The following is a portion of an email I sent to my professor after he sent a critique of a theological discussion paper I recently wrote. I think it underlines the issue of drawing false caricatures and straw men in the arena of doctrinal responses:

On the larger issue of polemics in this context I continue to run into a number of struggles as you have found out. There is a prevailing temptation to paint reality in a superficial light that honest dialectics just won’t allow for. These efforts expose the parts of my prideful heart that need sanctified as it seems more comfortable to create a theological structure with conveniently painted black and white walls than to faithfully represent the complexity that is such an integral parts of discussion.

I pray that my root motivation for my efforts is one of apostolic obligation, chiefly the defense and confirmation of the gospel. However it is hard to discern between attacks on perspicuous, central doctrines of Scripture and assertions that can still rest comfortably inside the circle of Orthodoxy. It frequently appears to me that the fabric of truth is seamless. Every truth is intertwined with every other truth, such that any assault on the inspiration of Scripture seems to be just a few steps away from denying the very gospel it seeks to propagate. Throughout the New Testament it seems the Apostles know that letting minor strands continue to unravel can eventually lead a dangerous compromising on the centrality of the gospel.

Clearly there is two ditches on every road. While my more fundamentalist brothers appear to exhibit a more retreatist attitude it seems the other extreme is equally as misguided. Under the banner of humility it becomes to easy to be hesitant where God is clear. I think you would agree that we live in a day of politicized discourse that puts no premium on assertions that are inherently clear. Some use language to conceal where they stand rather than to seek for clarity where they stand. My guess is that this happens because clear and open statements usually result in more criticism than ambiguous statements do. Vagueness wins more approval in hostile atmospheres than forthrightness ever will. This is not the vehement zeal for the truth which Christ and his Apostles unashamedly displayed. Perhaps if we loved the glory of God more deeply, and if we cared more for the eternal good of the souls of men, we would take our engagement in necessary controversy more seriously, supremely when the truth of the gospel is at stake. The Apostolic command is clear: we are to be “speaking the truth in love,” being neither truthless in our love, nor loveless in our truth, but holding the two in careful balance.

I seek to write with clarity and yet avoid the myopic thrust of closed-eyed dogmatism or unhelpful theological obscurities. This requires a commitment to precision that I have not yet discovered, as I displayed in the section of my book you read.

I appreciate your willingness to provide correction where it is necessary as I need to be held accountable for irresponsible polemics. Surprisingly I am always right whenever my thoughts go no further than my head or close group of friends on the same theological page. Yet even if this piece does not turn out to be a fair or helpful one it will have been another step to climb in the direction of taking seriously the task of dialogue.

Soli Deo Gloria,

kp

If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

C. S. Lewis from the Weight of Glory

Like anyone, I can read this intellectually and say amen, but I doubt that I fully grasp the weight communicated in the following paragraph and video:

It will not do to say that God only uses our cancer but does not design it. What God permits, he permits for a reason. And that reason is his design. If God foresees molecular developments becoming cancer, he can stop it or not. If he does not, he has a purpose. Since he is infinitely wise, it is right to call this purpose a design. Satan is real and causes many pleasures and pains. But he is not ultimate. So when he strikes Job with boils (Job 2:7), Job attributes it ultimately to God (2:10) and the inspired writer agrees: “They . . . comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him” (Job 42:11). If you don’t believe your cancer is designed for you by God, you will waste it.

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. Their measuring line goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat.

Psalm 19:1-7

Trailer from the new Life DVD:

While this may seem too folksy… In part this is my response:

Soli Deo Gloria,

kp

Last week I finished Religious Affections by Jonathan Edwards. Admittedly it was no small task for me. Instead of my opinions about the book I will quote a section at length that was especially helpful for me:

Affections that are truly spiritual and gracious do arise from those influences and operations on the heart which are spiritual, supernatural and divine. ‘Spiritual man’ refers to a sanctified person or saint if by natural and carnal be intended unsanctified, then doubtless by spiritual is meant sanctified and gracious.

