Kirk Goes to West Point

On June 29, 2009, we dropped our only son and oldest child to West Point, the United States Military Academy. They call it R-Day, Reception Day. I'm sure it is unlike any day at any other regular college. I'm going to describe that all to you, but first let me give you a little debriefing on our trip.

We left home in California early the week before on Tuesday and flew a straight flight from San Francisco to JFK in New York City. We got a great price on the tickets and Virgin America was a unique and quality flight. They have more leg space, leather seats, with little televisions right in front of you where you can follow your trip on a google map and watch programs. I watched some Wimbledon tennis on the way out in addition to reading Duty, Honor, Country: A History of West Point by Stephen E. Ambrose. You can order your food right off this little interactive set as well. They charge you 2 dollars for a headset.

New York City

My wife, Kirk, Julia, and I arrived in New York City and took the air train to Jamaica (this is $5 per person), caught the E line subway to Lexington, and then down two stops to 33rd on the 6 line. I'm not sure, but I think that Manhattan in New York City was where the whole idea of Downtown and Uptown came from. We got a great deal on our hotel from Priceline---I'm talking 70% off the regular price. It costs $2 to ride the subway, per trip, no matter how long it is. We ate that night in little Italy at America's first pizza parlor, Lombardi's, which has the authentic thin crust pizza with the fresh sauce and mozarella. We bought some souvenirs right across from the Empire State Building when we got off the subway coming back.

The next morning Kirk and I got up and worked out in the hotel gym. Then we ate breakfast at Dunkin Donuts. Those are nice. We took the subway uptown to Battery Park. We took the ferry to the Statue of Liberty National Monument---many very impressive views. The ferry stopped on Ellis Island, but we stayed on until Battery Park and got off to walk a little. We moved down the Canyon of Heroes to Wall Street, Trinity Church (where Alexander Hamilton is buried), and then the World Trade Center Memorial. Things are going slowly there. We caught the subway back to our hotel, picked up our luggage, got back on the subway again, and caught the 6 line to 125th Harlem to take the Metro North train to New Rochelle to pick up our rental car. It's cheaper to rent a car outside of NYC.

We should have exited at Grand Central Station. On the trip back, we did. At Harlem, you must walk two blocks to the train station, and it is not a very friendly environment. I mean, we were friendly, but the locals were a little too friendly in a bad sort of way. When my family and I walked out of the subway with our luggage, a local met us with a huge greeting, "Welcome to America!" A man said to my wife, "You look nice!" We walked pretty fast to the station and caught the train to New Rochelle. We should have taken the local train that stops at every station, but we took the express that stopped in Connecticut, so we had to take a train back to arrive in New Rochelle. Our rental car was there. We drove to Fishkill. Traffic was very bad. I wouldn't have expected it so far north, but it was.

Up North from NYC

We got to church on Wednesday night, Liberty Baptist Church, Pastor Paul Morrison, where Kirk will join. We drove to the location and no one was there. They had just gotten into their new building. We had arrived at the old one. We called the pastor and they were then into the service, so we had a Bible study and prayer and then the pastor called after his service, and we drove over to the church and spent about an hour or two with him and his family.

We drove up to my sister Kim's in Massachusetts, arriving at midnight, got up for breakfast and spent time until 11am, when we left to New Hampshire to be with my in-laws and some of the nieces and nephews who were staying with them. When I was there I pulled a muscle in my rib cage working out with Kirk and through the rest of the trip it was interesting breathing and sleeping. We arose at 4:30am and left very early on Sunday morning with my in laws to drive about 3-4 hours to get to the 25th anniversary church service of the church my sister and her family had been attending in Massachusetts. We saw family again and enjoyed the service there. We ate at the church, stayed for a time of dedication of their newly remodeled church building (an old grange hall). They also had a sending ceremony for my brother-in-law, who is moving with my sister and their children down to Virginia to pastor a church there. They also gave a graduation diploma to my nephew, Caleb, who finished with his home schooling.

We left at 3pm from Pittsfield, Massachusetts and got to Fishkill, NY from there at about 5:00pm, so we checked into the motel first, freshened up briefly and went to Sunday evening service. We got to hear Pastor Mike Custer from Bible Baptist in Grand Forks, ND, the church that sent Pastor Morrison to Fishkill. Afterwards we fellowshiped and ate and then left to drive to our motel.

West Point

The next morning we arose to eat breakfast at 6:30am at Cracker Barrell in Fishkill. We left and drove down to West Point at about 7:15am. My wife's brother and his two sons and my brother's son drove down that night and met us for breakfast to be with us all day. We crossed the Hudson River over to Newburgh, NY, and then went South. In front of you is a big mountain. West Point is surrounded by mountains. We got to Stoney Lonesome Gate at about 8:00am. We were greeted by a line of cars going through MP security, who had us open our trunks, etc. We drove forward and ran into another security who directed us to a parking lot. Kirk was wearing knee length Bermuda shorts, a teeshirt, black socks, and his shiny low oxfords. He had one very small duffle bag.

We caught a bus to Eisenhower Hall (they call it Ike's Hall). There we got in line and finally made it into the auditorium where we were given a little speech and then a cadet stood and told us we had 90 seconds to say goodbye. We hugged our son and watched him follow other cadets out the room. We would not talk to him in person until Christmas and only three times by phone and only for 10 minutes each.

We walked out of that building into a very large two story area that had parent clubs and other West Point tables to get material, information, and make purchases. We got Kirk's address and we all sat down and wrote him a letter and delivered it to the West Point post office. That was about 11 letters.

The rest of the day we toured West Point. That was interesting. Maybe I'll write on it more later, but it is built like a Gothic Castle. The buildings are amazing. West Point sits on the Hudson River, a very wide portion that is shaped like an S. It is an impressive view. Famous military men are buried in the cemetery. Trophy point, the plain where the marching occurs, is surrounded by statues of West Point heroes. At 3:00pm we joined the rest of the parents in Eisenhower Hall for a parent briefing from the Superintendent of West Point. He and others made an impressive power point presentation, telling us the basics about West Point as an institution. We left there to go up to the parade grounds to wait for the new cadets to march out to take their oath of allegiance.

Each of eight companies of new cadet plebes marched out from their barracks to Battle Monument at about 5:40pm, led by the United States Military Marching Band, in basic military uniform under the leadership of upper class cadets. We got to see Kirk briefly. He seemed to be enjoying himself. They marched back around the parade grounds to the mess hall. We caught a bus back to the parking lot, said goodbye to the family, and then departed to drop our car off in White Plains, NY. We arrived back home in California on Tuesday at about 4:00pm.

Pray for Kirk while he makes his way through Beast Barracks, Cadet Basic Training.

A Defense of the Peter Masters' Article with Criticism of its Bad Reviews part two

Quite a few reviews have been written for Peter Masters' article, "The Merger of Calvinism with Worldlinessm"and mainly negative.

Douglas Wilson's Review

I have enjoyed reading Douglas Wilson in the past and using the Canon Press logic curriculum. I watched his debate with Christopher Hitchens and learned some helpful truths in dealing with atheists, which we have in plenty here in California. However, as I have become more familiar with him, my appreciation has grown dim. He ends the first paragraph of his review of Masters with this high opinion of himself and personal insult of Masters:

If you are involved in ecclesiastical punditry, never ever let a fat pitch go by.

The assumption is that Wilson has taken Masters' article and hit a home-run. Masters lobbed an easy one to Wilson, so he need only argue with half his brain tied behind his back. I'm sure this is the "serrated edge" that Wilson claims to wield. Let's see what he can do with Masters' soft ball.

Before we can even witness a swing of the bat, Wilson scorns again:

Masters . . . rejects some of the doily arrangements on the davenport of old school pietism. So to speak.

The portly Wilson begins his subtle attack on Masters' manhood, relegating his concerns over genuine worship to the sewing and knitting room. Later you get his hint of the feminine with these phrases:

[H]is (Masters') definition of worldliness is more indebted to the residue of Victorianism.

[People like Masters] sprinkle their daytimers with weekly wine and cheese events in support of the local symphony and/or arts councils.

[Y]ou also have ask the same question about Liszt and Chopin, not to mention other composers of other pieces that sweet homeschool girls play at their piano recitals.

Wilson mounts a preemptive defense of this line of mockery with an explanation of what a bad thing Masters has done in implying that MacArthur and Piper "don't have the love of the Father in them." I didn't read this implication in Masters' piece but Wilson applied the special juice for reading between the lines. I wonder if one can purchase the juice at Canon Press.

Wilson's main problem with Masters' review is his "appeal to certain sectarian traditions as though they were the emerald glow around the throne of God." Nowhere does Masters appeal to sectarian traditions. Pass the cracker-jacks as we wonder when Wilson might waddle to the plate.

Wilson gives himself three wacks at Masters' underhand tosses. Right away he displays the most apparent contradiction of himself. On the one hand, he claims that he would not "allow a Time/Life worship song into a worship service," because of his understanding of "what kind of music is suitable for that occasion." Then later, he writes this:

While working on this post, to take a snippet of my playlist at random, I have listened to "Feelin' Alright" by Joe Cocker, "Rivers of Babylon" by the Melodians, "96 Tears" by ? and the Mysterians, "Lonestar" by Norah Jones, "Almost Hear You Sigh" by the Stones, "Watching the River Flow" by Dylan, "Motherless Child" by Clapton, and you get the picture. Now here is a quick quiz. Get out your Bibles, everybody. Is that playlist worldly?

Wilson says he understands "what kind of music is suitable" for a worship service. Based on his standard of exegesis for his musical playlist, how does he know what music is suitable? Where does the Bible list the music suitable for worship? I've got a simple solution for Wilson: use the same "understanding" that you have for "suitable worship music" to determine whether your playlist is worldly. Wilson wants to have it both ways. He can judge his worship service music with an understanding that he has, but no one can judge his musical playlist because those songs aren't specifically listed anywhere in scripture.

