Sooooo true

TommyMertonHead from the Boar's Head Tavern:

I’m trying to find a metaphor to measure the difference between Wright and Mclaren.

If Wright had entered a meeting of the Jesus Seminar, he would emerge, covered in blood, carrying the heads of his adversaries in a sack.

If Mclaren had entered a meeting of the Jesus seminar, he would have emerged in lingerie, giggling.

Joel Osteen, Pharisee extraordinaire

Um.... what part of "Peter, kill and eat!" (Acts 10:9-15) do you not understand, Joel?!?



He may be right of course on all of the science there... but good grief... he's using the Bible to give us a diet... Can Christians stop mining the Bible for stuff other than Jesus???

Christmas Needs to Get More Materialistic

This is the best Christmas sermon I've ever heard: it was preached by the Rev. Sam Wells, Dean of the Chapel at Duke University . It's entitled "Christmas Needs to Get More Materialistic," and the Scripture text is John 1:1-14 . You can get the text of the sermon here.

My favorite part, where he really hits it home:

This is Christianity: not some set of disembodied ideals and noble values, but the life shaped around the logic of God in a human form, at Christmas found in a tiny crying baby, on Good Friday found in a naked man hanging on a cross, on Easter Day found in the wonder of a man defeating death and opening the gates of glory. And this is what we find difficult about Christianity: not its sense of the spiritual, not its sense of inner logic and its appeal to a personal God, for who could be against such reassuring things; no, what we find difficult about Christianity is its materialism, its claim that God took human, material form and lived and died and rose again clothed in and surrounded by the sheer material stuff of ordinary life. A God who is watching us from a distance is a God we can keep at a distance. A God who takes human form is a God that comes up close and personal, a God so close to us we can never escape his grace.

Death before the Fall

Greg Koukl of Stand To Reason nails it on this last week's program regarding the question of what kinds of "death" were in operation before the Fall and what it all means theologically. You can hear it on this week's podcast.

Why is it so unbelievable?

From the hymn O Come, All Ye Faithful, waxing Nicea:

God of God, Light of Light;
Lo, He abhors not the Virgin's womb:
Very God, begotten, not created;
O come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.

It is because of this that the phrase "Mother of God" enters into our speech.

That's right. I said it. "Mother of God". Or Theotokos, if you will.

Isn't that nuts? Isn't that crazy? The shock in it has nothing to do with Mary. It has everything to do with the fact that the Creator of the universe condescends and takes on a human nature, made of ordinary flesh made of ordinary molecules made out of ordinary atoms that were fused in an ordinary star sometime in the past, just like you and me.

The logic of the universe (see John 1) is wrapped up in a tiny, crying, pooping baby.

This is the lengths to which God will go to redeem the world. By the standards of human wisdom, this is scandalous.

More reflections on this later.

"Dear Ed. Young"

Hilarious. Simply hilarious. 

But very true.

I'll stop talking about it now.

Good stuff at STR

A good program from Stand to Reason this past weekend... topics are divorce and remarriage, the power of prayer, and how we know that Jesus was who he really said he was.

Listen here.

EDIT: Don't care much for the global flood/YEC stuff that comes at the end though. Too bad otherwise competent apologists have to peddle this crap.

What does your pastor read?

The great thing about where I go to church is that I know exactly what my pastor is reading besides the Bible. Why? Because before he goes off on some big idea he names the person he got the insight from. I don't want to label ideas by the person they come from, but it does help me get a bearing on whose thought is influencing the guy who brings the Word of God to me every Sunday. And that is very good.

Incidentally, this is why being part of a historic tradition actually means that you are probably less prone to wander away from the Bible, because at least if you're a Lutheran or a Calvinist or a Baptist or whatever at least you know where your ideas (and hence your biases) about the Bible come from. If you're nondenominational, where do your biases come from? Basically your pastor. Where does he get  his ideas about the Bible from? Whatever he's been reading; this year, this month, or maybe even this week.

People who say things like "you have Luther, we have only the Bible" drive me nuts.

So what should we think about the "7-Day Sex Challenge"?

Pastor Todd Wilken of Issues, Etc. and listeners talk about it. Listen embedded below or go to the Issues, Etc. web site.

