Monthly Archives: February 2007

Scarier than Moses (and more gracious too)

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I have to admit, I simply can’t make any sense of this post.

According to the writer to the Hebrews, the giving of the law to Moses was accompanied by darkness, by tempest, by thunder, and by threat. Moses “exceedingly feared and quaked,” we are told. Its preamble notwithstanding, the function of the Decalogue was to instruct God’s people in the context of a covenant that threatened disinheritance for failure to “keep all things written in the law, and do them.”

But is not the point being made by the author of Hebrews that the New Covenant is scarier?  If Moses quaked  how much more should we?  “That’s why we needed a New Covenant: so that we can obey without fear.”  Not what the writer of Hebrews says, in my opinion.

Stop the tape

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I haven’t read the rest of this entry but I have to just add my testimony here:

“One side tends to argue that genuinely Reformed doctrine teaches one covenant before and after the fall, the imputation of Jesus’ passive obedience only, and faith that justifies because it obeys. The other side in contrast holds that the Reformed doctrine denies those very things. Without equivocating, both sides cannot be correct” (p. 5).

So writes Dr. Clark.

Utter crap. Lying from beginning to end.

  1. Adam’s covenant is not ours. His covenant, which demanded perfect personal obedience is over. Otherwise, we would all be dead.
  2. Imputation of active obedience of Christ, has not only been articulated on this blog, it has been defended.
  3. Faith justifies because, in giving us faith, we are united to Christ our righteousness–not because it is obedient.

Awhile back Clark asked if he was an antinomian. He seems to have been treating this as a question about his theological formulations. No, Dr. Clark, it’s your life–the one you live in public by your bramble-firespreading mouth.

But it does make something clear. The Apostle Paul testified against his Pharisaical accusers:

But this I confess to you, that according to the Way, which they call a sect, I worship the God of our fathers, believing everything laid down by the Law and written in the Prophets, having a hope in God, which these men themselves accept, that there will be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust. So I always take pains to have a clear conscience toward both God and man.

Can it be any clearer what sort of life results when people don’t believe they will be held accountable before God at the Last Day? You don’t have to imagine it. We are all getting a live demonstration.

Why don’t I let my boys have fun?

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Reading this review, reminds me of some minor event that sort of became an epiphany for me. And I’ve done nothing about it.

It happened because Calvin had band. He had to play at the local private high school (I signed a paper about not revealing names on the internet–for security reasons that, I just realized, are probably related to what I’m discussing here).

So we drove there and then later drove back. He did pretty well for a kid who had held an instrument for less than four months.

It was driving out of the parking lot that I had the epiphany.

Background:

I used to live here–third house from the turn-off on the north side. This was 1979-1981. As you can see, my brother and I had an easy walk to Croton Elementary School. While still in elementary school, my younger brother and I used to walk to this skating rink (it might not be a rink anymore). In seventh grade I began biking here to go to school, a much longer journey (and, on the way, here is the back parking lot of the church in which I was seriously beaten by a classmate–which cascaded into a bunch of political issues that resulted in our family eventually relocating).

My point–the truth that suddenly smacked me up the head that night driving Calvin back home from such a short distance–is that this used to be my bike-riding/visiting-friends territory. I wasn’t especially outgoing. I was quite bookish. But I took these sorts of ventures for granted. There may have been all sorts of conditions I am forgetting about (“Call me as soon as you get to his house”), but the fact remains that I haven’t let my sons do anything remotely like this.

This simply can’t be healthy for them (except for the part where nothing happens to them while they are out). I’m raising them as homebodies. We’ve got a trampoline now and at least we’re on a single street where they are allowed outdoor (private street dead-end street). But that’s not much.

The fact that I work out of my home in front of a computer I think makes it even worse. It reinforces the need for electronic diversions away from the outdoors. I hate it but I don’t know what to do about it. Living the way I grew up seems like playing Russian roulette with their lives.

Pontifical Council for Social Communications?

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Wow!

I haven’t had a chance to look at this report yet, but I have to say it looks like the Vatican has its act together.

The Church’s interest in the Internet is a particular expression of her longstanding interest in the media of social communication. Seeing the media as an outcome of the historical scientific process by which humankind “advances further and further in the discovery of the resources and values contained in the whole of creation”, the Church often has declared her conviction that they are, in the words of the Second Vatican Council, “marvellous technical inventions” that already do much to meet human needs and may yet do even more.

Thus the Church has taken a fundamentally positive approach to the media. Even when condemning serious abuses, documents of this Pontifical Council for Social Communications have been at pains to make it clear that “a merely censorious attitude on the part of the Church…is neither sufficient nor appropriate”.

I want to read this and see if it provides some help for us, but at the moment I was simply overcome with curiosity about the Council itself. I messed with the URL and then followed a link to this page. The group dates its start from 1948 and the Pontifical Commission for the Study and Ecclesiastical Evaluation of Films on Religious or Moral Subjects.

One would have needed to be a clairvoyant to foresee the remarkable future of this minute Office, composed of a President and four Members and housed in a single room in the Palazzo San Carlo in Vatican City, in a wing still overflowing with the Information Office’s vast archives on the Second World War. In spite of its modest beginnings, this small Commission was to write a new page in the history of the Church’s pastoral and cultural activity.

I’m sure it did!

stikkit.gifOn a much less important note, since I listed some Web 2.0 apps I like, I feel compelled to mention one I have bookmarked that really intrigues me. Stikkit looks like it might come my bookmark site, address book, task list, calendar, and more.

Maybe.

If it works.

Here is Merlin Mann’s hint sheet.  See what you think.

John Calvin from his commentary on Psalm 25.8-11

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David is not here speaking of the character in which God acts towards mankind in general, but what his own children find him to be. We have already seen in Psalm 18:26, that he is stern and severe towards the obstinate and rebellious; and even though he act with kindness towards them, in mercifully exercising forbearance towards them notwithstanding their iniquity, yet we find, that so far from seeking their full enjoyment in him, and trusting to his promises, they have no sense of his goodness. Nay, as soon as any adversity befalls them, they either become passionate and fretful, accuse God of acting cruelly towards them, or else complain that he is deaf to their prayers; and when they enjoy prosperity, they despise and neglect him, and as much as they are able flee from his presence. David, therefore, in speaking of the mercy and faithfulness of God, justly describes them as a treasure peculiar to the godly; as if he had said, We have no reason to be afraid that God will deceive us if we persevere in his covenant. These words, covenant and testimony, are of the same import, unless that the second is added as an explanation of the first. They comprehend the whole doctrine of the law, by which God enters into covenant with his chosen people.

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Other precedents

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This invocation of J. C. Ryle is interesting. However, all you have to do is compare Ryle to John Calvin or Turretin and Pictet, or Zacharias Ursinus, and a much different story is immediately evident.

In my opinion, we should remain Confessional rather than innovating.

And, in fact, that is exactly what is happening. Judging from the fact that ministers who would side with Leithart are scattered throughout the PCA presbyteries, including the Southeast, it is pretty much a fait accompli. I’m not suggesting that the PCA is going to go in Leithart’s direction or that it needs to. I’m just saying that it is a fact that the PCA has ruled through her Presbyteries that this is within the doctrinal bounds of the Westminster standards.

Personally, I suspect an education at the Master’s College and Seminary and a continuing sympathy with “New Covenant theology” isn’t the best background for gaining an objective view of the matter.