in the light of God's own revelation of himself in Christ hanging on the cross.

The implications of this position are revolutionary. For a start, Luther is demanding that the entire theological vocabulary be revised in light of the cross. Take for example the word power. When theologians of glory read about divine power in the Bible, or use the term in their own theology, they assume that it is analogous to human power. They suppose that they can arrive at an understanding of divine power by magnifying to an infinite degree the most powerful thing of which they can think. In light of the cross, however, this understanding of divine power is the very opposite of what divine power is all about. Divine power is revealed in the weakness of the cross, for it is in his apparent defeat at the hands of evil powers and corrupt earthly authorities that Jesus shows his divine power in the conquest of death and of all the powers of evil. So when a Christian talks about divine power, or even about church or Christian power, it is to be conceived of in terms of the cross—power hidden in the form of weakness.

For Luther, the same procedure must be applied to other theological terms. For example, God's wisdom is demonstrated in the foolishness of the cross. Who would have thought up the foolish idea of God taking human flesh in order to die a horrendous death on behalf of sinners who had deliberately defied him, or God making sinners pure by himself becoming sin for them, or God himself raising up a people to newness of life by himself submitting to death? We could go on, looking at such terms as life, blessing, holiness, and righteousness. Every single one must be reconceived in the light of the cross. All are important theological concepts; all are susceptible to human beings casting them in their own image; and all must be recast in the light of the cross.

This insight is one of the factors in Luther's thinking that gives his theology an inner logic and coherence. Take, for example, his understanding of justification, whereby God declares the believer to be righteous in his sight, not by virtue of any
intrinsic righteousness (anything that the believer has done or acquired), but on the basis of an alien righteousness, the righteousness of Christ that remains external to the believer. Is this not typical of the strange but wonderful logic of the God of the cross? The person who is really unrighteous, really mired in sin, is actually declared by God to be pure and righteous! Such a truth is incomprehensible to human logic, but makes perfect sense in light of the logic of the cross.

Read the entire article HERE.

Mammon Worship or Peace of Mind?

Phil Johnson has posted an excellent article on the Christian's relationship with money. Considering what I have preached about the last two Sunday's I thought the post was very timely.

Worry is the natural and inevitable by-product of setting one's affections on earthly things. It ought to be obvious that the end of all earthly things is destruction, whether by the slow decay of moth and rust, or rapidly by sudden loss. In either case, the end will surely be the same.

How can anyone not worry who knows with absolute certainty that decay and ruin will be the inevitable finale of everything he holds most dear? Obviously, then, true peace is possible only for those whose driving affections are not worldly and materialistic, but spiritual, heavenly, and eternal...

So when Jesus says "do not be worried about your life" in the Sermon on the Mount, He is not instructing us to live with no hedge whatsoever against possible disaster. He's not forbidding us to take out insurance in case something goes wrong. He's not saying it is wrong to prepare for hard times. He's not ruling out wise provisions for possible disasters.

What Jesus forbids is the sort of worry that is rooted in a love of things. Don't get so caught up with hedging against future disaster that you pour all your energy and resources into an earthly storehouse. Don't fret about the future. Don't become preoccupied with what may go wrong tomorrow. And above all, do not cultivate a love of material things. Don't sell yourself into the service of mammon.

Read the entire post HERE.

Will promises made be promises kept?

Al Mohler has posted an article commenting on President Obama's speech at the Human Rights Campaign annual dinner. For those who do not know the euphemistically named Human Rights Campaign exists to promote "lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgender civil rights." The President's promises to the group were breathtaking in scope and would, if realized reshape American culture.

Mohler writes:

The President's promises were sweeping. Nevertheless, the most remarkable section of his address included a truly unprecedented promise. The President told the group that his expectation is that when they look back over the years of his administration, they would "see a time in which we put a stop to discrimination against gays and lesbians."

Then he spoke these words:

You will see a time in which we as a nation finally recognize relationships between two men or two women as just as real and admirable as relationships between a man and a woman.

Those words represent a moral revolution that goes far beyond what any other President has ever promised or articulated. In the span of a single sentence, President Obama put his administration publicly on the line to press, not only for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, but for the recognition that same-sex relationships are "just as real and admirable as relationships between a man and a woman."

It is virtually impossible to imagine a promise more breathtaking in its revolutionary character than this -- to normalize same-sex relationships to the extent that they are recognized as being as admirable as heterosexual marriage.

The attendees at the Human Rights Campaign's annual dinner heard the President of the United States make that breathtaking pledge. Was the rest of America listening?

Read the entire article HERE.

Inspiration, Incarnation, and Inerrancy

In the last issue (Spring '09) of the Westminster Theological Journal there is an excellent article by James Scott entitled "Inspiration and Interpretation." Scott's immediate concern is to address and critique Peter Enns' Inspiration and Incarnation. In the process however Scott provides a robust defense of the historic doctrine of the Bible's inerrancy with reference to its impact on biblical interpretation.