Masters must have had some movement on that fat pitch because I felt a breeze coming from Wilson's bat.

The other genius reason that Wilson says we don't use rock music for a worship service is because "ours (sic) forms of it are almost always lousy rock music." Aaaaah. Yes. If we just knew how to do "good" rock music, then it would be acceptable---I guess good like Dylan, Clapton, and the Stones. Every good classical piano player I've ever asked says that rock music isn't hard for him to play. Maybe our Christian rock isn't violent, syncopated, or sexual enough.

Most of Wilson's essay just assumes that Masters doesn't have the special knowledge, cultural education, and maturity that Wilson possesses in discerning what is worldly music.

Before agreeing with Masters that young Calvinists shouldn't go clubbing, Wilson takes his last big whiff. Masters writes that Christians need "the personal guidance of God in the major decisions" or else strike "a death blow to whole hearted consecration." Wilson spins this into making "personal life-decisions as though the gift of prophecy were still operative today." How did "personal guidance" become extra-scriptural revelation? That's not what I got out of Masters' statement. What I read in Masters' sentence, and perhaps he was not clear enough at this point, was that God can guide believers in the application of Scripture. Application of the Bible doesn't require extra-scriptural revelation. Consecration to God requires applying Scripture. The Bible doesn't tell us the name of the person we're going to marry or what the titles of the songs are on our playlist, but it gives us the principles and we rely on the Holy Spirit ("personal guidance of God") to live a consecrated life.

I concur with Wilson's last statement---"It is not that difficult." Unfortunately, Wilson has taken tee-ball and made it look like Nolan Ryan.

Frank Turk's Review

Frank Turk, the Centurion, chimed in the discussion. Many might have a hard time believing that I essentially agree with Frank through his entire post until he gets to his eleventh paragraph. I don't know if that will make him happy. I would tweak the first ten paragraphs here and there, but it is this statement about Masters that brings Turk and myself into conflict.

[H]e honors and confesses a proto-fundamentalist view of all things, down to making even matters of style and context into urgent doctrinal crises and therefore matters over which to separate.

It isn't as simple as this for Masters. For him, like myself, this is a worship issue. He wants God to be recognized, believed, and worshiped. When evangelicalism offers a worship that so contradicts the character and nature of God, men will be deceived as to who God is and what He desires in worship.

That is about all I differed from Frank.

Dan Phillip's Review

Dan Phillips writes a criticism of Masters' article after he had read both Turk's and Wilson's. Phillips makes this amazing statement about Masters and about Spurgeon:

As disappointing and largely wrongheaded as Masters' rant is (basically he dismisses "new Calvinists" because he doesn't like their music style and their worship style), I am afraid he is at least somewhat in Spurgeon's tradition.

I can applaud the honesty of Phillips. He agrees that Masters takes the same position as Spurgeon on this, so that he rejects what both of them say. Later he says that Spurgeon should not have condemned theater-going---this, of course, coming from a Phillips who is a regular theater attender and who writes reviews on his blog for many of the movies he has seen.

His other problem with was the statement about "personal guidance" that Wilson referred to. I think that Phillips read Wilson and then interpreted Masters in light of reading Wilson. I think they are both wrong about what they are rather reading into what Masters believes and teaches. The pretty much renders moot most of the second half of his post.

A Defense of the Peter Masters' Article with Criticism of its Bad Reviews

One of the most famous churches in the world is the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, England, where for thirty-eight years (1854-1892) Charles Haddon Spurgeon pastored and preached. By the time we get to the late 1960s, the church had shrunk down to a tiny membership. Then Peter Masters became its pastor in 1970 and, despite horrible moral, spiritual, and religious conditions in England, the church has experienced a renaissance of numerical growth with a comparable belief and practice to Spurgeon himself.

Masters, like Spurgeon, is a Calvinist, and one in the Spurgeon tradition. He and his church are aggressively evangelistic while remaining God centered. They have expanded from preaching the gospel, notwithstanding a strong position against many of the unscriptural modern church growth innovations.

Masters has written many books and essays, including Worship in the Melting Pot. Less than a month ago, he wrote an article entitled, "The Merger of Calvinism with Worldliness," a quasi book review of Young, Restless, Reformed, by Collin Hansen. His analysis became more a jumping off point for him to warn of false worship within "new Calvinism." Many well-known, online blogs have responded to Masters' piece, very little positive. This post will support and explain what Masters has written, as well as expose the negative reviews he has received.

The Crux of Peter Masters' Concern

The title of Masters' article aptly communicates his proposition. This section sums it up well:

Indeed, a far better quality Calvinism still flourishes in very many churches, where souls are won and lives sanctified, and where Truth and practice are both under the rule of Scripture. Such churches have no sympathy at all with reporter Collin Hansen’s worldly-worship variety, who seek to build churches using exactly the same entertainment methods as most charismatics and the Arminian Calvary Chapel movement. . . . The new Calvinists constantly extol the Puritans, but they do not want to worship or live as they did.

He warns about worldly, syncretistic worship utilized as church growth methodology and reflecting continuationist charismaticism. He sees Calvinism as the adhesive employed for keeping together the various and contradictory points of view. He evaluates this as an erroneous separation of soteriology from sanctification, yielding a conduct incongruent with God's sovereignty.

Most of the reviews of Masters decried his lack of scriptural exposition. Masters was editorializing. It took on the form of a scriptural exhortation. He didn't refer to specific passages, but he did use biblical, doctrinal truths as a basis of his criticism. He's also exegeted the passages in previous books he's written that stand as a basis for what he says here. He has a reason to be upset. He sees false worship as very bad. Everyone else should too.

My Take on What Masters Was Concerned About

The new Calvinists target the gospel as the minimum objective of fellowship. They get together to revel in the gospel with too much emphasis on reveling. The gospel has become another commodity to consume. They've been saved with the accent on they. They're lovin' their salvation.

The gospel will end in worship, but worship for them has become more about how they feel than what God wants, compatible with the spirit of the age. The current of consumerism flows strong in the United States. The customer wants the best deal for himself. He chooses by what makes him feel the best. What is to make this so special to God is that He gets something that worshipers feel so good about.

The points of Calvinism are not alone enough to stir the new Calvinists' affections above the level of indifference. Instead adoration must be propelled along by the histrionics of the musical composition. They reason that something living must be felt. The music causes a feeling so it must be alive and, therefore, is authentic. The theological content of the words justifies the feeling.

Physiological manifestations validate spiritual reality like is seen in the charismatic movement. They are feelings choreographed by musicians with the credit going to the Holy Spirit. If not produced by the music, they are faked according to the importance of facial expressions to the communication of authenticity. Grimacing, eyes closed, hands waving, and heads wagging are all stock reactions in the catalog of sincerity. And yet the Holy Spirit hasn't worked through music not characteristic of His work. And these aren't responses anywhere in scripture that authenticate spiritual reality.

Within the five points Christ is to be glorified by Calvinism. Jesus chose, atoned, supplied grace, and secured. Instead of the Lord being raised high above and separate from what is common and profane, He is dragged along by the musical choices of professing adherents. Jesus has become an icon to them. They use Him as an excuse to celebrate. The party is fun and Jesus is a good reason to have it. It's so much fun that it must be real, so He must be pleased. And on top of that, 'Jesus' logo is imprinted on my teeshirt with matching grafiti font.' Hardly anything is more heart-felt than grafiti, the crumbling brick walls of a third world infrastructure, and a Mao Cap with a "resolved" symbol in place of the red star.

The most recent spiritual, historical patriarch of new Calvinism is the Jesus movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. These evangelicals often mention fundamentalism's infatuation with the 1950s. Most evangelicals, whether they know it or not, love the 60s and 70s. The Jesus movement invented the new measures for new Calvinism revivalism. Masters makes reference to this when he mentions the "Arminian Calvary Chapel Movement" as well as Francis Schaeffer's sixties sit-in style of biblical dialogue that mirrored what college students were doing on the campuses at the time. Schaeffer's method could easily be the forefather of today's online forum where everyone with an opinion counts as much as anyone elses.

Some of the important new measures the Jesus movement introduced into evangelicalism are worldly music, very casual dress, new hip styles of communication, casual relationships between boys and girls outside parental authority, and cutting edge marketing. All of these provided a comfortable and accepting environment for that generation of young people. We see the same new measuresas the Jesus movement (except worse) in the new Calvinism with Piper, Macarthur, Mahaney, and Driscoll. The reason these new measures work is because these young people are immersed in the world as a Christian liberty. The measures speak their langugae, a worldly one, and makes the religion an acceptable one to them.

There really isn't that much different, probably only a little in degree, between the new measures of new Calvinism and the methods of Rick Warren and the seeker sensitive. It is obvious that this new missiology and contextualization are appealing to a demographic. The content has more substance in the new Calvinism, but the methods are often the same. The joy in Jesus Christ and the teaching of scripture isn't enough. It must be embellished with the enoucrements of the natural man.

The points of Calvin start with total depravity. The new Calvinism parks on the inability of depravity, so that when Christ chooses, ability is what they've received. They were unable and now they're able. They seem to forget that depravity was alleviated as well. Enabling grace limits the power of unredeemed flesh. Its power no longer has dominion. Children of darkness become children of light. That separation is blurred by the revivalistic new measures of new Calvinism.

The new Calvinism lacks the distinction between the sacred and the profane. Indeed, they are jumbled together in a way that you can't tell where one stops and the other ends. Recently John MacArthur has become incensed with the smutty language used in the preaching of Mark Driscoll, and rightly so. However, he doesn't seem to have the discernment to see how that the new revivalistic measures his church employs have profaned the holy name and character of Christ by framing Him within the common fashions of smutty culture.

In contrast to Finney revivalism, some serious exposition in the conferences and gatherings supposedly justifies the new measures of new Calvinism. Many of the various video clips of preaching used to advertise this preaching attract using worldly means. The clips themselves accentuate the theatrics one would experience if he chose to attend. The exposition in these meetings does enlighten in doctrine, but often without the specific and strong application that would give pause to a seeker more interested in the fun time.

