My post below has prompted a reaction.

I’ll let Kevin speak for himself but make a couple of points about what is said of my own words:

Oh my. So invocation of the saints and the veneration of images, practices long, long practiced by both the Eastern and Western Churches, are condemned as necromancy. The Angelus just rang at the Catholic Church next door. I stopped my typing and prayed the Hail Mary three times. Was I engaging in necromancy? Of course not. What a silly suggestion. I was participating in the prayers and intercessions of the communion of saints. Catholic Christians have always known the difference between the invocation of the saints and necromancy. Mr. Horne appears to be stuck back in a time before the incarnation and resurrection of the Son of God and his Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit had occurred. Like the iconoclasts of the seventh and eighth centuries, who did not see how the incarnation of the Son of God necessitated a reinterpretation of the second commandment for Christians, Horne does not see our baptismal incorporation into the triune life of God through the sacred humanity of Christ Jesus has affected the life of prayer for the people of the New Covenant. In Christ we share in the wondrous mystery of communion with the saints and all the faithful departed. We are upheld by the prayers of the saints and are bidden by the Church to invite their intercessions. None of this was possible before the death and resurrection of Christ but is wondrously possible now in the Holy Spirit.

OK, the writer never engaged in necromancy and Bill Clinton never had sex with Monica Lewinsky. God prohibits contacting the dead. If this was retracted at some point, we would expect to see some major sparks flying over this. There are tens of thousands in Judea, we are told in Acts, who remained loyal to the Law as Christians. This caused some huge arguments about circumcision and diet. But we are supposed to believe that people began praying to the dead and it never provoked a ripple of concern?

When Moses constructed the Tabernacle and later Solomon the Temple the Spirit as fire fell upon the altar so that the priests had to retreat. At Pentecost, rather than falling on things, the fire fell on people as living sacrifices and living stones in the Temple of God. From this huge difference we are expected to learn that it is now OK to to venerate objects and talk to dead people? Venerate the living.

If you have to stay RC, you can still use this, OK? If you ever get to meet the Pope kiss his hand rather than his ring.

Iconoclast? I have three bona fide Eastern Orthodox icons on the wall not ten feet away from where I sit. The only thing is that I’m never on my knees in front of them except when I am searching for one of the remote controls (which raises uncomfortable questions about whether or not there is an iconostasis in the living room that my family “adores.”) I think the “iconoclast” label is being stretched rather widely, especially in a piece that complains about imprecision.

Of course, there can be no argument. The writer claims to represent the group that is always right by virtue of holding their own opinions. If they say it isn’t necromancy then, by definition, it is sin to say otherwise. I make no claims for hoping to persuade the writer of anything. I can’t cure autism. I’m writing for people who aren’t sick yet, who can still hear the living.

This is confusing, and insulting, and it’s difficult to see a proper response. That it is possible to invoke the saints and venerate images and not fall into gnosticism is evidenced by the long history of the Church. These are completely different issues. The grounding of both communions in the incarnation and sacraments is solid protection against the retreat into gnostic interiority. As to whether Protestantism is a superior protection against gnosticism, I refer the reader to Philip Lee’s Against the Protestant Gnostics.

Good book. But no one in the Church is a gnostic or else he wouldn’t be a professing Christian. It is still possible to find gnostic tendencies in the Church. My point is that Protestants for all their faults (which Lee is right to point out) have the resources to more easily overcome this. My assumption is that gnostic tendencies affect the entire church East and West and the question is how to root them out.

I didn’t take time to argue about how gnosticism affects the RC communion other than the obvious ways I critique on other grounds (which the writer simply states can have nothing to do with gnostic impulses). So I can see why this was difficult to respond to. Since I completely share in the incarnation and the sacraments (and other practices which I might not want to technically call “sacraments” but still see as real means of grace and gracious gifts) we can just stipulate that there is no real gnosticism here.

Need I point out that Zwingli, Luther, and Calvin, as well as other reformers, believed in the perpetual virginity of Mary. As far as the tendency of many Christians in the past to associate sexual intercourse with sin, I certainly agree that this was unfortunate. It’s a tragedy the Church Fathers did not listen to and learn from the rabbis—one of the evil consequences of the first great schism, the schism between Church and synagogue. In any case, contemporary Catholicism certainly cannot be accused today of demeaning sexual intercourse or identifying it as evil. Mr. Horne should carefully read the reflections of the celibate John Paul II on the sacredness of the nuptial union.