Scott writes:

Central to the Christian doctrine of Scripture and well articulated in traditional Reformed theology is the teaching that the Scriptures are the written word of God. This is repeatedly taught by Scripture itself, most commonly whenever the NT introduces an OT quotation with such words as "God said" (e.g.; 2 Cor 6:16) or "the Holy Spirit says" (e.g. Heb 3:7), especially when God is not the speaker in the OT passage (e.g. Acts 13:37, quoting Ps 16:10). "The word of God," to which Hebrews 4:12 refers, includes the Scriptures (along with God's spoken words), as is clear from the repeated statements in the previous verses that God has spoken the words of Scripture. Also, the NT's characterization of the OT as "the oracles of God" (e.g., Rom 3:2) "fairly shouts to us," concludes Warfield after thorough study of this expression, "that to its writers the Scriptures of the Old Testament were the very Word of God in the highest and strictest sense that term can bear - the express utterance, in all their parts and each and every of their words, of the Most High." The consistent witness of Scripture to itself is that it consists of verbal communication from God to man. That is, God is the originator, or author, of Scripture. What Scripture says, God says.

Scott also demonstrates effectively the limits of the incarnational model of biblical interpretation.

It would be unfair to accuse Enns of simply looking at the data of Scripture in Inspiration and Incarnation without any theological framework. He does have a framework for his analysis of the biblical evidence, and he lets readers know that up front. That framework is the incarnational analogy between inspiration and the incarnation. However, he makes no attempt to derive that analogy from Scripture. He simply asserts that it is true and will guide his discussion. He quotes no passage of Scripture that sets forth the incarnational analogy, for there is no such passage. One could perhaps build some sort of analogy from a combination of passages, much as the doctrine of the Trinity in constructed, but Enns has not attempted to do so in print. Furthermore, he presents no evidence that Scripture itself ever argues on the basis of the analogy. That is, no biblical writer ever explains some aspect of Scripture (or of any passage of Scripture) by comparing it with Christ. Enns's approach is essentially pragmatic: the analogy works, by answering difficult questions; therefore, we should accept and use it...

Enns asserts that Herman Bavinck's statement of the analogy, which he quotes in its entirety in defense of his own use of it, 'represents my own deep Reformed commitment.' But his view is not that of Bavinck. Bavinck says only that the word of God entered the creaturely world of humanity 'in all the human forms of dream and vision, of investigation and reflection,' that is, in the processes of revelation and human preparation for writing Scripture - which is a far cry from Enns's notion that God entered into and adopted the pagan worldviews and non-Christian views and methodologies of the ancient world, as vehicles to convey his message...

It is one thing to develop a doctrine of Christ and a doctrine of Scripture, both from the didactic passages of Scripture, and then to observe an analogy between them and consider how far it extends. It is something quite different to observe that certain characteristics of Scripture are analogous to certain characteristics of the incarnate Christ and then to argue that Scripture has certain other characteristics because analogous ones can be discerned in the incarnate Christ. Yet that is what Enns sets out to do in Inspiration and Incarnation: to 'build a doctrine of Scripture' by making 'an attempt to flesh out (as it were) the Incarnational Analogy.' There are two related problems with this approach. First, as Irving M. Copi observes, 'No argument by analogy is ever valid, in the sense of having its conclusion follow from its premises with logical necessity.' Such arguments can only be suggestive: the more points there are of established similarity, the greater the probability is that there will be similarities at other points - but it is still only a probability, never a demonstration. Hence, an analogy is inherently a precarious foundation upon which to build a doctrine of Scripture. Christ and Scripture may well correspond at points A and B, but it does not necessarily follow that they correspond at point C. Second, as Enns himself admits, the analogy does not always work. Indeed Warfield comments that 'between such diverse things there can exist only a remote analogy; and, in point of fact, the analogy...amounts to no more than that in both cases Divine and human factors are involved, though very differently.'

The Ten Commandments on Nightline

Nightline has been running a series of reports on the Ten Commandments and contemporary culture. The episode dealing with idolatry. Interviewed for this episode was Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. Check it out HERE.

Sunday's Sermon

Today's message, like last week's dealt with the relationship between Christians and their money. Today the focus was on how the Gospel serves as the controlling reality in our giving. Listen to or download "Gospel Generosity" HERE.

Photos

Matthew and Ryan - Long Beach Island

New David Brainerd Biography

Phil Johnson writes of Vance Christie's new biography of David Brainerd:

I had the privilege of reading Christie's manuscript almost three years ago, when he sent it to John MacArthur to consider a Foreword. I loved the book and was sad when I had to turn the manuscript over to John MacArthur so that he could write the foreword. I have been eagerly awaiting its publication so that I could get a copy of my own. After three years, I was beginning to wonder if I would ever see it again. But it's now in print from Christian Focus, and well worth your time to read.

Read MacArthur's forward HERE.

Photos

Color or Black and White?

Deserted by God?

One of my favorite books on the subject of God's presence and purpose in our pain and loss is Sinclair Ferguson's Deserted by God?

Check out Nathan Pitchford's helpful review HERE.

I keep multiple copies of this book on hand for the purpose of giving it to people who need to be reminded of God's faithfulness.

Photo

The pulpit at St. Paul's Chapel in New York (across the street from the World Trade Center).

Bible Mesh

THIS looks very cool.

Bible Mesh...

• Walk through the story of God's dealings with His people.
• Dig into the ancient world of the Bible
• Access an advanced learning platform and get tested on what you have studied.
• Participate in group conversations about the Bible.

Oh for more sober pulpits!