Just take it

Do you know what's great about the Sacrament of Holy Communion? That it's the body and blood of Jesus, shed for you, for the forgiveness of sins. That it's a means of grace simply because of what it is.

I have  long lived with a foot in both evangelicalism and Lutheranism, living in the tension that such a position engenders. One of the things I  have noticed about (non-Lutheran) evangelical celebrations of the Lord's Supper is that there is such a contemplative air about it. People take the bread and wine, meditate and pray, and then eat and drink. 

Now, to itself, this is all well and good. In fact, it's biblical: "Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup." (1 Corinthians 11:28, ESV) We should take some time to remember what it is we're doing, why we need it because of our sin, and thank God for the gift he's given us in Jesus.

But this goes too far when we make our contemplation the make-or-break element of our receiving the Lord's Supper. "If I don't remember, if I don't take it in appropriately, then I haven't done it." How could you ever be sure you "remembered" enough? Will God, who supposedly wants to give us a "means of grace", withhold that grace if our contemplation isn't up to snuff?

No. It's a means of grace for those who have faith in Jesus because it is what it is, the body and blood of our Lord Jesus. If I eat the bread and drink the cup, believing that I need what Jesus gives for the forgiveness of sins, I will receive it. That's it. It's not conditioned on the quality of my rememberance. 

So go receive the Supper. Hear the words "shed for you" and "broken for you". Take and eat. Take and drink. And be forgiven.

Sola Fide

Great post over at Internet Monk.  An excerpt:

I grew up in a church that would have told you that you had to believe in salvation by faith alone to be a Baptist. I minister among those same people today.

And what do I hear?

I hear that no Christian could read Harry Potter.

I hear that no Christian would wear that t-shirt or listen to that kind of music.

I hear that no Christian could possibly not see in the Bible all the things that I see there.

I hear that if you are a Christian, you must support these political views.

I hear that a person can’t be a Christian and not oppose another set of political views.’

I hear dress codes called “the way Christians should dress.”

I hear in reference to any number of sins common to human beings that “no one could be a Christian and do that.”

And with every statement (and many more) sola fide is dismantled a bit more.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones once said that if you aren’t regularly accused of being an antinomian, you probably haven’t preached the Gospel. I absolutely agree.

Dropping like flies

MSNBC.com -- Episcopal diocese splits from national church

Lord, we pray for these your faithful servants, and the faith of the entire church, that one day we may all be united once again, but not at the expense of the truth of your Son, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever, Amen.

Benedict XVI Speech to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences

Not bad, not bad... but I always liked this guy's thought if not his theology.

Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am happy to greet you, the members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, on the occasion of your Plenary Assembly, and I thank Professor Nicola Cabibbo for the words he has kindly addressed to me on your behalf.

In choosing the topic Scientific Insight into the Evolution of the Universe and of Life, you seek to focus on an area of enquiry which elicits much interest. In fact, many of our contemporaries today wish to reflect upon the ultimate origin of beings, their cause and their end, and the meaning of human history and the universe.

In this context, questions concerning the relationship between science’s reading of the world and the reading offered by Christian Revelation naturally arise. My predecessors Pope Pius XII and Pope John Paul II noted that there is no opposition between faith’s understanding of creation and the evidence of the empirical sciences. Philosophy in its early stages had proposed images to explain the origin of the cosmos on the basis of one or more elements of the material world. This genesis was not seen as a creation, but rather a mutation or transformation; it involved a somewhat horizontal interpretation of the origin of the world. A decisive advance in understanding the origin of the cosmos was the consideration of being qua being and the concern of metaphysics with the most basic question of the first or transcendent origin of participated being. In order to develop and evolve, the world must first be, and thus have come from nothing into being. It must be created, in other words, by the first Being who is such by essence.

To state that the foundation of the cosmos and its developments is the provident wisdom of the Creator is not to say that creation has only to do with the beginning of the history of the world and of life. It implies, rather, that the Creator founds these developments and supports them, underpins them and sustains them continuously. Thomas Aquinas taught that the notion of creation must transcend the horizontal origin of the unfolding of events, which is history, and consequently all our purely naturalistic ways of thinking and speaking about the evolution of the world. Thomas observed that creation is neither a movement nor a mutation. It is instead the foundational and continuing relationship that links the creature to the Creator, for he is the cause of every being and all becoming (cf. Summa Theologiae, I, q.45, a. 3).