Again, sort of had in mind a reader different from my critic–one who would recognize Benedict Pictet as a late Protestant Scholastic. If I’m stipulating that he was at least open to the perpetual virginity of Mary I’m stipulating that the Reformers also held to it at least as strongly and probably more so. You don’t need to point out anything about Luther or Calvin or Zwingli (can anyone be surprised about Zwingli?) except to the extent that I used in-house sorts of references that went past you. So thank you for making my intended meaning clear, which is: Luther and Calvin and Zwingli and Pictet were in error on this point.

Whatever spin (and this may involve nothing but solid truths) can now be put in celibacy, the historical fact is that it was considered to demeaning to the Theotokos to be penetrated by her husband. It is a sick superstition which needs to whither and die rather than be perpetuated by anyone. This still comes across even when moderns try to come up with acceptable rationalizations. EO apologist Peter Gilquist claims in Becoming Orthodox that if his wife had given birth to God that his respect for her would be greatly heightened. And there it is: husbands defile their wives by virtue of sex. This needs to be terminated and cauterized.

A proper response to this criticism is beyond this article, and most likely my competence. I am persuaded by the arguments of Newman and others, but I acknowledge that the papal claim, based on the historical evidence alone, is less than coercive. But the Catholic does not properly ground his belief in the supremacy and infallibility of the successors of Peter on the scholarly, and not so scholarly, research of historians but on the authoritative teaching of the Catholic Church (see my article “Newman did not become Catholic because of the Pope“). The authority of the Catholic Church comes first, then the authority of the Pope.

OK, I’m not able to read your essay on Newman at the moment, but I appreciate your candor here (Having read what you said earlier about Pope Leo I was all set to pounce). But still, you seem to have simply stopped time at the age you want. The church produces the Pope and then everything else is illegitimate rather than a further development in the Church. You appeal to the Church as your standard of truth for giving you the Pope but you only recognize as the Church that which is associated with the Pope.

On the Vulgate I’ll simply wait until I have time to collect sources. The idea that Trent represented a huge step backwards, a reinvention of the Church, is not simply a piece of Protestant self-justification. But arguing further in that direction needs to await another day.

One other thing: the writer seems to see himself as open to Eastern Orthodoxy in some way. This is interesting in light of Luther’s debate with Eck:

As for the article of Hus that “it is not necessary for salvation to believe the Roman Church superior to all others” I do not care whether this comes from Wyclif or from Hus. I know that innumerable Greeks have been saved though they never heard this article. It is not in the power of the Roman pontiff or of the Inquisition to construct new articles of faith. No believing Christian can be coerced beyond holy writ” (Roland Baintan, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther [Nashville: Abingdon Press] p. 89, emphasis added).

“Some reasons I am not a Roman Catholic”

I like this stuff. Here are a few comments of my own.

WARNING: Sensitivities might be offended!
Proceed at your own risk.

• While God in his mercy includes all sorts of people who have been ill-taught (including all sorts of Protestants), it is nevertheless eternally dangerous to embrace serious sin when one knows better. It is an act of unbelief. Contacting dead people and praying to/through images is high-handed sin. Some of the severest warnings and punishments in Scripture are assigned to such practices along with murder and sexual perversion. Sure, grape juice in the Lord’s Supper is an abomination. But it is your abomination, the one God assigned you to deal with. Trading that for necromancy and idolatry doesn’t seem remotely safe.
• More positively, the Protestant Faith seems like a much more likely place to truly escape gnosticism. After all, for all the real virtues one finds in the Roman Catholic or the Eastern Orthodox communions, whispering prayers to omniauditory ghosts and talking to pictures is hardly an affirmation of anything embodied or alive, let alone both. We have the potential, at least, to truly put the community back in its proper place as the embodied inhabitation of the Spirit of God. Other people are God’s images, his icons. And when you are face to face with them you can and should ask them to intercede for you. In interacting with other living, present people, rather than artificial images or imaginations, God will renew us in the image of Christ. Idolatry leads the other way:
  

  The idols of the nations are silver and gold,
  the work of human hands.
  They have mouths, but do not speak;
  they have eyes, but do not see;
  they have ears, but do not hear,
  nor is there any breath in their mouths.
  Those who make them become like them,
  so do all who trust in them!

  Emphasis on the “blank wall” in church architecture is a distraction from what the Second Commandment really means, but it is one that can be more easily cured. Everyone knows the Sixth Commandment means “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Eventually people will figure out that the Second means we should regard one another as a means of grace.

