For some time now I’ve been planning on blogging about a YouTube video, not because I have some burning desire to turn this site into an apologetics blog (if I only respond to atheism would I ever be recogizable as an apologetics blog? Isn’t apologetics a series of rants against other Christians for being compromised or for not engaging in the right apologetics methodology?), but because the video itself was so depressing. I don’t mean that the truth is depressing and only the brave can face the truth. I mean it was depressing in its utter contempt for a coherent message or argument.

But I haven’t had time.

However, I see Doug Wilson has begun responding to Sam Harris. And it begins by pointing out a similar incoherency.

But that, actually, was the surprising thing. You disapproved that kind of hateful behavior too. You used a number of words that clearly portrayed that disapproval — “hostile, “murderously,” “disturbed,” “hatred.” I could not get to your second page without encountering a cluster of indignant moral judgments, and I am genuinely curious as to what you could possibly offer as the basis for these judgments. Pick the nastiest letter you got from the nastiest Christian out there. As a pastor, I know what I would say to him about it. But what could you say to him? He is just doing his thing. Two hundred years from now, when both you and he have returned to the soil, what difference does it make? There is no judgment, no standard, no law that overarchees the two of you. When this nasty Christian dies, you don’t even have the satisfaction of knowing that he will finally discover the error of his ways. He will discover nothing of the kind. His eyes will close, and that will be that. The material universe will not give everyone thirty minutes after death to readjust their thoughts on the subject before they pass into final oblivion. So why, on your terms, should he have written you a nice letter? I think he should have, but then again, I’m the pastor guy.

In different ways, this same issue is going to come up again and again. You want Christians to quit behaving in certain ways. But why? You want them to write nice letters, and you want them to stop turning America into a big, dumb theocracy. But why? If there is no God, what could possibly be wrong with theocracies? They provide high entertainment value, and they give everybody involved in them a sense of dignity and high moral purpose. You get to wear ecclesiastical robes, march in impressive processions to burn intransigent people at the stake, you get to believe you are better than everybody else, and, at the top of the doctrinal heap, that God likes you. Further, the material universe doesn’t care about any of this foolishness, not even a little bit. So what’s wrong with having a little bit of fun at the expense of other bits of protoplasm? Hitler, Ronald Reagan, Pol Pot, Mother Teresa, Mao, Nancy Pelosi, Stalin, Ted Haggard, and the Grand Inquistor are all just part of a gaudy, and very temporary, show. Sometimes the Northern lights put on a show in the sky. Sometimes people put on a show on the ground. Then the sun goes out, and it turns out nobody cares.

One casual observation: I don’t think I’ve ever seen any other reaction from an atheist (bear in mind my experience is limited) who ever responded to the quesiton, no matter how gently put, of an objective basis for ethical judgments, without getting angry. In a way, I can sympathize since, at bottom, ethics has to be somehow immediately evident or else it simply doesn’t work. More later perhaps.

Hat Tip: Cult of Mac

Probably my proudest moment in seminary was when I got a Greek exegesis paper back from my professor with “Astute, but fanciful” written prominently in the margin in bright red ink.

I was reminded of this glorious moment while reading this review of my The Victory According to Mark: An Exposition of the Second Gospel (Publisher / Amazon), which contains the following:

Another key aspect of the commentary is the interest in OT background of the thought in the gospel. The importance and relevance of the OT in Mark is certain. However, I think Horne overplays this quite often. For example, his treatment of the cutting off of the ear of the High Priest’s servant is entitled, “The Circumcised Ear” (178). Horne says this wound “is significant” and suggests this is a sign to Israel, “a sign that the nation needs its ears opened that the people may no longer be servants, but have the status of full sons in the household” (178). This is rooted the piercing of the ear of slaves in the Old Testament. Frankly, without any further evidence, I find this fanciful. To be fair, this may be one of the most far fetched examples but it does illustrate a tendency.

I wish the reviewer had given an example of an OT connection I made that he had found credible and helpful. That might have helped me to develop some sort of argument that would be persuasive to him.