To “evolve” literally means “to unroll a scroll”, that is, to read a book. The imagery of nature as a book has its roots in Christianity and has been held dear by many scientists. Galileo saw nature as a book whose author is God in the same way that Scripture has God as its author. It is a book whose history, whose evolution, whose “writing” and meaning, we “read” according to the different approaches of the sciences, while all the time presupposing the foundational presence of the author who has wished to reveal himself therein. This image also helps us to understand that the world, far from originating out of chaos, resembles an ordered book; it is a cosmos. Notwithstanding elements of the irrational, chaotic and the destructive in the long processes of change in the cosmos, matter as such is “legible”. It has an inbuilt “mathematics”. The human mind therefore can engage not only in a “cosmography” studying measurable phenomena but also in a “cosmology” discerning the visible inner logic of the cosmos. We may not at first be able to see the harmony both of the whole and of the relations of the individual parts, or their relationship to the whole. Yet, there always remains a broad range of intelligible events, and the process is rational in that it reveals an order of evident correspondences and undeniable finalities: in the inorganic world, between microstructure and macrostructure; in the organic and animal world, between structure and function; and in the spiritual world, between knowledge of the truth and the aspiration to freedom. Experimental and philosophical inquiry gradually discovers these orders; it perceives them working to maintain themselves in being, defending themselves against imbalances, and overcoming obstacles. And thanks to the natural sciences we have greatly increased our understanding of the uniqueness of humanity’s place in the cosmos.

The distinction between a simple living being and a spiritual being that is capax Dei, points to the existence of the intellective soul of a free transcendent subject. Thus the Magisterium of the Church has constantly affirmed that “every spiritual soul is created immediately by God – it is not ‘produced’ by the parents – and also that it is immortal” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 366). This points to the distinctiveness of anthropology, and invites exploration of it by modern thought.

Distinguished Academicians, I wish to conclude by recalling the words addressed to you by my predecessor Pope John Paul II in November 2003: “scientific truth, which is itself a participation in divine Truth, can help philosophy and theology to understand ever more fully the human person and God’s Revelation about man, a Revelation that is completed and perfected in Jesus Christ. For this important mutual enrichment in the search for the truth and the benefit of mankind, I am, with the whole Church, profoundly grateful”.

Upon you and your families, and all those associated with the work of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, I cordially invoke God’s blessings of wisdom and peace.

HT: The Holy See

More wacky (and borderline heretical) YEC views

My ears perked up today as I listened to listener emails read and answered on "Issues, Etc." One woman emailed in to claim that she had heard that the Institute for Creation Research (a prominent young-earth organization) had said that the Virgin Mary served as the place where Christ was conceived but did not provide her genetic material for him to be conceived from.

Ummmm.... huh?

I couldn't believe that this was for real. A little bit of searching revealed it was true, because I found this article. Here are some excerpts of the lunacy written by Henry Morris.

Perhaps the most amazing aspect of the incarnation is that a God who is absolute holiness could reside in a body of human flesh. Is it not true that "they that are in the flesh cannot please God?" (Romans 8:8). Our human bodies have been formed through many generations of genetic inheritance from Adam himself, and "in Adam all die" (I Corinthians 15:22).

The paradox is partially resolved, of course, when it is realized that Jesus Christ came in a body which was not of sinful flesh. His body was truly "in the flesh," but only "in the likeness of sinful flesh" (Romans 8:3).

 So far, so good, I suppose, but I wouldn't make too much of the distinction between "in the flesh" and "in the likeness of sinful flesh" as Morris does. I think that Paul's point is merely that the flesh of humans is sinful, though Jesus is the exception to this. But beyond that, Jesus took our sin upon us on the cross, so in this limited sense it is true that the flesh of Jesus was "sinful." However, Morris quickly goes overboard:

But even this doesn't resolve the dilemma completely, for how could His body be of flesh (carbon, hydrogen, amino acids, proteins, etc.), received by the normal process of reproduction of the flesh of his parents, without also receiving their genetic inheritance, which is exactly what makes it sinful flesh? "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me" (Psalm 51:5). "Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble … Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one" (Job 14:4).