• More on the anti-gnosticism thing: While even as late as Benedict Pictet vile allegations against the Mother of God were deemed pious, we are now all happy that Mary and Joseph joyfully did it to and with one another and gave Jesus a bevy of brothers and sisters. God blessed Mary and Joseph with orgasms and children. Deal with it. Even if nothing more had been at stake, the idea that antique squeamishness and false view of spirituality and deity should be permitted to be perpetuated would alone be worth a reformation and a schism or two if necessary. I do appreciate the way that orders of celibates can accomplish great things for the kingdom. If that can be continued without making sex evil, more power to such groups. If not, we’ll have to live without them.
• You can’t play both the institutional card and the development card in the same hand and expect to win anything. If the Papacy was instituted by Christ, then everyone from Peter on down knew about it. But, as anyone who reads Clement’s letter to Corinth knows that he was unaware of this great bequest So we come to the idea that the Papacy naturally evolved. It probably did. And it also withered quite drastically. Why would we chain all the present and future church to an arrangement that was so obviously an adaptation to the world of Classical antiquity. No one denies that the Pope can serve as a transnational reference point (i.e. compare the German Roman Catholics to the German Evangelicals in the struggle against Nazism). But these benefits can probably be derived from a more stable foundation. In most cases the doctrine of the Papacy seems comparable to burying a widow alive in the grave of her husband.
• And how can any Protestant who takes church history seriously not simply shake one’s head at the historical revisionism that must be swallowed. The relationship between the medieval church and Trent is that of a pregnancy to a late abortion. Christendom flowered with new knowledge and scholarship and suddenly we are told that all theology must come from the Vulgate. This form or reactionary repristinization is as revolutionary as anything Luther ever dreamed of and is an obvious kick at the Jerome who thought so highly of recovering the true text of Scripture. I don’t think it would be hard to point out many other discontinuities. There is nothing in history that compels anyone into Rome.

Some good things to think about.

Some day the word “Rome” will mean nothing but to a few scholars who specialize in early Christian history. 182 thousand years from now a few people will speak of TBN and Origen as belonging to a single age of the Church Perhaps somewhere there will be a sect demanding that we “go back to the earliest churches” and join something called “Calvary Chapel.” They will teach that it was pastored by Irenaeus, no doubt. The entire myth of Rome will be forgotten. No one will know why Washington DC had all those columns. The cultural force of the whole mystique that has affected the architecture of our capital and the religious identity of Russia will have long since evaporated.

Nor will there be any doctrinal standards geared to the Protestant / Roman Catholic divide. Other errors as yet undreamed will be repudiated by name. The Reformation will mean nothing to anyone outside of some obscure branches of academia.

My point is that as important as the divisions are now, some day there will be a church with a whole different set of issues. The differences between Irenaeus and Billy Graham will probably be miniscule compared to the difference between us and our descendents in a hundred thousand years. Or a million. This will pass. We have to be faithful in our time, but God will bring things right some day.

Wow. Blogger and Gmail include buttons!

P.S. But Firefox can’t read my rss feed. What’s up with that?

Apparently, some presbytery is appealing to a higher court to take “original jurisdiction” over some notorious heresiarch somewhere…

Hat Tip: Scarecrow

I’m in a mixed marriage. Jennifer uses a PC.

We keep our calendars in sync by using Yahoo’s free service. But this only works when wifi is available. I would much rather use some other system in my computer and sync with either Jennifer or the Yahoo calendar. I’ve tried double-calendaring and it gets tiring. I fail to keep up.

Another option would be to find a way to get my yahoo calendar loaded for offline browsing. But while that is possible on the PC I haven’t yet found that feature available in a browser for the Mac.

Any suggestions?

And while I’m on the subject of computer organization, is there any reason I should keep Entourage on my hard drive. I like Microsoft Office in general, but the Mac already comes with a calendar and email system. Off hand it looks to me like Entourage is not as searchable. Does anyone out there prefer Entourage. What about the firefox/thunderbird system? Are there some benefits there I don’t know about?

P.S. I just noticed Mozilla has a calendar as well. I’m wondering of the PC and Mac versions can export data to one another…. Anyone know?

Why Was Jesus Justified?

The desire for status can be a huge temptation.

Lacking status in the eyes of other people, or at least thinking you lack such status, can be a horrible feeling. If you’ve ever been to a meeting where you didn’t know anyone but everyone knows each other and greets each other warmly but ignores you, then you know what powerful emotions can result from the perception that you have no status, no standing.

