Monthly Archives: August 2009

Blogging revisions to the Institutes and the Reformed heritage

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Here:

Our sins are called ‘debts’ because they leave us accountable to God, and freedom from them can only come by way of forgiveness. Thus ‘in the first section of the prayer the highest perfection is set before us, but in the latter our weakness’. Those who truly aspire to the glory of God in all things are most aware of their own needs. The addition of the words ‘as we forgive our debtors’ is not meant to make our receiving forgiveness conditional on our granting it, but to show the freeness and wonder of God’s grace. If we can willingly forgive others, how much more does God freely forgive us? As Calvin comments on Matthew 6:12: ‘if the Spirit of God reigns in our hearts, every description of ill-will and revenge ought to be banished’.

Here is the apparently unbloggable Calvin:

Wherefore, we are not to ask the forgiveness of our sins from God, unless we forgive the offenses of all who are or have been injurious to us. If we retain any hatred in our minds, if we meditate revenge, and devise the means of hurting; nay, if we do not return to a good understanding with our enemies, perform every kind of friendly office, and endeavour to effect a reconciliation with them, we by this petition beseech God not to grant us forgiveness. For we ask him to do to us as we do to others. This is the same as asking him not to do unless we do also. What, then, do such persons obtain by this petition but a heavier judgment?

Modern Presbyterianism is about as good at remembering Calvin as a politician is at remembering his campaign promises.

See here for the Reformed understanding of conditions in our relationship with God.

5 observations on G. Vos v. Neo-Reformed

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So I don’t know what to make of Geerhardus Vos. I’m a late-comer to him, to be sure, but I recently read his “Doctrine of the Covenant in Reformed History,” which appears in the collection Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation. I have a few interesting observations of his work, and perhaps I can go in more detail in subsequent posts.

1st) Vos is largely responding to the critics of “Covenant Theology” or “Federalism,” but also those who say that it represents a novelity in the Reformed tradition. Vos does this in a rather sophisticated way, however, since he freely admits that Calvin was not a covenant theologian. Vos also admits the Lutherans never latched on to this sytem, and he puts some distance between the Lutherans and Reformed.

2)…

Read the rest of the list at Vos! « Wedgewords.

Here is real hope: blue-state meltdown

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On the surface this should be the moment the Blue Man basks in glory. The most urbane president since John Kennedy sits in the White House. A San Francisco liberal runs the House of Representatives while the key committees are controlled by representatives of Boston, Manhattan, Beverly Hills, and the Bay Area—bastions of the gentry.

Despite his famous no-blue-states-no-red-states-just-the-United-States statement, more than 90 percent of the top 300 administration officials come from states carried last year by President Obama. The inner cabinet—the key officials—hail almost entirely from a handful of cities, starting with Chicago but also including New York, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco area.

This administration shares all the basic prejudices of the Blue Man including his instinctive distaste for “sprawl,” cars, and factories. In contrast, policy is tilting to favor all the basic blue-state economic food groups—public employees, university researchers, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Wall Street, and the major urban land interests.

Yet despite all this, the blue states appear to be continuing their decades-long meltdown. “Hope” may still sell among media pundits and café society, but the bad economy, increasingly now Obama’s, is causing serious pain to millions of ordinary people who happen to live in the left-leaning part of America.

Read the rest at The Blue-State Meltdown and the Collapse of the Chicago Model — The American, A Magazine of Ideas.

Food: The Rebuttal

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I’m so tired of people who wouldn’t visit a doctor who used a stethoscope instead of an MRI demanding that farmers like me use 1930s technology to raise food. Farming has always been messy and painful, and bloody and dirty. It still is.

But now we have to listen to self-appointed experts on airplanes frightening their seatmates about the profession I have practiced for more than 30 years. I’d had enough. I turned around and politely told the lecturer that he ought not believe everything he reads. He quieted and asked me what kind of farming I do. I told him, and when he asked if I used organic farming, I said no, and left it at that. I didn’t answer with the first thought that came to mind, which is simply this: I deal in the real world, not superstitions, and unless the consumer absolutely forces my hand, I am about as likely to adopt organic methods as the Wall Street Journal is to publish their next edition by setting the type by hand.

He was a businessman, and I’m sure spends his days with spreadsheets, projections, and marketing studies. He hasn’t used a slide rule in his career and wouldn’t make projections with tea leaves or soothsayers. He does not blame witchcraft for a bad quarter, or expect the factory that makes his product to use steam power instead of electricity, or horses and wagons to deliver his products instead of trucks and trains. But he expects me to farm like my grandfather, and not incidentally, I suppose, to live like him as well. He thinks farmers are too stupid to farm sustainably, too cruel to treat their animals well, and too careless to worry about their communities, their health, and their families. I would not presume to criticize his car, or the size of his house, or the way he runs his business. But he is an expert about me, on the strength of one book, and is sharing that expertise with captive audiences every time he gets the chance. Enough, enough, enough.

Read the rest at The Omnivore’s Delusion: Against the Agri-intellectuals — The American, A Magazine of Ideas.

Plagiarizing myself: Election as an Historical Act

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I somehow lost my RSS subscription to the Auburn Avenue blog and am just seeing some gems I have missed.  For example, here is a great post on “Election according to Peter” that deals with First Peter 1.1-2, and quotes some Reformed sources I had never read.

Go read the blog entry and then read comments I wrote for a paper in seminary in 1996.  I quote the important part after the jump:

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