Comments on Varied Details of Masters' Piece

"Immoral Drug-induced Musical forms of Worldly Culture"

The forms of present rock music utilized in contemporary Christian music was induced by drugs. The world itself says this (also here among many other places online). Rock musicians were often on drugs when they wrote their music. However, they also wrote music that used fuzztone, feedback, synthesizers, and volume to mimick the supposed mind-expanding properties of marijuana and LSD. The drug induced state was simulated by electronic amplification. The Jesus movement and the hippie subculture both arose from the same location and with this same music. The grunge used by Mark Driscoll in his "worship" was part of the drug counter-culture in Seattle, the location of his church. This is the type of music that Douglas Wilson proudly proclaims is on his playlist at home:

While working on this post, to take a snippet of my playlist at random, I have listened to "Feelin' Alright" by Joe Cocker, "Rivers of Babylon" by the Melodians, "96 Tears" by ? and the Mysterians, "Lonestar" by Norah Jones, "Almost Hear You Sigh" by the Stones, "Watching the River Flow" by Dylan, "Motherless Child" by Clapton, and you get the picture.

I suppose that this is what the grace of God means to Douglas Wilson.

One of the vaunted new conferences is called Resolved, after Jonathan Edwards’ famous youthful Resolutions (seventy searching undertakings). But the culture of this conference would unquestionably have met with the outright condemnation of that great theologian.

I believe that Masters could safely say these two sentences in the light of Edwards' book Treatise on the Religious Affections. This conference violates the major theme of Religious Affections that Edwards unpacked from scripture.

Worldly culture provides the bodily, emotional feelings, into which Christian thoughts are infused and floated. Biblical sentiments are harnessed to carnal entertainment. (Pictures of this conference on their website betray the totally worldly, showbusiness atmosphere created by the organisers.)

Masters is here differentiating between passions and affections that Edwards treated in his book. The latter starts with the mind and the former with the flesh. Masters implies that the doctrinal message is ruined when it is harnessed to carnal entertainment. MacArthur decries the attack on truth in our culture and yet what Masters describes is at the very root of the attack. David Wells has much to comment on this in his No Place for Truth:

What shapes the modern world is not powerful minds, but powerful forces, not philosophy but urbanization, capitalism, and technology. As the older quest for truth has collapsed, intellectual life had increasingly become little more than a lgoss on the process of modernization. . . . Christian faith, which has made many easy alliances with modern culture in the past few decades, is also living a fool's paradise, comforting itself about all of the things that God is doing in society (which is the most commonly heard religious version of this idea of progress) while it is losing its character, if not its soul.

Wells says this about the place of feelings in evangelicalism:

Today we "demand instant access to authentic reality, " he [author Brian Wilson] says, and these ministries do indeed offer instant and painless access, the authenticity of which is "guaranteed by subjective feeling, reinforced by group-engendered emotions"; the televangelists capitalize on the widespread perception that "reality is to be felt rather than cognitively realized."

The contradiction in harnassing "Biblical truths to carnal entertainment" is exposed by Wells:

The growth in this type of evangelical faith in America is in part also to be explained by the powerful undercurrents of self-absorption that course through the modern psyche. Many charismatics have made the experience of God rather than the truth of God foundational. The self therefore becomes pivotal. This, in turn, links with the deep subterranean sense of progress that is inescapable in America, as the proponents of this movement tout it as the most recent cresting of the Spirit.

When you look at their ‘favourite films’, and ‘favourite music’ you find them unashamedly naming the leading groups, tracks and entertainment of debased culture, and it is clear that the world is still in their hearts.

The new Calvinists talk about worldliness being only a matter of the heart. Even if it were just in one's heart, it will come out in the life and Masters is right to point out that this is how it is seen. The new Calvinists talk about their favorite lager, the latest blockbuster, and the music of their most beloved rock group. This displays the world in their hearts.

The new Calvinism is not a resurgence but an entirely novel formula which strips the doctrine of its historic practice, and unites it with the world.

The old Calvinists like Spurgeon, Gill, Owen, and Turretin, among many others had much to say against worldliness. And they did in a day when there was so much less to be attracted by in the world. You can't appreciate their soteriology with appreciating their seperation from the world. When you read those old Calvinists, you see that their sanctification arose out of their soteriology. You couldn't divide the two with them. The new Calvinists have separated them anyway.

A final sad spectacle reported with enthusiasm in the book is the Together for the Gospel conference, running from 2006. A more adult affair convened by respected Calvinists, this nevertheless brings together cessationists and non-cessationists, traditional and contemporary worship exponents, and while maintaining sound preaching, it conditions all who attend to relax on these controversial matters, and learn to accept every point of view. In other words, the ministry of warning is killed off, so that every -error of the new scene may race ahead unchecked.

Wells talks about this phenomenon in No Place for Truth:

The kind of pluralism that is necessary to eliminate antagonisms among the competing views has the effect of reducing the values of each inhabitant to the lowest common denominator. City life requires the kind of friendliness that allows us to cohabit with the mass ethic. It is typically assumed that this sort of friendliness must be divested of moral and religious judgment, since it is difficult for our society to see how judgments about truth and morals can escape the charge of social bigotry. And so we settle for the kind of friendliness within which all absolutes perish either for lack of interest or because of the demands of social etiquette.

It doesn't seem that Masters is willing to settle for that "friendliness." I know I won't. The new Calvinists do.

(to be continued) I will deal with several of the negative reviews that Masters has received.

Majoring on the Minors

A few days ago, I received a nasty comment here from 'anonymous,' and he started it with some sarcasm about my majoring on the minors. Don't look for the comment. I didn't post it. It was error-filled, so I wasn't interested in anyone entertaining its content, especially since he wouldn't own it. But it did motivate me to speak to the concept of "majoring." I've found the criticism, "you major on the minors," to be common. Rather than dealing with the actual exegesis or application, the critic attacks the choice of subject matter. It is akin to a poor review of a book on Gettysburg because the author didn't choose Antietam.

I refuse to accept the 'majoring on minors' charge. The Bible chronicles the technical character of God. He wants minutiae kept. I believe we invented "minors" for fake unity or to excuse some kind of disobedience. A violation is minor to the ones who want to do it. Our concern should be whether God is pleased or not.

Cain thought fruits and vegetables were minor. Nadab and Abihu thought their unique recipe for the altar of incense was minor. Achan thought the Babylonian garment was minor. Uzzah thought touching the ark was minor. David thought the means of carrying the ark was minor. Moses thought that striking the rock was minor. Ananias and Saphhira thought that holding back part of their offering was minor. Israel thought that using Gideon's ephod for worship was minor and that worshiping God in the high places was minor.

What we have with these denials of the "minors" are presumptuous sins. We ought to instead pray with the Psalmist (19:13):

Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression.

2 Peter 2:10 speaks of presumptuousness:

But chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government. Presumptuous are they, selfwilled, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities.

We can see the presumptuousness comes from a disrespect of authority. The presumptuous takes liberty where he doesn't have it. He assumes too much. He takes matters into his own hands, presuming that it shouldn't matter as much as other issues, because it isn't as important. And yet, if God said it, it's important. He possesses all authority. If He said it, He meant it, and He expects us to obey it. If we love Him, we will keep what He said, and it won't be burdensome to us to do so (1 John 5:3).

The "minor" that my critic disapproved was the obedience of Deuteronomy 22:5. Deuteronomy 22:5 ends by saying that all who violate one of its prohibitions "are abomination unto the LORD thy God." My critic is saying that an abomination to God is a minor issue. How could anyone who loves God think that becoming "an abomination to God" is permissible, only a minor issue? John writes in Revelation 21:8 that "the abominable . . . . shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death." You can see how presumptuous they are who say that disobedience to Deuteronomy 22:5 is a minor issue.

The Issue of Designed Gender Distinction: Answering Comments or Questions

I commented on the blog of a young man who is leaving fundamentalism. One of his big criticisms was "standards." In the comment section, another pastor who blogs, Will at Reforming Baptist, wrote this:

KB: "On the pants/skirt, I don't think the position gets explained exegetically and historically well enough, but your position will fail exegetically and historically"

A few weeks ago on the former fundies blog, I demonstrated that your argument for this is not exegetical, it's circular. I'm not going to get into it here, but your argument for "the male article" is strictly a cultural determination and not a biblical one, yet you say that the culture used to hold to a biblical standard which can't be found anywhere in the Bible concerning the definite male article.

As you can see, he pulled a quote from my comment (I'm "KB") and then addressed it. I want to deal with this idea that my position on designed gender distinction is not exegetical. Of course I believe he's wrong. I think it does show a blind spot in how to exegete and then apply scripture that is common in many evangelicals and fundamentalists.

A Model for Exegesis in Passages that Require Second Premise Application

Ephesians 4:29 reads: "Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth." When we make application of that command, that imperative, we can see it in this logical syllogism:

Major Premise: Corrupt communication is disobedience to God's Word, that is, sin.
Minor Premise: #&$%@*# is corrupt communication.
Conclusion: Therefore, #&$%@*# is disobedience to God's Word, that is, sin.

Paul did not tell us what corrupt communication was. When he wrote that passage in the first century, the English language didn't exist. So we must apply this passage culturally. We would assume that there is English language that is corrupt communication. If we cannot make that assumption, then we cannot apply this passage and it is meaningless to us. We know that is not the case. I'm going to guess that Will thinks that there are English words that Paul would be referring to "in principle" in this verse, words that we should be expected by the verse to refrain from communicating. Does Will disregard it because of a "cultural determination?" I doubt it. Does he dismiss the verse because it is a "circular argument?" Again, I strongly doubt it. So that's what makes his little diatribe a totally moot point.