As it stands, I’ll just point out Mark had several options:

• leave out the incident all together
• not mention the victim was a bondservant
• not mention the victim’s relationship to the high priest
• not mention the part of his body that was wounded

Remember that the gospels (and almost all the Biblical histories) are frequently sparse on details. If they decide to include them, we need to ask why they do so.
Of course, asking why, doesn’t mean that we’ll automatically know the correct answer. If someone has another explanation for why we are given this story in the way it is written, I’m open to hearing it. And if there is an argument against my proposal, I’ll hear that too.

A couple of minor comments:

I actually disagree with Wright’s views on how exile works in the Gospels, and thought I had argued for an alternative view. On the other hand, something has to be said about exile when one reads Jesus as the fulfillment of Isaiah 40. It’s not in Wright but straight out of the text.

When mentioning my influences, and particularly the influences that come to view in my commentary on Mark, don’t forget Austin Farrar. He is at least as important as N. T. Wright.

From page to of an LA Times story:

Many of the Republican House members who were defeated were moderates who suffered as Bush dug in on Iraq and his party drifted to the right.”This election is the end of the Republican revolution. They became too narrow and too extreme and too rigid in every way,” said Matt Bennett, vice president of Third Way, a centrist Democratic group. “They lost sight of the fact that moderates and independents are the kingmakers of American politics.”

OK, I’d be the first to want to promote anti-war Republicans, and get the hawk-wing excised from our definition of “conservative.” (There was a time when getting involved in overseas wars was considered to be a progressive, liberal idea. I’m not arguing good or bad; just making an observation about how our definitions and associations for “right-wing” have dramatically changed.)

But leaving that aside, is this not some hardcore wishful thinking? If the republicans who lost their seats were disproportionately moderate, then the problem is not with the party “moving to the right.” The problem was the party had too many moderates.

I think the first alcoholic beverage I ever drank was as an illegal minor offered a sip of Budweiser in my friend Tom’s kitchen. I was young and naive so I didn’t know enough to be proud of the fact that I instantly gagged and spit it out on his mother’s cleaned dishes draining in the sink. After that, I don’t think I was ever tempted by illegal underage beer again, though I did spend an unfortunate year consuming illegal whiskey and probably took ten years out of my parents life.

Well, I gave that up before my senior year in high school and flew straight until graduation. Then I went to Houghton College where I mostly flew straight, though I did occasionally break down and have a drink which, while legal, was the breaking of the student pledge I signed. That fact bothered me enough that it didn’t happen often. The only real industrious drinking I did was the occasional gallon jug or three of cider I just happened to allow to sit out too long before drinking. (And even that could be dangerous. I distinctly remember one day my friend and neighbor’s room smelling like a brewery because his roomate’s fermentation experiment exploded on the top shelf. I walked in to see him bent over his partially dissassembled stereo with a hair drying trying to get rid of the moisture that had saturated its innards. Christian colleges are a lot more exciting than outsiders give them credit for.)

So the point here is that I didn’t get to make much progress as an alcohol connoisseur until after graduation. Whiskey and Vodka straight was not something I thought I should do, not wanting to die, and I didn’t really know anything about wine yet to even try it. Beer, disgusted me.

So that left wine coolers. Seagram’s golden (does that even exist anymore?) appealed to me a lot. And between Seagram’s and Bartles & Jaymes (which actually is closer to beer than most people realize) I could enjoy an adult beverage.

But either the marketing and product development changed, or I just gradually woke up to the fact, so that I started feeling like my masculinity was at stake. All the wine coolers seemed more and more fruity and fru-fru. What was a self-respecting male who wanted his heart made glad supposed to do.

I did discover and start enjoying wine (usually out of a box with a spigot–only quality for me, baby) at this point, but it was almost always White Zin, which is pretty much the same sort of pro-estrogen drink as a wine cooler.

My wife and I tried Zima for awhile, but eventually we faced up to the fact that this was just albino frufruness.

But then the beers began improving. I think this may go back to Pete’s Wicked Ale (Pete’s a hero to me because he may have saved beer by being willing to fight with the California bureaucracy for his brewery–see Joel Miller’s Size Matters). Foreign dark beers for special splurging and a general routine of Honey Brown or Michelob’s Amber Bach became my drinking buddy.

(Our wines got darker–Merlots or Cabernet Sauvignons–but I still have no discrimination. To this day the way I choose a wine is to go into the grocery store and scan the shelves until I find the thing that sells for less than four bucks.)