Sinful flesh comes about by genetic inheritance? It's, like, in the DNA like a gene? I don't want to go into this too much, but it seems clear to me the Bible doesn't teach this. Whatever "born in sin" and "conceived in sin" means, I doubt it has anything to do with meiosis. However, building on this argument, he carries it through to a very odd conclusion, even for an odd argument:

Not only is there the problem of inherent sin, but also of inherent physical defects. Over many generations, the human population has experienced great numbers of genetic mutations, and these defective physical factors have been incorporated into the common genetic pool, affecting in some degree every infant ever born. Yet the Lamb of God, to be an acceptable sacrifice for the sins of the world, must be "without blemish and without spot" (I Peter 1:19). The very purpose of the incarnation was that God could become the Saviour of men as well as their Creator, but this required that in His humanity He must be "holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners" (Hebrews 7:26), and this would have been absolutely impossible by the normal reproductive process.

Morris has completely missed the point. In the Old Testament ritual, "without blemish and without spot" may have been from a physical perspective, but it was only because it was a type and a shadow of the one who would be without blemish or spot of sin. It has nothing to do whatsoever with whether or not Jesus had or didn't have physical defects. The New Testament clearly teaches that Jesus got tired, hungry, frustrated, worried, etc.. For Jesus to fully take part in our humanity it seems essential that he was not immune to the effects of genetic deterioration that piled up over the centuries either. I believe that Jesus was in pain when he stubbed his toe, that he bled if he scraped his knee, and that he got sick and ran fevers. Why should we deny the possibility that he also might have inherited physical defects? He was fully a part of our humanity, with only one Biblically-stated exception: he was without sin. Morris has completely re-defined and misunderstood the humanity of Jesus.

The solution could only be through a mighty miracle! He could not be conceived in the same manner as other men, for this would inevitably give him both a sin-nature and a physically defective body, and each would disqualify Him as a fit Redeemer. And yet He must truly become human. "Wherefore in all things it behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people" (Hebrews 2:17).

Morris has taken away with one hand what he gave with the other. How in the world is Jesus truly human if he does not have a human conception? I'm not denying the conception by the Holy Spirit  and the virgin birth. I'm simply stating that Jesus' true humanity requires he receive genetic material from Mary. Otherwise all of the fuss that the Gospel writers make with the geneaologies showing the lineage of Jesus is pointless.

On second thought, however, one realizes that it was not the virgin birth which was significant, except as a testimony of the necessity of the real miracle, the supernatural conception. The birth of Christ was natural and normal in every way, including the full period of human gestation in the womb of Mary. In all points, He was made like His brethren, experiencing every aspect of human life from conception through birth and growth to death. He was true man in every detail, except for sin and its physical effects.

The miracle was not His birth, but His conception. And here we still face a mystery. Conception normally is the result of the union of two germ cells, the egg from the mother and the seed from the father, each carrying half the inheritance and thus each, of course, sharing equally in the transmission of the sin-nature as well as all other aspects of the human nature.

Morris has completely contradicted himself. It is simply not possible for him to affirm that Jesus was made like his brethren in "all points" if he did not receive genetic material from Mary. Jesus needs to have a human conception, albeit a miraculous one, for him to have true humanity. The early church fathers would not have tolerated such nonsense had they had access to the science we have today.

Therefore, even though He was nurtured in Mary's womb for nine months and born without her ever knowing a man, it was also necessary for all this to have been preceded by supernatural intervention, to prevent His receiving any actual genetic inheritance through her. The body growing in Mary's womb must have been specially created in full perfection, and placed there by the Holy Spirit, in order for it to be free of inherent sin damage. Christ would still be "made of the seed of David according to the flesh" (Romans 1:3), because His body was nurtured and born of Mary, who was herself of the seed of David. He would still be the Son of Man, sharing all universal human experience from conception to death, except sin. He is truly "the seed of the woman" (Genesis 3:15), His body formed neither of the seed of the man nor the egg of the woman, but grown from a unique Seed planted in the woman's body by God Himself.