When we make application of scripture, we must often use second premise arguments. That is not a circular argument. It says that there are certain truths in the real world to which scripture is referring. Let's now show how this works with Deuteronomy 22:5. But first, let's read the verse:

The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God.

Here's a syllogism that comes from the verse:

Major Premise: A woman who wears a designated male-only article is an abomination to God,
Minor Premise: Pants or trousers are a designated male-only article.
Conclusion: A woman who wears pants or trousers is an abomination to God.

I'm dealing only with Will's criticism, the so-called cultural one. (I want to limit the comment section to discussion only about this particular point, so I won't publish comments that are off this narrow aspect.) Quite a few verses in the Bible require application within a culture. That doesn't make the interpretation of those verses less exegetical. We've got to apply scripture within our culture. That doesn't take away from the meaning or the authority of the Bible in those issues.

What About Culture on Designed Gender Distinction?

The position that the culture determines what are the male-only and female-only articles of clothing is the historic position. You'll see it word for word in seventeenth century Puritan Vincent Alsop's "The Sinfulness of Strange Apparel." Women don't have on the male garment and men don't wear the female articles of clothing.

Even though culture makes the application, the purpose of this prohibition in Deuteronomy 22:5 relates to God's created design as seen in Genesis 1:26-27. There we see God created man in His image, male and female He created them. The image of God is seen in both male and female. The distinctions between the two make up the image of God in man. This is how God's image is represented by man, by distinctions between male and female.

Every culture and people are responsible to keep Deuteronomy 22:5. You can see this in the words "all that do." In every instance these words are found together (in the Hebrew too), they refer to all of mankind, any nation or people. This one grammatical point says that this wasn't only an Israelite regulation.

In 1 Corinthians 11:3-16 Paul expects the Corinthians to keep a culturally designed distinction between male and female with the head-covering. We can see in Isaiah 47:2-3 that the absence of a head-covering for Babylonian women ("uncovered locks") was a shame unto them. In 1 Corinthians 11, not having the head-covering was a shame to a Corinthian like the shorn or shaved head was significant of a prostitute. This is obviously a culturally related issue, because in our culture, the shaved female head does not portray a prostitute. It did in Corinth.

This criticism usually centers on the dress that was worn by men and women when Israel received this law. Most say that men and women both wore robes. Perhaps they did. The Bible doesn't say. What is ironic about this criticism is that the Bible doesn't tell us what the male or female garments were.

For the sake of dealing with this criticism, however, let's say that there was a male robe and a female robe. I think there were. The point of Deuteronomy 22:5 was that there the robes were designed differently. How were they different? There may have been colors that must be kept different, ornamentation that must remain peculiar to each robe, perhaps the actual type of material, the girdle, the sleeve length, and more. We don't know what those distinctions were. The point of Deuteronomy 22:5 is that they were designed distinct, not sameness.

For centuries in our culture, the unique male garment, which was public and constant, for the purpose of distinction, was the pants or trousers. The woman distinguished herself from the man with the skirt or dress. When women began wearing pants or trousers, the distinction was not replaced, but removed. Women began wearing pants at the expense of the distinction, not for distinction.

For arguments sake, let's say that now both men and women both wore pants, like we are saying that in Old Testament Israel, they both wore robes. Some would argue that since they both wore robes, we can both wear pants. That makes some sense at first glance. However, the point of Deuteronomy 22:5 was that there was a male-only robe that was distinct from a female-only robe. The woman would not put on the man's robe and the man would not put on the woman's robe. This did not relate to size differences or even fit (tightness or looseness), but some clear, public, designed distinctions that made them purposefully different. That has not occurred with pants. The point of pants was to remove the distinction.

Our culture has not replaced the distinct female garment, the dress, with a new one, pants. Men wear pants. Now women wear pants. Some will say, "But women wear women's pants." But no distinctions have been designed in women's pants for the purposes of obeying God's requirement in Deuteronomy 22:5. We haven't said as a culture or as Christians, "Well, women's pants shall always have the zipper on the side." Or, "Women's pants must always be of a pastel color and men's pants must always be either dark brown, blue, or black." We have made no distinctions between the two. Sure, women will wear pants that are more feminine looking---in color, in embroidery, or unfortunately in tightness---but these are not designed distinctions. Women can and do wear pants the same color, material, embroidery, and sewing as men.

Again, the point of pants on women was to remove the distinction. This attacked the image of God in men. This attacked God's design. That's why the person who does so is an abomination to God. It is a personal insult to God. This should be a serious issue to Christians. It should be about God and not about fitting in with the world.

Is There Something Non-Cultural In the Argument?

At the end of Job, God speaks directly to Job. In two places, Job 38:3 and 40:7, God says this to Job:

Gird up now thy loins like a man.

God says that only men gird their loins. What is "girding your loins?" Men wore a robe. Only men girded their robe. Men had a belt, a girdle around their waist (in the loin area). When they would do manly activity, they would pull up the center of the robe and tuck it into their girdle so that they could function as a man.

The loins are between the legs. Only men would pull a garment up to the loins. Pants permanently girded the male garment. The new expertise and skill and technology in sewing allowed for pants to be made, so that men could have their garments permanently girded. This way men could ride a horse, jump over barriers, and run much more easily.

"Gird up your loins like a man" means nothing to us in Job if we don't understand what that practice meant. God said that this girding was a unique male activity or appearance. We should at least understand from this text that God wants these distinctions in appearance.

How Should We Determine Our Position On Issues?

When we take a position on an issue we start with interpretation of the appropriate passages. Then we investigate as to whether this is a historical position. Have Christians believed like this in the past? In other words, is it a private interpretation? It shouldn't be. If it is a non-historic position, great scriptural exegesis should overturn it. Then we make an application of the passage on the issue.

What I have found with this issue of designed gender distinctions is that those who do not take the male pants and female dress position do not spend any time on exegesis themselves. They are not curious as to what the historical position is. All I've seen them do is take pot shots at those who take the same position as I do and usually ridicule.

I would hope to see critics study the passages and history. I would expect them to interact with the multitude of commentaries that take the same position as I do. They don't. That should be tell-tale to anyone who is attempting to sort out his position. Pot shots and ridicule should not be respected as a way to deal with any issue.

Who Would Make the Decision to Replace the Distinctions?

When these cultural changes occur, it should be a big deal. It was when women started wearing pants. If there were distinctly female pants, who would decide that had occurred? The culture would. So has it? It hasn't. Why not? The culture isn't interested in distinctions. That was the point for allowing the distinction to disappear.

What our culture has done in allowing this distinction to be removed is something unique in the history of mankind. Secularists believe that mankind has been here millions of years. We've actually been here around 6000 years. Men have believed in a creator or a designer. We have moved away from that belief as a culture. We have left the concept of a designer so it is no wonder that it doesn't matter if we reflect design any more in our culture. When Christians do not obey Deuteronomy 22:5, they are supporting this false idea that there is no design for humanity.

Our culture isn't going to decide to replace old distinctions with new ones. For that reason, on this issue, Christians can't follow the culture. We must go back to the distinctions that were removed. Those were pants for men and dresses for women.

Two Obvious Contemporary Theological Contradictions and their Meaning part two

God "cannot deny himself" (2 Timothy 2:13). "Let God be true, but every man a liar" (Romans 3:4). We should not expect contradictions. This is not the nature of God. Jesus said, "I am the truth" (John 14:6). There isn't more than one truth.

From this perfect unity of God's attributes and revelation of Himself and His will through Scripture, we expect the same lack of contradiction in our own doctrine and practice. Recently, however, two such contradictions have caught my attention. I wrote about a first in part one, entitled: "Contradiction Number One: The Eruption over the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship Sermon."

Contradiction Number Two: The Supposed Rejection of Total Apostasy and Yet a Belief in a Total Apostasy in the Scriptural Doctrine of the Perfect Preservation of Scripture

The concept of a total apostasy is foundational to most cults. They must prove that the doctrine and practice of the first century early church has been forsaken for an erroneous replacement. For instance, the Jehovah's Witnesses must believe that the pure, original teaching of the Person of Christ had been lost to the conspiratorial Trinitarians. The Campbellites must accept that the pure, original teaching of salvation had been lost to the novel salvation-by-grace-through-faith alone view. The Mormons, to make room for their theological system, must show how that the right interpretation of scripture had actually been lost.

We have a scriptural basis for not believing in a total apostasy. Any belief that espouses a total apostasy of doctrine, we should reject. True doctrine will not be lost. We should assume that. Paul in 1 Timothy 4:1 writes:

Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils.

The key here is that "some shall depart from the faith." Not all. Some. "The faith," which includes all of the teachings of scripture, will not be lost. Ironically, even most of those, who don't think we have all the words of the original manuscripts of the Bible available to us, do believe that scripture promises that none of the doctrines will be lost. This is an important part of their belief in preservation, that is, that no doctrine is lost in the words of the critical text. They hope to calm the fears of those who are finding out for the first time that 'we're not sure what the words of the originals are.'

Jude 1:3 also rejects a total apostasy.

Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.

The key portion on this is "the faith which was once delivered unto the saints." "Once" comes from the Greek hapax, which means, "once for all time." It is a strong statement about the teachings of God's Word. They were delivered to the saints once and for all time. "Delivered" is aorist, speaking of completed action. The deliverance of the faith was complete. We don't need to be concerned that we had not yet been given doctrine that God still planned for us to receive. From this verse we believe that no doctrine would be lost.

A scriptural pneumatology, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, precludes the possibility of a total apostasy in the age in which we live. Jesus made promises that ensure that every Christian can count on having all of the teachings from God's Word.

John 16:13---Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.

1 John 2:27---But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.

In John 16:13, we see that the Holy Spirit "will guide [us] into all truth" and in 1 John 2:27 that the Holy Spirit "teaches [us] of all things" and "is no lie." Biblical Christianity will last and every doctrine will survive in its midst.

