Category Archives: offsite

It Is Time For Christians To Recognize The Evil Empire – Kuyperian Commentary

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There are lots of reasons to doubt Putin’s character. It is easy for me to wish death upon him just for the Smolensk Crash, apart from all his other alleged sins or crimes. But it is naive to think that a good person could gain the reins of power in almost any current government, not least that of the United States of America.

As a public figure, Putin is leading Christian resistance to the United State’s ruling class’ hard push for sexual perversity–for a pagan planet. If he improves Russia’s horrible abortion ethic, and does so as part of a general Eastern European revival of a pro-life practice, then speculations about his personal character are beside the point. Russia becomes a new Constantinople working to hold back the hordes of infidels howling to conquer them.

There may be good reason to expect Christendom to revive south of the equator. Perhaps Russia’s prominence will be temporary. But even so, I think that temporary protection would be important and helpful.

American Evangelicals need to pray for it. With Christianity spreading in China, the whole world may change in ways we can’t easily envision. Think of China and Russia giving aid and support to Kenya in resisting Obama’s culture war.

So stop calling Russia Red. Practice a new phrase: Holy Russia.

And whether or not that happens, be sure of one thing. The United States is the Evil Empire. We Christians are the enslaved masses that Sam and Frodo saw as they approached the Dark Tower. Our taxes (which, lest anyone misunderstand me, God says we should pay) are supporting the Eye.

We live in Mordor.

read the entire piece: It Is Time For Christians To Recognize The Evil Empire – Kuyperian Commentary.

What Happened at Christmas by Don Garlington

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By and large people at the time of the incarnation were poor, bone-crushingly poor. There was no real middle class in the sense that we know the middle class. You were either very rich or very poor, there was no real buffer zone in between the two. The rich got richer and the poor got poorer, no doubt about it. People worked very hard for relatively little. There was little or no medical care, and very little entertainment, at least in terms of the way that we would evaluate entertainment. Then on top of that, there was exploitation by the rich. Exploitation in the sense that a rich person could lay hold of your property if you had any, and take it for his own. The Roman government at that time had instituted a policy whereby if they wanted someone’s land, they would raise the taxes so high on that land that the landowner had no choice but to sell to the government. He would then become a sharecropper on his own property. Only the very rich avoided that kind of exploitation. So it was a time when life was hard. It was a time when people were in great need, when they were looking for hope, they were looking for consolation. The Jewish nation was looking in particular to the promise which God had made, that one day he would send a redeemer and a deliverer.

read the rest: What Happened at Christmas: Dr. Don Garlington.

Peter Leithart 2007 on justification by faith & assurance

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We are right before God because Jesus has obeyed perfectly, offered Himself on the cross, and received the verdict of righteousness in the resurrection, a verdict in which we are included by union with the Risen Christ. We come to share in this verdict by faith.

But a question arises: Where do we ever hear this verdict? How is it communicated to us? We need to hear the verdict. What good is a verdict that’s never declared to us?

We could say: I hear it in my heart. But how do I know that what I hear in my heart is God’s verdict or my own self-justification?

We could say: In the preaching of the Word. Correct. But how do I know the promise delivered in the preaching of the Word is addressed to me, individually and personally?

We could say: I hear God declare me righteous when I hear His minister pronounce my sins forgiven in worship. Correct. But again that is a general declaration of forgiveness. I hear it, so to that extent, it is personally directed at me. But it doesn’t have my name attached.

Here’s one of the points where baptism links up with justification. Baptism is not the “ground” of justification; the ground is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the results of which we share in our union with Him. Baptism is the declaration of the verdict, to me personally, with my name attached.

In baptism, God promises to forgive me my sins for Jesus’ sake. In baptism, He communicates His verdict to me, just as truly as He communicates it in preaching, but in baptism he more obviously communicates it to me. In baptism, He says that I am included in Christ, and in the verdict that He passed on Jesus. This is what it means for baptism to join us to Christ’s death and resurrection, since the resurrection is the Father’s verdict over the Son through the Spirit (Rom 4:25; 6:1-7).

I receive what my baptism declares only by faith. If I don’t believe what God says about me in baptism, then I don’t receive the verdict, for I make Him a liar.

Read the rest: Leithart.com | Justification by faith.

Word and Feast

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“The word without the bread is not enough to open our eyes to the living, risen Jesus. The Word without bread is detached from real life; the bread without the Word turns into a magic act. But when the scriptures are taught and the bread is broken, then Jesus can be known.”–Peter Leithart, The Four

via Resurrectio et Vita.