So that has been the way of it. The only thing that has varied is the states relationship to fundamentalist pressure. MO and WA are great places to shop. Tennessee wants you to buy wine in places without sealed floors and with bright neon signs saying “PLEASE COME HOLD US UP.” Oklahoma didn’t let you bring your children with you to buy wine. Our only salvation was that the stores nearest us were in strip malls where we could pull up to three feet from the front door. “Be right back kids.”

(Probably the most gruesome aspect of OK’s system is that they don’t allow liquor (and wine) stores to open on election day–robbing us of the comfort we need.)

Oddly, though, I haven’t bought beer in a while. Some pastor’s wife told my wife about Mike’s Hard Lemonade. And I’m hooked. I don’t know if I’ve given up on ever really being a real man, or not. One could claim this is a regression to the frufru. But I don’t care. I really like it.

The only problem is the expense. I’m trying the Aldi version right now.

This post was brought to you (and powered by) hard lemonade.

I’ve mentioned in the del.icio.us links in the side bar the great pastoral material regarding Ted Haggard at the Ref21 blog. Well, it keeps getting better.

I fear that it [claiming we are all “just like Ted”] poorly presents the biblical description of normative Christianity. Biblically, we are not supposed to be “just like Ted.” The biblical rule is that the fornicator has no place in the Kingdom of God. Paul writes, “You may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous ( that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God” (Eph. 5:5). So we should all look into our hearts and see the sources of Ted’s sins, but if we look into our hearts and see the actual sins that Ted has admitted, you are in deep trouble. In this respect, if you are “just like Ted,” then you should question your salvation. Let’s not kid ourselves, Ted Haggard did not “slip” into this situation overnight. As he has indicated, it resulted from a long-term pattern of deceipt and moral corruption. This does not absolutely mean that he is not saved — of that, I certainly am not his judge. But according to the Bible, people who live like this normally are not. (But what about David after his tryst with Bathsheba? The answer is that David’s salvation truly tottered on a knife-edge, at least from a human perspective. Read Ps. 51 carefully! Without Psalm 51, we would have little basis for considering David a regenerate man. Moreover, he never fully recovered from the consequences of his sin with Bathsheba, and neither did his kingdom.)

By the way, if you read the post, you will see I am taking one point in a very even-handed presentation which gives a lot of pros and cons. It is a good and judicious post. Nevertheless, I hope Pastor Phillips will be careful lest he join company with Calvin in having a presbytery write an appeal against him. Claiming that salvation can be viewed from different “perspectives” has gotten some people in a lot of trouble.

That irony aside, I repeat that the post is well worth reading.

the price of gas shoots back up after today?

By the way, wordpress.com users, is there any way to insert a flickr panel in the sidebar on the free account?

Oh, and here are the only cats my allergies will allow in the house.

…statistically speaking, I’d probably be a Democrat.

the party of the rich, contra popular opinion, is not the Republican Party. The super-rich love the Democrats. Think about how Democrats fund their campaigns. 17 of the 25 top donors to outside advocacy groups in the U.S. are putting their big bucks behind the Democrats. Think names like George Soros and Peter Lewis and you get my drift. And rich liberals run for office often and when they do they spend a lot of money to get elected. (Think Ned Lamont in Connecticut in today’s election.) Of the five U. S. senators worth more than $25 million, four are Democrats.

And if I were a Democrat, I would really push campaign reform. It would be an easy moralistic way to hamper any opposition who consists of people who have to help each other out if they want to win elections.

PS.  Like all statistical statements, this is going to totally irrelevant to the actual lives of any number of Democrats.  My real point here is that we should be hugely suspicious of campaign reform.  Other than that, join any political party you want.  I don’t care much one way or another beyond a couple of rather important issues (for example: killing babies with legal impunity).

At first I used Del.icio.us, but, Richard is right, this must be stored for safe keeping. You should store it too.