Does this mean that there will never be a total apostasy? There will be a total apostasy. 2 Thessalonians 2 talks of that time and we know that this apostasy will be witnessed when the Antichrist reveals himself. Verse three informs us of that:

Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.

The "falling away" (apostasy) and the "son of perdition" being revealed occur at the same time period. Also the Holy Spirit, the restrainer (the one who "lets" or "restrains"), will be taken away.

For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.

The Holy Spirit will go before the apostasy occurs, explaining how it could take place. 2 Thessalonians 2 goes on to describe it in verses eight through eleven:

8 And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: 9 Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, 10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. 11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:

Until this occurs, there will be no total apostasy. All doctrines will remain intact.

So What Happened to the True Doctrine of the Preservation of Scripture?

Most evangelicals today say that the true doctrine of the preservation of Scripture is that God chose not to preserve the words of the original manuscripts. He preserved the doctrines of scripture, but we do not possess a perfect copy of God's Word any more. Enough mistakes were made in copying that we do not know what the words of the original are anymore. They contend that this is the orthodox doctrine. Those who do believe in perfect preservation they will attack as heterodox and heretical.

If what these evangelicals propose, which includes many fundamentalists, were actually true, then we should find their doctrine from 1500 to 1800 among orthodox, evangelical Christianity, that is, the ones who possessed the Holy Spirit. However, when we read the doctrine of reformation era and post-reformation era saints, we don't see this supposedly orthodox doctrine of the "preservation of all the doctrines but not the words." They didn't believe that. They believed that they had available to them all of the words of Scripture. You find this in the Westminster Confession (WC) and the London Baptist Confession and the Formula Consensus Helvetica. You will find this bibliology of modern evangelicalism and fundamentalism nowhere during that time period.

When we can't find a particular doctrine in history, we should look to see if we can determine when it arose. This is actually simple. Evangelicals didn't start holding this view until Benjamin Warfield of Princeton Seminary came along to read this view into the WC in the late 19th century. No one else had read this doctrine in the WC until that point. Many evangelicals and then fundamentalists (once the fundamentalist movement began in the early 20th century) latched ahold of this new Warfield doctrine.

Today you can read fundamentalist materials written that attempt to formulate a history to their new doctrine. As you read their books and articles, you see that they trace the teaching no further than the late 19th century. And then they claim this as a historic position. You read this in God's Word in Our Hands: The Bible Preserved for Us and in God's Word Preserved and God's Word Preserved: A Defense of Historic Separatist Definitions and Beliefs. Notice how Sproul says, "Historic," in his title. I believe that we would need to give a new definition to "historic" if "historic" refers to a doctrine that one can trace back a little over one hundred years. That is just the opposite of a genuine understanding of "historic."

Neither of the above mentioned books does anything to show why the history of 1500-1800 could not be true. They don't show why we shouldn't believe what Christians believed in that time period. Both Sproul and the authors of the other book just make an assertion that they have a history, one that cannot be proven for them. They either don't think it important to deal with historic doctrine or they're ignorant of it. If their doctrine on preservation is true, then there was a total apostasy from 1500 to 1800 at least. They need to explain that. Not only haven't they, but no one has. That should make their doctrine completely suspect as the actual new doctrine, the new heterodox doctrine of preservation.

When you read the materials by mainly fundamentalist authors in their multiple volumes attacking the historic doctrine of preservation and the King James Version of the Bible, what you will see is that they mainly resort to ad hominem attacks, including slanderous smears of those who hold to the scriptural and historical position. This is a major part of their strategy to make their position acceptable. They attempt to discredit those who take the historical orthodox belief. They often point out how that they are the ones that are being slandered and misrepresented, and yet, this very activity is a major technique they utilize to buttress their own position.

True believers should expect more than this theological contradiction of those who claim orthodoxy. They ought to be able to produce some history. If they can't, then they should admit that they're holding to a new position. To do otherwise is dishonest and manipulative. A new doctrine should not arise without scriptural and historical support.

If I had this kind of charge brought against me, that is, that I am believing a brand new doctrine without historical basis, and that by doing so, I am holding to the total apostasy of a particular doctrine, I would take it very seriously. I would go to the one(s) making the charge and give them my answer. I wouldn't stand for it. I would want to show that it wasn't true. I would expect to see that reaction from men, evangelical and fundamentalist, who claim to hold the truth.

Two Obvious Contemporary Theological Contradictions and their Meaning part one

Taxing cigarettes and taxing income. Do you see the contradiction? Government taxes cigarettes to what? Stop smoking. And then they tax income to what? Stop income. No, not for the second one. You can see how a progressive tax is actually a regressive tax. This is simple. We can understand it. But I'm not dealing with government and politics. I've got two other obvious contradictions in the realm of theology. These seem to appear again and again.

Contradiction Number One: The Eruption over the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship Sermon

I need to give some back story for those who are not aware of this. The Fundamental Baptist Fellowship (FBF) is a fellowship of independent Baptist pastors who claim to be a part of fundamentalist Christianity too. On April 6-7 the FBF held a meeting of the South Regional Fellowship at Wilds Christian Camp. At this meeting, Pastor Danny Sweatt was invited to preach.

I knew nothing about this meeting until I read about it on a blog that I visit to read from time to time to gather the thoughts of a younger fundamentalist, Pastor Bob Bixby, in Rockford, IL. His post is actually what started the firestorm. He wrote several other follow up posts (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

What Pastor Sweatt (whom I met a couple of times when I was in college---at that time he was the music director of an independent Baptist church in the Chicago area) did in his sermon was attempt to deal with what he saw as the biggest problem in fundamentalism today. It was mainly a speech in which he attempted to defend big name fundamentalists from the recent past and then to criticize the new heroes of today's young fundamentalists, which happen to be new-evangelical and Calvinist. As part of his diatribe, he spent a few moments dealing with Calvinism.

That I know of, Pastor Bixby said something first. If it was he alone, there would probably not be any kind of significant conflict that would have ensued. But then the dean of the Central Baptist Theological Seminary, Kevin Bauder, wrote about it in his weekly column, called In the Nick of Time, along with a follow-up. This ratcheted up the rhetoric with numerous posts being written on blogs all over fundamentalism, as well as a few well-known evangelicals.

Since Kevin Bauder entered the frey, the FBF has posted a statement on the controversy on the front page of its website. Many forum threads broke out at the fundamentalist forum, SharperIron, on the subject, including one polling its members as to whether they believe the FBF statement was strong enough. Danny Sweatt hasn't said anything publically that I've heard, although at his church website, he has linked on the front page to a downloadable book against Calvinism, called Deconstructing Calvinism.

The Theological Contradiction

That's the back story, but what I see as a theological contradiction is found in the second of the two essays written by Bauder. In his third to fifth paragraphs, he writes:

If we did not challenge leadership such as that of Rice, then we were too complacent. If we did challenge it, however, and a fight ensued, then Carpenter was ready to spank us for being schismatic. I suggested that this was a no-win situation.

Carpenter’s response was that there are plenty of intermediate steps between tolerance of an evil and outright separation. For instance, he said, you can admonish a brother but not withdraw fellowship from him. What Carpenter found distressing was the unwillingness of fundamentalists to attempt these intermediate measures.

I think that Carpenter was not entirely correct. Fundamentalists have indeed attempted intermediate measures.

It is here where I see the major flaw in fundamentalism. For some reason, fundamentalists don't see the contradiction. Or they see it and choose to ignore it. Bauder calls it a no-win situation. Well, I didn't know there were any no-win situations for Christians. Of course, there are not, but a fundamentalist error brings one. No-win is another word for contradiction. It is a contradiction that appears again and again and again and again, which produces the incessant fighting in fundamentalism.

"Intermediate Measures"

The problem is the one of "intermediate measures." The solution is found, according to the man Carpenter, the provost of Calvin Seminary in Bauder's story, and according to Bauder, in something between tolerance of evil and outright separation. Let's get this right---we don't choose tolerance of evil and we don't choose separation. Bauder and fundamentalism, I have noticed, says that there is some kind of relationship that isn't toleration but also isn't separation. Do you understand that it isn't possible scripturally to tolerate unrepentant evil without separating? So why do that?

We have a rub here. There is a contradiction between tolerance of evil and choosing separation. If we don't choose separation, we tolerate evil. We're talking about unrepentant sin or false doctrine. But Bauder expresses what he sees as his problem and the problem of fundamentalism and why it is that evangelicals like Carpenter say they can't get along with fundamentalism. It is in this section of Bauder's piece:

If we did not challenge leadership such as that of Rice, then we were too complacent. If we did challenge it, however, and a fight ensued, then Carpenter was ready to spank us for being schismatic. I suggested that this was a no-win situation.

We can't be schismatic and we can't be complacent. No-win. It seems that the politics are actually being played right here. We've got to get along so that we're not schismatic. Schismatic with what? What are we dividing if we don't tolerate evil? Bauder doesn't say. He assumes we understand. He means we are splitting the "body of Christ." Of course, the body of Christ to fundamentalists is fundamentalism, which it isn't, but for intents of keeping together something in the realm of evangelicalism, they draw the line at fundamentalism.

Fundamentalists in the past have thought that they had good reason to keep together and exclude evangelicals from this hypothetical "body of Christ." The evangelicals were too bad, too evil. They messed up too much. But the FBF-types look over at who they see as their ugly cousin revivalists or easy-believism-ers or KJV-onlyists or, as Bauder says, the "bellicose," and wag their heads and whisper, "These guys are worse than John Piper and Mark Dever and at least John MacArthur, and probably D. A. Carson. We're more comfortable with those conservative evangelicals than we are with these theological inbreeds." I see the wheels turning among fundamentalists, who still believe in separation, explaining how that these conservative evangelicals are enough separatist that they will tolerate fellowship with them. They would contend that these conservative evangelicals are the militant fundamentalists of the early twentieth century. That's not true, but that's the elephant in the room now.