And when you go to such a meeting, you have to psyche yourself up to do what needs to be done in order to achieve standing in the sight of the people there. You can go to a Bible conference or seminar in our own denomination and it is very likely you will face this challenge unless you happen to be really well known. People will greet each other as old friends and no one will have time to look at you. It happens all the time.

There is a Greek myth about a handsome man named Narcissus who stared at his reflection in a pool until he died because he was so entranced with his own appearance that he didn’t care about food or sleep. Because of that myth we still use the term “Narcissistic” to describe someone who is incredibly selfish–who adores himself.

But the fact is that, in real life, Narcissists don’t go off by themselves to admire themselves. Even selfish people want admiration from other people. They may expect too much and show they don’t care about other peoples’ feelings, but they still gain their status from other people. They either expect recognition, acceptance, and/or admiration from others, or else they maintain their own sense of status by denying it to others and mistreating them as if they were worthless.

People want status and they get it, or try to get it, from their relationships. Often a young man or woman will crave the attention of some popular person in school, not because he actually likes that person but simply because that person’s social acceptance entails a sudden rise in status among his classmates.

That quest for status is often idolatrous, but even at it’s worst it reflects something fundamental about us as human beings. We are alienated from God. We have no status with him. Of ourselves, we are estranged from him. We are on the outs with him.

WE NEED RIGHTEOUSNESS BEFORE GOD
Our need for status ultimately has to do with a need for status from God. We hunger for acceptance because we were created to be acceptable to him but we’re not anymore.

Now that need for standing with God is another way of saying that we need to be found “righteous” before him. Yes, “righteousness” can refer to ethical uprightness but it can have other nuances as well. It can mean that one is accepted, so that one is rightly related to another and has status with that person.

This is what James tells us about Abraham when God reckoned him righteous in Genesis 15.6: “‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness,’–and he was called the friend of God” (James 2.23). Being counted as righteous means being reckoned as one of God’s friends. He accepts your company. You are all right by him.

For sinners to be justified, to be declared rightly related to God, is an amazing thing. Judged on our own merits, we more than deserve being alienated from God. We would, of ourselves, never have any standing with him. It is of his mercy that he somehow declares us righteous–that he gives us that status before him.

WHY WAS JESUS JUSTIFIED?
But why does our text declare that Jesus himself was justified by the Spirit? Jesus was God’s Son. Why did he need to be justified? Jesus was an eternal member of God’s own family, the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Why would he need to be given that status by God?

By the way, your translations probably say that Jesus was “vindicated in the Spirit,” which is a fine translation except that it is not consistent with the way the Greek word is translated in the rest of the New Testament. If we are going to use the word, “vindicate” in our translations, then we need to do so consistently and speak of how “vindication is by faith.” If we use the word “justify” elsewhere, we should do so here.

But again: why did Jesus need to be justified?

because jesus was condemned
The answer is actually not that mysterious. Jesus needed to be justified because Jesus was condemned. “Condemn” means exactly the opposite of “justify.” Think of a court of law where a defendant is being tried for murder. The prosecutor will speak on behalf of “the people.” By virtue of his office his case will be “the people’s case.” When he rests his case, he will tell the judge, “The people rest, Your Honor.”

And so, if the jury finds him guilty, he will no longer have the standing he once did in his society. He will no longer have the status of a full citizen with rights. Rather, he will be a prisoner for a time with severely limited rights. He won’t be a full member of the society. He will be alienated. He will no longer have status in the eyes of “the people”–represented by the judicial system.

On the other hand, if he is declared “not guilty”–declared righteous, in effect–by the jury, his status will be affirmed. Our country claims that one is innocent before the law until proven guilty, but the fact is that in most cultures historically it is recognized that being hauled before a judge gives you a questionable status in society. You want the judge (or, in our case sometimes, jury) to give you a new status and you don’t want to leave the courtroom without it. You want to be vindicated before the law and declared to be innocent so that you can enjoy the standing you had before you were accused.

Now, it is not an accident that our gospels all climax in a courtroom. Jesus is brought before Pontius Pilate as a condemned prisoner already. He is bound and has been beaten. Because the local leaders who did this don’t have the authority to inflict the death penalty they have come to Pilate, as the representative of the Roman Empire, to get him to condemn Jesus to the ultimate penalty, death by the torture of the cross.