Presbytery Memorial to GA
TO: The 34th General Assembly of the PCA
FROM: Central Revivalista Presbytery

Whereas it is the obligation of teaching elders to uphold in their teaching the system of doctrine taught in the Westminster Standards (BCO 2 1-5.2), and;

Whereas presbyteries are charged “to condemn erroneous opinions which injure the purity or peace of the Church” (BCO 13-9.f), and:

Whereas TE Jean Calvin, senior minister of St. Peter’s Reformed Church in Geneva, has persisted in teaching and publishing doctrines in flagrant contradiction to our Standards, to wit:

1) TE Calvin publicly teaches a doctrine of election in flagrant contradiction to our Standards. Whereas the Confession teaches that “God hath appointed the elect unto glory” (WCF III.6), TE Calvin states that the elect are appointed to a conditional relationship which they can lose through unbelief. He writes: “Now then it is of God’s free election that we have his Word purely preached unto us and that we have his Gospel and Sacraments. And therein we have reason to confess that he has shown himself generous to us…So then, when the Gospel is preached in a place and it has the warrants that God gives men salvation – as when we have Baptism and the Lord’s Holy Supper ministered uncorruptly – we may say it is an election of God. But yet for all that, in the meantime he holds to himself those he so wishes in order that people should not trust the outward signs except by faith and obedience, knowing that although we have been chosen to be of the Body of the Church, yet if we do not make that election to our profit, God can well enough cut us off again and reserve a final number to himself.” (Sermons on Deuteronomy, Sermon 53, Saturday, 3 August 1555).

2) TE Calvin teaches a doctrine of the church in flagrant contradiction to that of our Standards, in that he denies the distinction between the visible and the invisible church. The Confession states that “The catholic or universal Church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect,” whereas “The visible Church… consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion, and their children” (WCF XXV. 1-2). The sum of TE Calvin’s erroneous view is to teach that all members of the church – without distinction to their actual faith and/or regeneration – partake of the saving benefits of Christ. Whereas the Standards state that the visible church enjoys “the ordinary means of salvation and offers of grace by Christ,” they grant only to the invisible church that they “enjoy union and communion with [Christ]” (WLC 62-65). As such, TE Calvin denies that there is any distinction between believing and unbelieving members of the visible church, insisting that all baptized church members enjoy the benefits of union with Christ, only conditionally. See his Commentaries, Sermons, Treatises, and Institutes, including the following statements:

“Whom will God bring charges against? His own people! If it were merely a matter of God prosecuting pagans and idolaters alone, we would have reason to say, ‘This should not bother us in the least. We are the people of God. He has chosen and elected us. We are in His safekeeping. We have nothing to fear when He brings His enemies to trial.’ Yes indeed, that is certainly what we would say. But when it is a matter of God bringing His own people to trial, this should make our hair stand on end. No men are so glorious that they are exempt from God’s judgment. We are the people of God, which is the greatest honor that can be bestowed on men – yet we are not excused from God’s punishment. He will not fail to prosecute us whenever we rebel against Him…” (sermon on Micah).

“Though Christ may be denied in various ways, yet Peter, I think, refers here to what is expressed by Jude, that is when the grace of God is turned into lasciviousness; for Christ redeemed us, that He might have a people separated from all the pollutions of the world, and devoted to holiness and innocency. They, then, who throw off the bridle and give themselves up to all kinds of licentiousness, are not unjustly said to deny Christ by whom they have been redeemed.” (comment on 2 Peter 2:1-3).

“…it is not enough that God should choose any people for Himself, except the people themselves persevere in the obedience of faith; for this is the spiritual chastity which the Lord requires from all His people. But when is a wife, whom God has bound to Himself by a sacred marriage, said to become a wanton? When she falls away…from a pure and sound faith. Then it follows that the marriage between God and men so long endures as they who have been adopted continue in pure faith…” (comment on Hosea 2:4-5)

“Yet, the reprobate [within the church] are justly said to believe that God is merciful toward them, for they receive the gift of reconciliation…” (Institutes 3.2.11)

“The mystery is that souls perish who are bought by the blood of Christ” (sermon on 2 Timothy)

Note that Calvin here directly contradicts WLC 69, which ascribes these blessings only to the elect and denies them to the visible church.