 So Morris claims that Jesus has no physical continuity whatsoever with his mother, or anyone before him for that matter. He claims that the human flesh of Jesus was a special creation. That's right, creation ex nihilo. He claims that this is necessary because if he did he would of necessity be tainted with sinful flesh. Where on earth did he get all of this? Certainly not from the Bible.

Where did all of this nonsense come from? It comes from the assumptions that he reads into Scripture and binds himself to. YECs have a view of the Fall that ends up being a soft Gnosticism, irrevocably tying whatever comes from physical processes to sin, including conception. Morris assumes that for something to be "good" and without sin it must come from a special creation, brand spanking new out of nothing. Rather, it seems that the true message of the Bible is that God is taking the good creation which has been tainted by sin and is making it without sin through the work of Jesus. Jesus was made of the stuff of this creation, yet was without sin, by the miraculous power of God. And through the perfect, sinless life of Jesus, his sacrifice on the cross, and his resurrection from the dead God is making "all things new." From our own sinful lives and flesh to the creation itself, God is making all things good once again. Paul says:

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. (Romans 8:18-23, ESV)

Jesus, true God, Creator of the cosmos, is also true man, conceived and born of the Virgin Mary. I have no idea how this happened, or where the "rest" of the material came from. That's why it's a miracle. But when we deny Jesus a real conception with real physical continuity with his mother, we implicitly deny his humanity.

Luckily, Todd Wilken, the host of "Issues, Etc." affirmed this. However, he then derisively questioned if ICR was one of those "old-earth, quasi-theistic" organizations. I'm sorry, but that's patently insulting. I wish Todd would seriously interact with old-earth creationism. However, that's another topic for another time.

Ha ha

Reality check for all of us (myself included) in this intense political season.

Absolutely Terrifying

I'm all for claiming the truth wherever you find it and all, but this is just plain ridiculous.

It's borderline blasphemous.

Have a listen.

Just change a word or two...

Some funny parodies of worship music... see how easy it is sometimes? Unfortunately, the "health and wealth" and "it's all about me" gospels are alive and well these days.

Calvinism = "God saves sinners"?

Was just listening to an old podcast from Greg Koukl, president of the apologetics ministry Stand To Reason. He said a couple of things that I found interesting (and somewhat odd). He was referring to a question from a friend about whether or not he was a Calvinist, and if so whether or not he was a "five-point" Calvinist. He claims "there is no other kind," and followed that up with this whammy: that there is only one point to Calvinism, and that is "God saves sinners."

Huh? So if I accept that (very Biblical) statement I must be a Calvinist? Do Lutherans not even exist? What about others, who don't consider themselves either Calvinist or Arminian? I think his supposition is that the five points of Calvinism must all hang together and are logically interdependent. So, if there really is only one point of Calvinism, then that must mean this:

"God saves sinners" = {"Total depravity", "Unconditional election", "Limited atonement", "Irresistible grace", "Perseverance of the saints"}

Last time I checked a lot of people believed the former but disagreed with some of the points of the latter, especially limited atonement (the idea that the sacrifice of Christ was only for the elect) and irresistible grace (that God's grace which makes belief in Christ and justification possible is irresistible to the human heart if that person is truly called). This is a result of demanding that all of your theology is like a solution to a differential equation, where the initial and boundary conditions are the data of the Scriptures, and what comes out is completely determined in a completely logical and completely understood way from this information.

I believe the Scriptures are absolutely true, and I believe that there is no contradiction in God's truth, but that doesn't preclude the possibility for mystery. If we are saved, it's because God chose us, but if not, it's because we refused him. Isn't that a contradiction? It is if you demand that God be placed in a four-dimensional straitjacket. The body and blood of Christ are really, truly present in the celebration of the Lord's Supper. Does that work? Not if you believe in some kind of rigorous 16th century cosmology that claims it contradicts Jesus sitting on the literal right hand of the literal throne of God. There are some things that I believe the Scriptures teach that are just plain irreducible to human logic. That doesn't mean they are illogical, it just means that God's ways are not always reducible to ours.

STR's podcast page is here, and the relevant program is from July 10.

"It's not my job."

This post nails it on the stuff flying around about Victoria Osteen and the alleged altercation on the airplane.

My favorite quote: "If you're a follower of Jesus, wiping up people's crap is your job."

I almost fell off my chair

It's freaking hilarious.