In many ways, this is shown to us readers to be an amazing miscarriage of justice. Jesus is not guilty of any wrongdoing. Nevertheless, Pilate sentences Jesus to die and God even indicates that he back’s Pilate’s sentence. Jesus himself confesses it with his own lips by crying out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

Jesus needed justification because Jesus was under condemnation. Even in the grave his official condemnation was evident to all because his grave was sealed with a Roman seal. Even in death he was not permitted that basic care that was ordinarily given to the deceased by those who loved them. He was condemned.

because we were condemned
The reason Jesus was condemned, not only by his enemies, but by his own Father, had nothing to do with his own sin. He was innocent. He was guiltless. He never did anything to jeopardize his status before the Father but rather trusted him faithfully to the very end.

The reason Jesus was condemned was because of his people’s sins. In the Bible, people can suffer because their leaders sin and leaders can suffer because their people sin. Once, when King David sinned, his nation was plagued by God.

Jesus was David’s descendant and the rightful king of Israel, but he never did anything to cause them to suffer. He was Israel’s representative. He spent his life trying to get Israel to repent, but then he was the one who was condemned to judgment. He died as Israel’s king suffering because of his people’s own sin. He was condemned, not Israel.

And furthermore, Israel’s king was the king of the whole world. God had chosen Israel back from the time of Abraham to be a light to the nations and bring them deliverance from condemnation. The prophets promised Israel when she lost her independent throne that God would again establish her king and that all the nations would eventually recognize his authority over them. Incidentally, the New Testament Church was quite confident that these prophecies were fulfilled in the preaching of the Gospel, resulting in masses of Gentiles as well as Jews submitting to Jesus as Lord. When Jesus suffered condemnation he suffered it as the embodiment of the whole human race. He was stripped of his status as righteous in God’s sight because humanity had no such status, even though he personally was righteous and faithful from beginning to end.

AS JESUS WAS CONDEMNED IN HIS DEATH; HE WAS JUSTIFIED BY NEW LIFE
Three days after Jesus died in condemnation, the Bible teaches us from multiple witnesses that he was raised to a new more glorious life. In Romans 8, the Apostle Paul states emphatically that the Spirit of God was the one who raised Jesus from the grave.

That deliverance from death and exaltation to life and even to his right hand was God’s justification of Jesus. Jesus, who by right should have always been able to stand before His Father, gave up that status in order for God to give it back to him in a public declaration that he was the faithful righteous son of his Father. And he went through the condemnation and alienation because he knew that his people needed that status of righteous in God’s sight to end their condemnation.

Jesus was not justified for himself alone. His righteousness counts to all who belong to him. His vindication is our salvation. What does the Apostle Paul say? Romans 8.1: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are IN Christ Jesus.” If we belong to Christ by faith, he tells the Galatians, then we have already crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. What happened to Jesus counts for us. His cross and resurrection are counted as our past history.

We have standing with God because we are in, and belong to, Jesus—who has standing before God. We are no longer condemned. We are no longer alienated. Jesus went into the courtroom ahead of us and attained a verdict that would have been very different had God dealt with us as we deserved.

APPLICATIONS
Now there are many implications of all this. Let’s mention some.

First of all, we all have been taught that justification is a legal declaration. But it is hard to understand how our belief corresponds to a declaration on God’s part that we can’t hear or experience. Perhaps understanding how Jesus was justified will help. When we are marked out by God by the gift of faith we are joined to Christ by that faith. At that point, the verdict God declared about Jesus applies to us because we belong to Jesus. The declared verdict was almost two thousand years ago. We share that status when we share in Christ by faith.

God tells us in many ways that we belong to Jesus: By arranging providence so that we are baptized into his Kingdom; by showing us we are his family in feeding us at his table in the Lord’s Supper as a Father feeds his children; by enabling us through the power of the Holy Spirit to declare that Jesus is Lord and believe that God raised him from the dead; by summoning us to corporate worship as his army under his command and care; and by many other means.

Let all those things give you confidence in knowing that Christ’s status as acceptable to the Father—as a friend of God’s much more than Abraham was—is yours as well. Your sins are already dealt with so God now forgives them freely for the sake of Christ. He took your curse and condemnation and God receives you as having the status of his own beloved son.

Secondly, this might help us understand that, even though we have, in substance, our entire salvation in Jesus Christ, we really are still waiting for it to be revealed. Right now, we look and feel like the wicked around us. We too get cancer and deal with old age, and have our children get sick, and struggle with finances, just like all the unbelievers around us. We too are under the general curse that was imposed on the sinful human race.