3) TE Calvin’s teaching directly contradicts our doctrine of perseverance. The Confession teaches that “They, whom God hath accepted in His Beloved, effectually called, and sanctified by His Spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere therein to the end, and be eternally saved” (WCF XVI.1). But TE Calvin teaches the opposite. See the above quotes regarding the reprobate, who according to Calvin were at one time reconciled, adopted, and redeemed. Calvin adds that all this “refers to a total defection or falling away from the Gospel, when a sinner offends God, not in some one thing, but entirely renounces His grace…For he falls away who forsakes the Word of God, who extinguishes its light, who deprives himself of the taste of the heavenly gift, who relinquishes the participation of the Spirit. Now this is wholly to renounce God…He calls it the ‘participation’ of the Spirit, for He it is who distributes to everyone as He will all the light and knowledge which he can have, for without Him no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’… ” (comment on Hebrews 6). In Calvin’s teaching, all church members share all the benefits of union with Christ, but only provisionally. He writes, “Thus they who are led away by the allurements of this world alienate themselves from God and sell their own salvation that they may feed on the morsels of this world, without thinking that they lose anything, nay, how they flatter and applaud themselves, as though they were extremely happy. When too late their eyes are opened, so that being warned by the sight of their own wickedness, they become sensible to the loss of which they made no account.” (comment on Hebrews 12).

4) TE Calvin’s teaching directly contradicts our doctrine of assurance. The Confession teaches that we may have a certain assurance of salvation based on inward evidences of faith and salvation (WCF XVI.1-2). Calvin directly contradicts this teaching, stating instead that “to confirm the certainty of our salvation…can only worry us with a miserable distress and perturbation” (Instruction in Faith 37) and “we must not try to decide what is God’s will by prying into His secret counsel, when He has made it plain to us by external signs” (comment on 1 Timothy 2) and “Whenever there is any question of forgiveness of sins, we must flee to Baptism and from it seek a confirmation of forgiveness. For as God reconciles us to himself by the daily promises of the Gospel, so the belief and certainty of this reconciliation, which is daily repeated even to the end of life, he seals to us by Baptism” (Antidote to the Council of Trent). Calvin elsewhere adds, “Surely there is no one who is not sunken in infinite filth! Let even the most perfect man descend into his conscience and call his deed to account, what then will be the outcome for him? Will he sweetly rest as if all things were well composed between him and God and not, rather be torn by dire torments, since if he be judged by words, he will feel grounds for condemnation within himself? The conscience, if it looks to God, must either have sure peace with his judgement or be besieged by the terrors of hell. Therefore we profit nothing in discussing righteousness unless we establish a righteousness so steadfast that it can support our souls in the judgement of God.” (Institutes 3.13.13) But the question of personal righteousness is one the Confession views as pastorally helpful and productive of assurance, not despair.

5) TE Calvin teaches a doctrine of baptism strikingly different from that of Standards. Calvin states that “So then we must ever come to this point, that the Sacraments are effectual and that they are not trifling signs that vanish away in the air, but that the truth is always matched with them, because God who is faithful shows that he has not ordained anything in vain. And that is the reason why in Baptism we truly receive the forgiveness of sins, we are washed and cleansed with the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are renewed by the operation of his Holy Spirit. And how so? Does a little water have such power when it is cast upon the head of a child? No. But because it is the will of our Lord Jesus Christ that the water should be a visible sign of his blood and of the Holy Spirit. Therefore baptism has that power and whatsoever is there set forth to the eye is forthwith accomplished in very deed. ” (sermon on Deuteronomy, Sermon 200, Wednesday, 15 July 1556). Moreover, “So then, when the Gospel is preached in a place and it has the warrants that God gives men salvation -as when we have Baptism and the Lord’s Holy Supper ministered uncorruptly – we may say it is an election of God…Do we have his Word? It is free grace to us, where he has bound us to himself. Do we have his sacraments? They are the badges of his fatherly election. We have not deserved these things…” (Sermons on Deuteronomy, Sermon 53, Saturday, 3 August 1555).