The word ’spiritual’ in the Bible (for example as in “spiritual man’) refers to the relation to the Holy Spirit. Qualities are not said to be spiritual, because they have their seat in the soul and not in the body. Thus Christians are called spiritual persons because they are born of the Spirit, and because of the indwelling and holy influences of the Spirit of God in them. They who have only the common influences of God’s Spirit are not so called. For it was not by men’s having the gifts of the Spirit, but by their having the virtues of the Spirit, that they were called spiritual. Natural men may be the subjects of many influences of the Spirit of God yet they are not, in the sense of the Scripture, spiritual persons. The great difference lies in these two things:

The Holy Spirit lives in spiritual people and causes them to shine from the inside. The Holy Spirit may shine upon carnal people too but only as a light on a dark object. The grace which is in the hearts of the saints is of the same nature with the divine holiness, as much as it is possible for that holiness to be which is infinitely less in degree. He never acts disagreeably to His nature, either on the minds of saints or sinners. Thus, for instance, the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, and there was nothing disagreeable to His nature in that action; but yet He did not at all communicate Himself in that action. And so He may act upon the minds of men many ways, and not communicate Himself any more than when He acts on inanimate things. So that not only the persons are called spiritual, as having the Spirit of God dwelling in them, but those qualifications, affections, and experiences, that are wrought in them by the Spirit are also spiritual. There is no work so high and excellent, for there is no work wherein God doth so much communicate Himself, and wherein the mere creature hath, in so high a sense, a participation of God.

2 Pet 1:4 “having God dwelling in them, and they in God”

2 Cor 6:16 “being the temples of the living God”

Heb 12:10 “being made partakers of God’s holiness”

John 17:13 ” having His joy fulfilled in them”

Not that the saints are made partakers of the essence of God, and are so godded with God, and christed with Christ, which is blasphemous, but to use the Scripture phrase, they are made partakers of God’s fulness.
They (natural men) not only have not these communications of the Spirit of God in so high a degree as the saints, but have nothing of that nature of kind.

And natural men are represented in Scripture as having no spiritual light, no spiritual life, and no spiritual being; and therefore conversion is often compared to opening the eyes of the blind, raising the dead, and a work of creation and becoming new-born children. From these things it is evident that those gracious influences which the saints are subjects of, and the effects of God’s Spirit which they experience, are entirely above nature. And this is what I mean by supernatural, when I say that gracious affections are from those influences that are supernatural.

Something is perceived by a true saint, in the exercise of this new sense of mind in spiritual and divine things, as entirely diverse from anything that is perceived in them by natural men, as the sweet taste of honey is diverse from the ideas men get of honey by looking on and feeling it. The difference is not like two people smelling two different smells but as experiencing different sensations, say one smelling and the other touching. Hence the work of the Spirit of God in regeneration is often in Scripture compared to the giving of a new sense, giving eyes to see and ears to hear, unstopping the ears of the deaf, and opening the eyes of them that were born blind.

So this new spiritual sense is not a new faculty of understanding, but it is a new foundation laid in the nature of the soul for a new kind of exercises of the same faculty of understanding. So that new holy disposition of heart that attends this new sense is not a new faculty of will, but a foundation laid in the nature of the soul, for a new kind of exercises of the same faculty of the will. When the Spirit of God gives a natural man visions etc. as he did in Balaam, He only impresses a natural principle, which in Balaam’s case was the sense of seeing. But the Spirit of God in His spiritual influences on the hearts of His saints, operates by infusing or exercising new, divine, and supernatural principles; principles which are indeed a new and spiritual nature, and principles vastly more noble and excellent than all that is in natural men. The carnal man cannot discern this, just as a man born deaf cannot conceive of the melody of a tune, or a man who is blind from birth cannot understand the beauty of a rainbow.

Soli Deo Gloria,

kp

Many probably know that I enjoy the ministry of Matt Chandler, who is still recovering from cancer. Here he preaches on the dangers of assuming the gospel. Here is the video:

Soli Deo Gloria,

kp

Some time ago I had the privilege of watching the documentary entitled COLLISION: Christopher Hitchens vs. Douglas Wilson. In it the prominent atheist, Christopher Hitchens, debates one of my favorite Christian thinkers, Doug Wilson. While on some level I had mixed reviews of the film, I still overwhelmingly support the promotion of public discourse on these issues. Since then I have paid attention to Christopher Hitchens (and Doug Wilson for that matter) and only of late have I discovered his brother, Peter Hitchens.

Ironically Peter is a Christian, and not a quiet one at that. Recently he has written a book why his atheism led him to God. The book is entitled The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith and is now available for pre-order. Here is a short video where Peter describes the book:

Soli Deo Gloria,

kp

Do you feel more loved by God because he makes much of you, or because, at great cost to himself, he frees you to enjoy making much of him forever?

If they had a social gospel in the days of the prodigal son, somebody would have given him a bed and a sandwich and he never would have gone home.