But one day, we will experience for ourselves the declaration that we are righteous in God’s sight through Jesus our Lord in a new way. Just as Jesus was declared righteous—justified—in his resurrection, so in our resurrection we too will be personally justified. That’s why now justification is by faith. We must believe that we have status with God as his friends even though we don’t see much difference between how we are treated and how God treats his enemies. But then we will see with our own eyes as we are reborn from the grave in the image and glory of the resurrected Jesus Christ our Lord!

Thirdly, if we understand that we have this status and yet God has not seen fit to yet reveal it as he will at the Final Judgment–that last courtroom scene which will end human history–then we might be able to understand some of the frustration we feel. Living by faith means living by hope for what we do not yet see. And, as Paul writes in Romans 8.25, “if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.” If you are dissatisfied with your present life, maybe you should not be discouraged by that fact, but realize that the reason you are dissatisfied is that God has promised to bring you into something better–something you will not just hope in or trust him for, but that you will actually experience for yourself. Your resurrection in glory, when you see Jesus face to face and reflect his image as a mirror, will be God’s public declaration that he accepts you. You have status with him and you will see it then with your own transfigured eyes.

Finally, among many other things we could say, know for certain that all the status the world has to offer is worth less than nothing in comparison to the friendship with God and adoption into his family that is given in the Gospel. If you are excluded from your classmates or even your own family, for the cause of Christ, that is nothing in comparison to the glory into which he welcomes you. Don’t be seduced by the allurements of acceptability in the world.

• When someone makes a joke at your workplace that you know is wrong and yet feel pressure to join into, remember that your workplace is temporary and fleeting but God’s resting place is forever.
• When a class peer offers you something to drink or smoke that your not supposed to use, remember that they probably won’t be friends with you in a few years no matter what you do, but that God’s friendship is everlasting.
• When you find your not getting the prom date you want because of what you will or won’t do afterwards, remember that you are part of the bride of Christ and that Jesus is a better husband than anyone else ever could be–even if they weren’t merely lying to you for their own selfish reasons.
• If your own children or your parents were to reject you in some way because of the Gospel, remember that all the love and loyalty you could ever wish for, from your family, is but a dim reflection of God’s love for his children.

Let God’s regard for you, the status he gives you, satisfy that craving we all have for acceptance in the eyes of others.

Let me close with some of what I think are the most challenging words written in the Bible. Listen to this as a charge to you in how you ought to value the status that Jesus Christ won for you by being condemned in order to be justified for your sakes. Romans 2.28 & 29:

For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly; neither is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God.

Watching season two of Buffy is a real hoot.

On the Halloween episode Willow temporarily becomes a ghost and can walk through objects. But when she exits a room with a bead curtain she makes it move and sway as she brushes past it.

In the very next episode Buffy is watching a hospital to protect the arrival of blood. No vampires appear as the van pulls up and two men come to receive the shipment. Are they themselves the vampires? I ask myself. Obviously not, because I plainly see both their reflections in the side of the van. Except that I’m wrong. Buffy dusts them before we can find out what magical force allows them to cast a reflection….

Add to all this that the film is cheap so that this all looks more like an mpeg file than a TV show.

If that’s a new expression to you, as it was to me, I highly recommend you check out Tim Enloe’s post on Wycliffe’s doctrine. It gives me a great deal to think about and research. I had never heard anything like this before.

I’m really glad I read this.

If we were to limit ourselves to the Bible, “conversion” would propbably primarily refer to the ongoing repentance that is part of sanctification in the normal Christian life. I pray for my children’s conversion as I do my own.

But, in common Evangelical parlance, “conversion” means repentance from unbelief, a transition from death to life. In that case, claiming one’s children must be converted is ordinarily an implicit denial of the doctrine of justification by faith alone. I have four children ranging in ages from two to nine. All pray to God as Father. All acknowledge Christ as the only savior. To claim that they must do something more in order to be saved is synergism and works-righteousness.

Is this hard to understand? Faith in Jesus is sufficient for salvation. It is Satan’s job to falsely accuse the brethren, not ours. We should not be declaring our praying, worshiping children to be unbelievers. We should be encouraging them to grow in the faith they have.

Of course, we all know there are children who never are given true faith and thus who apostasize. But this is no different than professing believers who also are lacking in this manner. The fact that such people exist doesn’t give one license to accuse professing believers of being unregenerate. Nor do we have a right to abuse and undermine the faith of our children in this manner. Our job is to encourage faith and deal with those who refuse our encouragement in the way God instructs us to.