They hear the Sweatt message at an official FBF function and the buzzers start going off. "We've got to do something about this. At least FBF was a safe haven. We can give the fundamentlist ugly cousins the cold shoulder, but we're not going to be able to do that with an FBF. That we can't tolerate." Hence the feud in the fellowship. If the FBF can't monitor the inmates, well, we'll just have to see what happens. The threat is out there.

John Piper and Phil Johnson have their ear to the rail. They foresee the prospects of additions to their gospel coalitions. Together for the Gospel and the Shepherd's Conference are already a fundamentalist reunion. They have the proverbial fundamentalist track in their workshops. Accepted fence straddlers like Andy Naselli have the heat on and the car waiting.

Sweatt brought frightening recollection of a former time. Abusive leaders who kept power over the constituency with harsh platform rhetoric. Or in the destructive whispers of the backroom corridors. Almost all power coalesced within the human derived organization on the few flamboyant, who wielded it for maximum self-service. No matter how embarrassing they may be, their privileges remained untouched. In this present age, we insist that we spread the faux authority thinner, cobbling together the coalition with diplomacy. The pendulum has swung to cerebral heroes who are multi-syllabic. Someone with the right mix of popularity, likeability, success, and education could harness the reins of power once again.

What's Missing

What seems to be missing in all this? I don't think it is a what. It's a Who. God. God is missing in the equation. What does He want? Does He really want intermediate measures? Does He want a hybrid toleration-separation?

If the body of Christ is all believers, then any division is schismatic. Yet scripture teaches to separate. How can unity not coexist with evil? This is the contradiction that manifests a flaw in doctrine. In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul talks about the communion of the body of Christ. Communion exists in the church. We don't have a universal, invisible communion. We're held together by the ordinances, baptism and the Lord's Table, by church discipline, and by the offices of pastor and deacons, a one-mindedness that is found only in the Lord's assembly.

We don't have to tolerate any sin or false doctrine. We're not supposed to. But we will if we look to intermediate measures and something bigger than a church for unity. Any other way will keep presenting the incessant contradictions that we see in fundamentalism and evangelicalism today. You don't have to sacrifice unity for separation or separation for unity if your ecclesiology is scriptural.

The church is a place of independence and protection. We can believe and practice scripture and proclaim it. The church just isn't big enough for most. It hasn't been big enough through much of the last two millennia. It was big enough for Jesus. Still is. If we could be happy with the church, we could have the confidence to resist these clubs of compromise that minimize doctrine to a lowest common denominator. We should always keep the right spirit, but we'll be less concerned about hurting someone's feelings. We're thinking about pleasing God. We break fellowship over doctrine and practice. Why? To honor God. To please Him. To walk by faith. We unify over doctrine and practice. We don't tolerate evil. We don't look for intermediate measures.

POST UPDATE: Sometimes I read my posts to my wife. I just did that. She commented that when she thought of "intermediate measures" she thought of Matthew 18:15-17 with the steps for church discipline. Wow. That's how simple this is. But that isn't what Bauder means by "intermediate measures." He means something that is entirely unscriptural that will keep unity while showing that the FBF isn't tolerant. And that's what the FBF did with their statement. They took on an intermediate measure. My wife then asked, "What gives the FBF authority to post that article?" Good question, huh? And it shows how easy this is. No one gave the FBF authority. I told her that the FBF didn't really tell Sweatt that they weren't tolerant. They wrote something that was ambivalent enough to retain deniability. They could deal with Sweatt without actually dealing with Sweatt. Doesn't this sound like politics to you?

One other thing. When you look at the context of Bauder's usage of "intermediate measures," language taken from Carpenter, a new-evangelical, this is not saying that this is something temporary and more will come later. This is saying that this is how we operate in fundamentalism. We take intermediate measures to deal with men so that we don't tolerate and neither do we separate. We find some middle ground, some unscriptural middle ground. Dan Sweatt doesn't use exposition. The FBF and Bauder don't use it either. There isn't a passage that explains "intermediate measures." None. For those who are saying that "intermediate measures" means "more is coming later," you are misreading what Bauder wrote. "Intermediate doesn't relate to time, but to position. It is a position between two other positions, not a time that is between two other times.

By the way, why is it that "intermediate measures" are so good? They make a no-win situation a win-win situation. It's like President Obama with his supreme court nominee. He chose a female Latina who likes to make policy with her court decisions. Republicans won't want to oppose the nomination because they're afraid they'll lose Latino votes. Plus she has a rags to riches story that will be hard to resist. Republicans can latch on to her story to tell their own story to their own supporters. I'm just using that as an illustration, but what am I talking about? The FBF has done enough to hold together their coalition. That's what matters most to them. But what about to God?

Bauder goes to a new-evangelical to find out how fundamentalists are to operate. Why would he do that? Shouldn't the new-evangelicals be coming to fundamentalists how to function? Aren't we the ones with the scriptural position? Why is it that it is so important to make Carpenter happy? Again, shouldn't we just always do what scripture says?

In the next post, I'll deal with number 2.

Maybe the Two Biggest Recent Economic Lies

We should vote on facts and not impassioned rhetoric. For that reason among others, I want to clear up what are perhaps the two biggest lies repeated by politicians and the media. Why do I care? Righteousness exalts a nation. These lies damage our country. They enable injustice in our land.

Lie One: Government Deregulation Caused the Mortgage and Housing Industry Crisis

The Truth: Government Regulation Caused the Mortgage and Housing Industry Crisis


The people telling this lie want more government regulation. They say that the mortgage and housing industry crisis could have been averted with tighter and closer government regulation. They say, "See what happens with deregulation? This theory of Reagan has been disproved. Say goodbye to Reagan." And then they proceed to grow government by enacting more and more regulations on as many sectors of the economy as possible.

How did the government supposedly not regulate enough? When all the bad loans were being made by unscrupulous bankers and loan brokers, lawmakers should have stepped in and written stiffer regulations to protect consumers. When the mortgage and housing industry were veering off the tracks, George W. Bush and the rich Republicans were asleep at the switch. And why? They could have stepped in to stop the debacle, but they were loyal to their Reagan principle of government deregulation and look what it caused.

Blaming deregulation for the mortgage crisis is like Hitler blaming the Communists for the burning of the German Reichstag. Of course, Hitler started the fire. The event gave the Nazis credibility and influenced his ultimate dictatorship and command economy. The blame for the fire stuck on the, in this case, innocent Communists.

The mortgage and housing industry crisis was caused by bad government regulation. In 1977 banks would not give loans to people in certain neighborhoods---it wasn't very safe banking practice to do so. President Carter changed this by signing the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). This law made banks give loans to people who lived in bad loan areas. CRA encouraged home loans through two government sponsored enterprises: one was The Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the other was The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac). With this new law, to go unpunished by the federal government, banks had to find buyers who could qualify for loans under the old, reliable standards. They often could not find any so out of the lack of qualified buyers hatched the concept of the sub-prime mortgage. CRA also created hundreds of unregulated housing "agencies," who would lobby banks for more money for their agencies. If they couldn't get the money, these agencies would cause great difficulties for banks with nasty lawsuits. One of these agencies, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) bragged that because of their influence, over one trillion dollars worth of these CRA sub-prime mortgages were written. President Barack Obama was a community organizer heavily involved in ACORN.

We're not done yet. In 1980 President Jimmy Carter signed The Deregulation and Monetary Control Act. In 1982 President Ronald Reagan signed The Alternative Mortgage Transactions Parity Act. These two laws created some modern mortage products with which we have now all become familiar: adjustable rate mortgages (ARM), balloon payment mortgages, interest only mortgages, etc. In 1986 the IRS tax code was changed to give a deduction for only the interest on a home loan. Financial advisors started encouraging customers to pay off mortgage debt only and to pay off other forms of debt with the equity in their homes. In 1993 President Bill Clinton made changes to the CRA that made it even more difficult for banks to deny loans to under qualified and gave banks points for giving out the more exotic loans.

Home loans became a major business. Many made incredible amounts of money as loan brokers. Amazing numbers of loans and bad ones, deceptive ones, were given to unqualified buyers. These mortgage brokers were just swimming in the waters created by new government regulations of the industry, designed by Democrats for the purpose of social architecture in poor neighborhoods. The government regulated the loaning institutions, forcing them to give loans to unqualified buyers. So it wasn't government deregulation that caused the crisis. It was regulation.

Lie Two: The Rich Didn't Pay Their Fair Share of Taxes During the Bush Years Because He Gave Tax Cuts to the Rich

The Truth: The Rich Paid a Greater Share of Taxes Under Bush Than They Ever Had Before


I think most people in America believe that President Bush gave unfair tax advantages to his rich buddies at the expense of the poor. Is that true? What really happened?

This isn't even going to be political. It's just the truth. I did not get my statistics from the Republican Party office. I took my figures from the non-partisan, completely neutral Congressional Budget Office (CBO). In order for you to see what really happened in the Bush years, I'm going to ask a few questions.

What Happened to the Share of Tax Liability for the Rich and the Poor during the Bush Years?

Again, I'm looking at the statistics available through the CBO, which presently ends in 2005. So I will give the figures in 2000 and then the ones in 2005 with which to compare. We will define the rich as those in the highest quintile (1/5, 20%) of wage earners and the poor as those in the lowest twenty percentile. The rich earned pretax on average $231,300 per year. The poor earned on average $15,900.

In 2000, the top 20% of wage earners paid 81.2% of all the individual income taxes paid in the United States. In 2005, after six years of President Bush, the top quintile in income paid 86.3% of those taxes paid in the U.S. So you can see that the rich actually paid a higher share of the taxes with George W. Bush as president. Under Bush, the rich paid a 5.1% higher share of the individual income taxes in the United States.