Vance Havner

The following is a excerpt from a piece I wrote on Biblical theology:

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
(Ephesians 4:12-16)

These are the words of the Apostle Paul to the church in Ephesus. Paul reminds us that upon Christ’s resurrection he gave gifts to men, namely the gifts pertaining to instruction of the Word of God. This should be an evident indicator that teaching is important to the ministry of Christ. Why? For the building up of the body of Christ into maturity. It is the churches goal to lead its members to be a reflection of Christ on the earth. The body of Christ is to act in the model of the incarnation of Christ and continually point to and worship the exhalation of Christ. Paul points out the two major goals: unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God. It seems ironic that these two objectives are so frequently pitted against one another. Do we side for truth or unity? The Apostle Paul appears to introduce these two as friends without a need of reconciliation. For truth is the foundation of true unity. Notice that Paul isn’t ascribing a generic unity but rather a unity of the faith. True unity never costs the truth of the faith. True unity is married to the knowledge of the Son of God. This knowledge is to grow us into maturity so that we are no longer tossed around with false teaching and false understanding. The Apostle Paul does not blush about identifying deceitfulness as being a present reality. Instead he commits the church to growing its members into a maturity whereby they will not fall prey to counterfeit gospels.

How is the church grown and sanctified? I believe Paul answered this in the same letter when he wrote, “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:25-27). Christ has redeemed his church by his own blood and is sanctifying her by the Word. It is no mistake that the Word is associated with the cleansing properties of water. Fundamentally, it is Christ who is doing the washing and sanctifying but he chooses to use his Word as the agent. Again we confirm the Scriptures as the center piece of our lives and the life of the church. In honoring the Word, we honor Christ’s promise to sanctify us. Paul identifies Christ as the head of the church and consequently he is slowly fitting us together by equipping us in truth for love. Thus the promotion of unity must be connected with the promotion of truth. London preacher, C. H. Spurgeon once observed:

Christ has not made a nondescript religion, that will hold all sorts of people in it, and yet all shall be alike obedient. Truth does not vacillate like the pendulum which shakes backwards and forwards. It is not like the comet, which is here, there, and everywhere. One must be right, the other wrong. It is not for me to pronounce who is right, or who is wrong. I am not infallible. It is for me to judge of Scripture, as in the sight of God, for myself. I beg you do the same, Do not think any error to be an unimportant one, but try the spirits, prove whether these things are so. I am quite sure that the best way to promote union is to promote truth. It will not do for us to be all united together by yielding to one another’s mistakes. We are to be united heartily, I hope we are. We are to love each other in Christ; but we are not to be so united that we are not able to see each other’s faults, and especially not able to see our own.

What Spurgeon noted here runs contrary to most of our culture, especially church culture. The best way to foster unity is to encourage truth. How can this be true when it is truth that appears to separate us? It is to this question we now turn.

Soli Deo Gloria,
kp

Michael Horton, of White Horse Inn and the book Christless Christianity, wrote a review of the ‘Joel Osteen’ type gospel some time ago. I am currently reading his book, Introducing Covenant Theology, and have found that he is very perceptive writer. While searching for more of what he has written I ran across this article: http://www.wscal.edu/faculty/wscwritings/horton.osteen/glorystory.php

Here is an excerpt:

As the New Testament repeatedly affirms, those who want to be saved by their own obedience need to know that God doesn’t grade on a curve. His record-keeping is bad news, not good news, unless Christ’s obedient record has been credited to us through faith alone. God’s law says, “If you want to be saved by your own effort, here are the terms: Do all these things and you’ll go to heaven; fail to do them and you’ll go to hell.” The revivalists of yesteryear came up with their own list, but it was basically the same threat: “Do or die.” The kinder, gentler version is, “Try harder and you’ll be happier; fail to do them and you’ll lose out on God’s best for your life here and now.” No heaven, no hell; no condemnation or salvation; no perfect obedience of Christ credited to us: Just do your best. Remember, God is keeping score! Christ becomes totally unnecessary in this message.

Osteen reflects the broader assumption among evangelicals that we are saved by making a decision to have a personal relationship with God. If one’s greatest problem is loneliness, the good news is that Jesus is a reliable friend. If the big problem is anxiety, Jesus will calm us down. Jesus is the glue that holds our marriages and families together, gives us purpose for us to strive toward, wisdom for daily life. And there are half-truths in all of these pleas, but they never really bring hearers face to face with their real problem: that they stand naked and ashamed before a holy God and can only be acceptably clothed in his presence by being clothed, head to toe, in Christ’s righteousness.

Soli Deo Gloria,

kp