Why “security” is a hoax

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The TSA has been a pointless, useless, unconstitutional organization from its very inception. Preventing another 9/11 required two things, and we’ve already done them both: strengthen cockpit doors so hijackers can’t force their way in, and let passengers know the old conventional wisdom “During a hijacking, the best course of action is to be quiet and do what the hijackers tell you” is wrong.

Everything else since then has been pointless: the bans on tweezers and similar grooming items, the restrictions on toiletries, all these and more have done nothing but erode the fourth amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure. Back in September 2006 I said of the TSA: “these stupid rules aren’t meant to make us safer, but only train us in habits of evermore mindless obedience.”

via Ravings of a Feral Genius: Fiddle About With Uncle Ernie Sam.

The rest of the post is more awesome, but I wanted to relate this observation which seems completely obvious to me.

Abortion diminishes

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While he can feel sympathy for the frightened young girl, Vanauken says, now “I know Marion and her children, too.” Had Davy undergone an abortion, Marion and her “three bright and beloved children, would never have existed at all.”

This is especially poignant in light of the fact that Davy and Vanauken had no children of their own. If Davy had aborted Marion, there would now be no loving woman who calls Vanauken “father,” nor her three children.

“I glimpse,” Vanauken writes, “what [John] Donne meant in saying that any man’s death diminished him. I should be diminished if half a century ago Davy had clutched at the straw of abortion. And all the folk who have touched or shall touch the lives of Marion and her children and their children-to-be would be diminished.”

Read the rest: The Little Lost Marion.

The Vindication of Constantine | Christianity Today

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Many evangelicals view the fourth-century conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine as an unfortunate chapter in church history, one that sabotaged the purity of the early church and ushered in the corrupt Middle Ages. Peter J. Leithart believes this version of church history is a myth. In Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (IVP Academic), Leithart shows that the early church was not as united as we think, nor was Constantine the villain many have made him out to be.

Along the way, Leithart teases out contemporary implications regarding the church’s role in the world, implications that distance him from scholars like John Howard Yoder. Defending Constantine could have been called Dismantling Yoder, for although Leithart’s primary purpose is to vindicate Constantine, he devotes significant effort to pointing out the cracks in Yoder’s Anabaptist perspective on Christendom.

Read the rest: The Vindication of Constantine | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction.

I think this actually describes the Reformed presence on the Web from 1995 to 2010

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The original idea of the site was to gather a diverse group of writers and guest contributors who would then write about the “intersection of theology and life”. This could find its expression in art, poetry, prose, meditation, short fiction, or more typical non-fiction theological fare. But in the end, I wanted it to be the expression of hearts whose affections had been inflamed by the deeper truths of who God is.

And I think we greatly succeeded in this. The vast majority of writings on the site certainly constituted this calibre of expression. It was exciting. But then people, due to life and such, stopped writing. Eventually, in my desperation to get somebody–anybody–to consistently write, I let the quality of the posts at times slip. The site’s readership, for one reason another (probably because it had the word “Reform” in it) began to appeal and primarily lead towards the … groupies and wanna-be’s; the “TR’s” as we would call them at my seminary (the “Totally Reformed!”). It just wasn’t fun and fruitful anymore when the hyper-Calvinistic theology police came to town, and it all went downhill from there, until no one was writing anything, and the only other person that had written as much as I had on the site deleted all of her stuff off the site, on the off-chance that someone would find her name attached to it someday.

via Reform & Revive: officially shutting down | the long way home.

[Note: I edited out a couple of specific names because they have nothing to do with why this description appealed to me. In my experience, the “wanna-be’s” of people whom I respect are still destructive. It is not the teacher’s fault as far as I can tell. In any case, I have no experience with such specific people and they are not really the issue of why I thought it was worth quoting this description.]

Doug Wilson on casting off in order to press onward

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This is why our time of confession ought not to be about a list of items, kept or broken. We are in the process of becoming a certain kind of person. Everything we confess is that which interfered with that process. If it did not interfere with it, then there is nothing to confess. But the rules are not floating above our heads, independently autonomous. No, God’s rules are simply a description of what He is like, and what we would like to become like.

The new covenant is all about two things—forgiveness of sin, and the internalization of the law. When you are forgiven, you can deal with sin in your life, and the gospel does what the gospel of grace always does—changes you. When you are forgiven, the law of God is internalized, meaning that you are becoming a walking incarnation of God’s words.

Read the whole post: Becoming a Certain Kind of Person.

“Study hard and floss every night, honey—and for heaven’s sake, get laid!”

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But it’s easy for parents to slip into denial. We wouldn’t dream of dropping our daughters off at college and saying: “Study hard and floss every night, honey—and for heaven’s sake, get laid!” But that’s essentially what we’re saying by allowing them to dress the way they do while they’re still living under our own roofs.

via Why Do We Let Girls Dress Like That? – WSJ.com.