What about the poor? In 2000 the bottom 20% of the wage earners paid -1.6% of the individual income taxes in the United States. You may wonder how someone could pay a negative or minus income tax. Well, that means that the poor received 1.6% of the taxes from those paying taxes. They not only did not pay income tax, but they got money from the payers. Surely that number went down as the cruel presidency of the cruel George W. Bush progressed. No, by 2005 the poor were paying -2.9% of the individual income taxes. They made out like bandits under Bush, taking more than ever from the tax coffers from other Americans.

What Happened to the Incomes of the Poor and the Rich During the Bush Years?

What you heard was that during the Bush years that the rich got richer. We know they had more tax liability under him, but some would submit that they deserved it because of all the advantages they had. In 2000 the top 20% of earners in the U. S. took in a 51.4% share of the total individual income in the United States. In 2005 the top 20% took in 51.6% share of the total. So the rich grew in their percentage of the income in the United States by .2%. How is that for the rich making out like bandits?

You can believe that those top twenty percent and those bottom twenty percent fluctuate. Some of the rich drop out of the top category and some of the poor move up to another quintile in share of income. For instance, a whole lot of mortgage and housing people were in the top twenty percent five years ago, but they aren't any more. New people moved up into the top twenty when they dropped out. That is the nature of the free enterprise. Who earns money depends on the choices people make in the market. They aren't buying houses right now and the ones they're buying are much cheaper.

When you hear that the rich aren't paying their fair share of the taxes, don't believe it. When you hear that the rich got richer during the Bush years, don't believe it. That's just propaganda used to get votes. In other words, it's a lie.

The Blind Spots of www.Christian part one

Did you hear that Chicken Little got it wrong? He did. But we'll allow him that. For one, he's not Humpty Dumpty. Not even Al Gore.

His obsession---the sky. He had a paranoia about it, probably stemming from something that occurred in his mother's egg. So let's take a deep, cleansing breath and recognize that the sky is not falling. Falling, no. Rolling up like a scroll, yes. Just not yet. A few things will happen first.

Some technophobic believe we've already opened up Pandora's box with robots, genetics, and highly complex machinery. Someone is going to invent something that he can't control, a modern day Frankenstein's monster (except a real one), and we'll be running for our lives like Japanese in a bad lizard movie. All of those fears make good fiction and some scary stories, but the real problems with technology lie elsewhere. My global positioning satellite is zooming in on the world wide web and then focusing on one small part of it: the Christian www.

The world wide web and modern Christianity are a perfect match. I don't know about a match made in heaven, but they do come together based on the unique interests and needs of Christianity. Matt Drudge was created by the web. And all he did was provide black hyperlinks on a white background that looked like they were plunked out on an old manual smith-corona. Christianity wants more visibility and attention. The web allows for that and at a very low cost. On the relative cheap, a church can build a fortress of a website that likely dwarfs what's really happening.

You've heard of the big fish in the small pond. The web can make the small pond an ocean and big doesn't describe the fish anymore. Immense fish in the Great Lakes. The world isn't meant to make Christians feel significant, and most of them don't feel that way. The web can produce a stronger sense of a missing significance. Even if not many are attending, the crowd grows because of a new, larger web audience. Even part of the status of an organization in the minds of its constituency ties into its online presence.

Some great opportunities have arisen from the web---easy access to a wealth of teaching, print, audio, and video, new avenues of gospel presentation into homes, a place to visit to find the distinctives of a particular institution. There are also some harmful traps on the web distinctly in the realm of professing Christianity---more false teaching, bad examples spread, and something of a replacement for actual, tangible church life.

What I want to talk about are just a few of the damaging blindspots that I see today online. We need to take the biblical commands and principles and apply them to the web for our own spiritual discernment and the honor of God. We still need to be scriptural even with the anonymous feel of the internet. The Lord still sees everything. There are many more, but I'm going to list four of them.

1. A Skewed Promotion of Men Who Haven't Earned this Veneration in the Real World

2. A Muddying of the Distinctions between Male and Female Roles

3. A Replacement for Actual Church Involvement

4. A Loss of Respect for Age and Authority

A Skewed Promotion of Men Who Haven't Earned this Veneration in the Real World

My Story

A recent trend is former fundamentalists coming out and telling "the" story of what led them to leave fundamentalism for evangelicalism or new-evangelicalism. Their story makes them the hero and the separatists or fundamentalists or independent fundamental Baptists are the villains. The entire authority for the point they are making is their own personal experience told not only from their own perspective, but their own slant.

In their stories, they often "profile" their villains with stereotypical descriptions. The villains must be villains. That is what vindicates their story and their move. Normally the former fundamentalist was a deep student yearning for more, but the separatist villain was shallow and couldn't or didn't answer questions. The story-teller has a great memory for mistreatment. He often has deep, really mystical insight into the villain's motives.

These "stories" either do or try to do several things. First, they are getting sympathy from people like them and the ones who already dislike fundamentalists or separatists. They are carving out their new niche here. They could secretly be a Nazi prison guard, but it doesn't matter as long as they are not a fundamentalist and an evangelical, or just a rabid Calvinist. They could have serial killed youngsters at recess, but as long as they're a Calvinist and a big tent evangelical, welcome.

Second, they not only get sympathy, but they are martyrs who have been abused. They have moved into the very popular American class: the victim. They are victims, which, of course, deserves our sympathy, but not just any sympathy. They have gone through the terrible ordeal of being in churches with standards higher than their own.

Third, fundamentalists are abusive (evangelicals are not). Fundamentalists abuse. They were under tremendous pressure because of these fundamentalists. They were threatened with the extreme persecution of having to leave a church that they don't like being a part of, but having the further embarrassment of having people now know that they don't like being a part of that kind of church. On top of that, these abusers treat them like they think they should stay, that it's wrong to leave (and other similar types of heavy-duty suffering).

Fourth, it's everyone else's fault. They have flown with turkeys so long. These eagles have been now set free. Down with turkeys.

Fifth, they want to "help" others like them. This validates their own experience when they can find others. This is all therapeutic, you know. You find others, bash the worst examples of what you left and smear the whole group. My how grand we've been. We are so wonderful. They are so bad. We must warn. Others could be abused like we were. Let's help rescue these others before they chew off three legs and still remain in the trap.

Sixth, they want to show how they've matured. Now they can drink, go to movies, listen to Christian rock or punk, mix swim, dance, date, touch, go to the prom, get tattooed, use whatever Bible version they want and other important Christian growth. What is all of this that's happened to them? Transforming grace, that's what (not worldliness because that's only in the heart). Oh and they just want unity (unity = reduce doctrine down to a few "important" ones and then even water those down for the sake of staying together).

I have a unique opportunity here, because one of the young former fundies with a story was once a member of our church. He's actually a real prominent one. In his story, he, of course, is the hero, and he marches through former churches like Sherman at the end of the Civil War, leaving them pummeled in his path. He could have just left fundamentalism and went about living the new kind of Christian life that he would say he loves so well. He has a whole new group of friends and he could just spend time with them. However, he couldn't do that. He's not that kind of person.

This new evangelical has to start blog upon blog in which he can be the very young hero with many elderly villains trampled over. They were wrong. He was right. He's an extremely young person and instead of forging ahead into his new life, he starts by trashing the places he had been before. However, I know the real story, and I'm going to tell it. I will change his name in this case to protect the guilty, but this is what happened. For everything that I write, I could present witnesses. We'll call him Bill. Bill is not his real name.

I met Bill when he attended school in Indiana (not Hammond). We were looking for a couple of teachers for our school and we considered him and the young lady he was going to marry as teachers. When we talked to the school faculty, they couldn't recommend him and his wife to us. Why? He had been looking at pornography. What they did know was that he had been assisting in a church in the summer and the pastor caught him watching pornography on the church computer. He was immediately removed from his position and sent away from the church.

I thought that maybe we could help Bill if he was willing to be under accountability and discipleship at our church, and that we would work with him in our church. I took him and his new wife in part because I knew that we he was intelligent, said he wanted to serve the Lord, and that he was willing to submit to discipleship. Doesn't that sound like grace, even like a doctrine of grace? Doesn't sound too mean, you know, unforgiving like "fundamentalists are"? He had skills. I wanted to help the young man. Later I found out that he had not been up front with his wife about his pornography issue until after he was engaged to be married. By the time everything was planned and invitations sent and more, he told her about what had taken place. I also learned that he had been addicted to pornography and looking at it since he was a boy. While at his college (one that he trashes), Bill broke through the filter of the college computer to support his internet habit.

After he and his wife got to our church, I found that he was often a proud, know-it-all. He wasn't much of a help with other people (selfless ministry) because all he wanted to do was talk about theological matters with just a few people in the church. He took up a tremendous amount of time, which I patiently gave to him, often spending an hour after church services speaking with him. On the other hand, his wife was a jewel---hard worker, very helpful, and a good teacher.

So he started teaching elementary in our school, along with his wife. Part way through the year, Bill mentally snapped. He temporarily went insane. I had never seen anything like it in my life. One school day our principal received word from one of the students in his class that Bill was just sitting straight up, almost comatose at his desk, saying nothing. When the principal went down to check, that's what he found too. The class was talking, messing around, doing whatever they wanted. He wasn't teaching. He wasn't doing anything except sitting there in some other zip code. It was about half way through the day. What we found out is that he had lost his mind. He was delusional and incoherent.

We had to dismiss him as a teacher in the middle of the year, which was quite a hardship to us. But that was perhaps the least of it. We spent many hours in counseling, helping him through this episode. For at least a week, we always had somebody watching him to be sure that he wouldn't do something harmful to himself or someone else. He would sit staring straight forward, eyes vacant. When I would go to run an errand, I would take him with me so that he wouldn't be left alone. We were paying him during that time too, despite the fact that he wasn't working. We've always been stretched to the limit financially. We don't operate with debt, but we can't afford to pay two teachers for one class. We had to do that. This all was an embarrassment to the school, trying to explain how we happened to hire someone so mentally fragile.