But, while the Confession describes baptism as a sign and seal of Christ’s blessings – including regeneration (WCF XXVI. 1) – the Standards do not equate all baptized persons with the elect, nor do they equate baptism with regeneration. Calvin teaches that

“the Lord, without fixing the day, yet declares that he is pleased to receive infants into his covenant with a solemn rite, what more do we require?” (Institutes 4.16.4)…

“We assert that the whole guilt of sin is taken away in baptism, so that the remains of sin still existing are not imputed. That this may be more clear, let my readers call to mind that there is a twofold grace in baptism, for therein both remission of sins and regeneration are offered to us. We teach that full remission is made, but that regeneration is only begun and goes on making progress during the whole of life. Accordingly, sin truly remains in us, and is not instantly in one day extinguished by baptism, but as the guilt is effaced it is null in regard to imputation. Nothing is plainer than this doctrine.” (Antidote to the Council of Trent)…

and

“If we do not profit from the good things God has given us, He will not spare us, especially since He has shed more praiseworthy grace upon us than He did upon the people of Israel: He was not merely content to choose us as His people, He gave us his Son as a sure and certain sign of the great love He bears us. Furthermore, He has seen to it that the Devil and all the armed forces of Hell can do nothing against us, as He has ransomed us by the death and passion of His Son. Since the time He began our salvation, He has sustained us daily by His grace; so we can be sure He will continue to multiply His grace upon, provided that we praise the mercy He has shown us and provided that we are truly repentant and beg His pardon for our sins…” (sermon on Micah).

The doctrine found in these representative statements from TE Calvin’s teaching can be none other than that to be baptized is to have all the eternal blessings of salvation and, by inference, he teaches that all persons baptized in water must be eternally saved, unless they apostatize. This is made explicit as TE Calvin applies all the blessings noted in the Epistle to the Hebrew to those who receive water baptism, including the salvific blessings of the ranson and passion of Christ given to us, reaching all the way back to election from before creation to final salvation at the end of history. Thus, in contrast to the Confession’s teaching that water baptism is a sign and seal of these salvific blessings, Calvin plainly teaches that water baptism grants actual possession of these salvific blessings.

Whereas the Geneva Presbytery has exonerated and approved the teaching of TE Calvin as “faithful to the confessional standards of the PCA”, contrary to their obligation to uphold the Westminster Standards, and;

Whereas the Geneva Presbytery’s exoneration of TE Calvin contradicts its own published declarations regarding the acceptable boundaries of teaching, to wit:

1) The Geneva Presbytery has declared that “the Confession itself uses the term ‘elect’ to speak of only those who have been unchangeably chosen by God for eternal salvation… The Confessional understanding of election does not allow for the view that a person can be ‘elect’ and, later, ‘unelect’” (Geneva Presbytery Ad Hoc Committee on Calvinian Theology Final Report and Recommendations, adopted July 2005). But Calvin teaches the very doctrine that the Geneva Presbytery has forbidden.

2) In its teaching on apostasy, the Geneva Presbytery officially requires teaching on the visible/invisible church and on perseverance that TE Calvin plainly contradicts. According to the Geneva Presbytery, one must acknowledge “the reality of apostasy, that a person can be a member of the visible church and fall away and thus loose the real benefits of belonging to God’s people, the real loss of external Covenant blessings claimed through being a member of the visible church through baptism.”

3) The Geneva Presbytery states that the Confession “does not accommodate a view that an individual can have a vital, internalized relationship with the Lord and lose it.” But this is TE Calvin’s explicit teaching.

4) The Geneva Presbytery admits that TE Calvin’s teaching on baptism has “led to confusion,” and has exhorted him “to clarify/reformulate his teachings to define them more precisely,” but it has specified no remedy to the harm – potential or real – produced by TE Calvin’s published teaching.

Whereas a failure to uphold the doctrines of Scripture as summarized in our Standards threatens the purity and peace of the Church;

Therefore, be it resolved that the Central Revivalista Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in America sends this memorial to the Standing Judicial Commission of the Presbyterian Church in America to assume jurisdiction over the investigation of TE Jean Calvin’s teaching, (BCO 34-1 & SJC Manual 18), in order to preserve the PCA’s commitment to sound doctrine, protect our reputation for faithfulness to God’s Word, and secure peace within our denomination.

Additionally, in the event that the Standing Judicial Committee declines to accept original jurisdiction over the investigation of TE Jean Calvin’s teaching, then the Central Revivalista Presbytery hereby petitions the Standing Judicial Commission to cite Geneva Presbytery to appear per BCO 40-5 and SJC Manual 16.

Approved this day, January 28, 2006 at the 104th Stated Meeting of Central Revivalista Presbytery.

Respectfully submitted,

TE Gilbert Tennant IX
Clerk of Presbytery