As the next few days passed, he was finally able to come out of his shell. And then we found out why he had snapped. For years he had been faking it. He had been looking at pornography for at least a decade. At the same time, he had been trying to impress people around him with how righteous he was. His parents had been in a kind of Christian service and they had not prevented him from getting involved in this type of lifestyle. He had learned how to put on a show. Being noticed for his spirituality was very important to him, despite the fact that he knew that he was looking at these things. He confessed that his brother had done the same thing. They had both been involved. Part of his eagerness to impress other people was a kind of means by which he could prove that he really did belong and fit into the standards of holiness that were around him.

This battle within Bill for so long had so stressed his mind, body, and emotions, violating the carefully set up scruples that he had himself set up. A big part of his break-up at our church in particular was the preaching. He had never been under consistent, thorough expositional preaching, verse by verse. He had never been somewhere like our church where the gospel was preached with precision. One specific point that contributed to the apex of this struggle in his heart and mind was an emphasis in our church on the believer not living in a continual state of carnality. In particular he said that he was penetrated by a dealing with 1 John 2:19. His soul was confronted with the realities of the gospel, the scriptural expectations of a genuine conversion. This unsettled him greatly.

When some of his mind returned to him, he confessed a continued battle with pornography. He had gone so far as to go to a convenience store a few blocks from his apartment to purchase hard copies to look at. He had continued to feed his mind on the images but at the same time try to keep up the facade that he loved the Lord and wanted to serve Him.

Bill confessed his need for salvation. He had examined his heart whether he was in the faith and he did not think so. He had just been going through the motions. During this very weak time, a few weeks after the worst of it, he professed that he made a profession of faith. I asked him what happened. He still found it difficult to communicate coherently. He would make meaningless, imbecilic statements like someone who was talking in his sleep. When you heard it, you would just smile and nod your head, knowing that he didn't have everything together. At that time, he said that one night he had been saved. What had happened was that he had a pillow with a heart on it. He said that at night when he went to sleep, he saw the heart on the pillow and he knew that Jesus loved him. It was at that moment of realization, he said, that he knew that he had been saved. He stuck with this conversion experience.

We knew that Bill knew the facts of salvation. He had a brilliant sort of mind. This was part of the battle for him. His thoughts bounced around all over the place in his head like a pin ball. He insisted that this night time pillow prayer was when he was converted. We nodded our heads in approval, not wanting to cause any problems in his head, and continued to watch him. He said that he wanted to be baptized, and since we believed that obeying the Lord was important for his fragile psyche, we went ahead with the baptism.

Bill couldn't keep cogent thoughts enough to be counted on for any kind of contributory task in the church. We wouldn't assign him anything. However, he liked reading. He read and read and read. His wife would come home from teaching all day and he hadn't done anything at home. He would just sit and read. So she was the breadwinner and she would come home to cook for him and care for him. He would read. He still wanted to discuss theology like playing with truth in a test tube. He liked figuring doctrines out like a brain teaser, a puzzle. When you talked to him, even though his eyes were somewhat distant, and you could tell he wasn't all there, he would tell you something very deep that he had gotten in reading a book.

Most of the time, these doctrinal finds of Bill's had nothing to do with what was important to him for living the Christian life. They weren't devotional in nature. They were in the way of arguing about theological issues. After months, we told him that if he wasn't going to work, he had to do some chores at home. We had to make him accountable and check on him to get this accomplished.

About that time, Bill got a visit from his parents. They came from another continent to get to our church in California. We were not of the same belief and practice as his parents. Close, but not in fellowship enough to have his father preach. When they came with some relatives as well, they were very cynical about our church, very critical. You could tell that they were blaming us for what had happened to Bill. That was the furthest from the truth. They were very excusing of his behavior and very defensive. They communicated to Bill that they didn't like us. While staying with Bill and his family, they decided that what he needed more than anything was a television. So they went out and bought him one. I was disappointed. Knowing Bill's big problem, and that the negligence of his parents was part of the problem, I thought a television was a bad move in light of the amount of skin that showed up on today's programs.

So now Bill could sit at home and watch television while he wasn't working and we were taking the duties that he was supposed to take during the year. Bill still came to church. He would sit in services and then afterward pepper me with questions about issues that he wanted to talk about, essentially ignoring everyone else. I regularly encouraged him to work on relationships with people that weren't necessarily offering him all the things that he wanted, which was about books and theological issues. I desired for him to be more concerned about his own character out of love for God and his wife.

In addition to weekly prayer meeting, we had men's prayer time one Saturday morning a month. The men's prayer time is at 7am, which in California is very early since people get up so very early for commute during the week. Men rise often at 4 and 5 am to start their long treks to places of employment in some of the busiest traffic in America. Bill wasn't working, but he still couldn't get to some of the men's prayer times. He would complain about us not praying enough. I told him that this was just public prayer. Also, I was doubtful about his complaints, seeing that he didn't get up half the time for the scheduled prayer meetings. What he wanted to do was "lead" a prayer time on Sunday mornings before services. I was all for prayer, of course, so had a hard time resisting this. It just seemed like this was something else that was disingenuous in light of how I knew Bill was in his basic character. It looked like another show to me.

Bill actually had a lot of time on his hands for prayer, since he didn't have a job. When he was finally able perhaps to get a job, he was offered one by a business man in our church. This man was a very weak Christian if a Christian at all. I had taken him through a thirty week discipleship, which he fought all the way. I didn't like the idea of Bill with this man. The man wanted a Christian to hire though. I went out of my way to tell him that I thought it was possible that Bill could fail. Bill did fail. The man had to fire him because he couldn't get the job done. The man had immigrants who knew very little English that were his best workers and Bill could not accomplish the job up to their standards.

Bill couldn't get a job for months. He was always looking for a kind of job that fit his personality and desires. I told him to get a job anywhere, but because he had to have one that fit him, he took a long time. When he finally did get one that suited his fancy, it didn't last. He didn't make it there either.

The ladies of our church during this time really showed friendship to Bill's wife. She didn't know what she was bargaining for when she married Bill. Her family was sure they were getting a solid man. He was good at acting that way in front of them. They thought they were getting someone just like them---a separatist, independent Baptist with strong standards of holiness. Ladies really helped her through this time. She was the strong one, carrying her husband along.

While Bill was with us, he received letters from his brother, arguing with him about Calvinism and about the text issue. His brother would recommend books for him to read that would push Calvinism and the critical text. His brother, a fellow pornography man himself in their boyhood, wanted him to believe like him. I really didn't know the extent of this communication. Bill would suggest some of these books to me and I was hopeful that his brother could suggest books that would help him be a better man and better husband, instead of being a Calvinist.

One of the books I remember him receiving that Bill passed along to me was one by John Piper on the death of Christ, right about the time that Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ came out. I read it and even though there was some good doctrine in it, I thought it was overall weak and afraid to differentiate what Scripture said with what the Catholics believed about the passion. That should have been a major concern, I thought, for Piper because he had marketed the book to look just like the advertised materials for the movie. There was nothing in the book that would have been offensive to the typical Catholic. Of course, my point was not to try to be purposefully offensive, but to use the truth as a sword that cut through the false doctrine and pulled down that stronghold. Gibson's movie was Catholic, so what Piper wrote should have differentiated with Catholicism. I noticed that Bill was very defensive of Piper.

Bill wasn't getting a lot of respect at our church. He wasn't earning it. We treated him very well, but not giving him the status that he would think he deserved. That always bothered me. He was very proud. Everyone around noticed this. When someone tried to talk to me, he was right there attempting to take my time. If you didn't give him your time, he would suggest that you didn't want to answer his question (or that you couldn't). If he did do anything in the way of service, he would make sure that he mentioned it to others. Often his testimonies during testimony time were an opportunity to parade some of his accomplishments.

Then one day Bill told me that he was in deep financial trouble. I understood that. He didn't hold a job and his wife was earning the living, paying the bills. You couldn't live in California especially with one small income from one spouse, in this case the woman of the family. He had a child now. His brother had called him and told him that there was job in another state in the midwest and that he would have it. This was Bill's type of job, one that he would like. He came to me and said that he needed to move because of his conviction to support his family. I knew that where he was moving there was a giant new-evangelical church, pastored by a Calvinist that he was presently really into. I saw this as him going there to be in that church.

Bill seemed to me to be drifting. He wasn't the cat's meow. He wasn't looked at really highly. He wasn't at the top of the heap. If he went somewhere else, he could start over. The people there wouldn't know about his despicable behavior and he could be a big shot again. This looked like running from problems. However, I looked at his wife. His child. I talked to our other pastor and some other men in the church. We agreed grudgingly that we would let him go with certain criteria. There was a certain church he should join when he went. I told him that I was afraid that he was going to go there and within a year join the new evangelical church. He insisted that he believed like us and that he was going to do that. So we sent him. A lot of people helped them.

They left and went to that midwest state. They joined that church I recommended. Upon getting there, Bill started questioning the pastor on everything, challenging him. And this lasted about a year before he joined the Calvinist, new-evangelical church. He dropped dozens of his beliefs and on things that I never ever heard him ask about. I told our church that Bill had left the church. I told them what our criteria had been and that Bill had broken them, even though he said that he would not.

When Bill was with us, I answered every possible question he asked. I taught him part of a year in third year Greek for free. After they moved to another state, the day that one of our benefits for Christian school teachers, a certain amount of money for dental that we allotted to be a blessing and help, would run out, we received from them a dental bill for the top amount that we allowed. We sent them the check. That was my only communication that I received from Bill, was that dental bill. He never checked in at all to discuss theology and all the multiple questions he had about his beliefs. Right now, as far as I know, he still hasn't paid his college tuition.

But what does Bill do now? Very soon after he left the church we sent him to, he began a blog bashing fundamentalism, blaming his problems on all the churches he had been in. There was nothing against him or his parents in these blogs. He was good at this. This was his type of activity, something very theological and very argument oriented. He was able to cobble together a lot of support from Calvinists. Men link to him all over the nation. In my opinion, he's got people fooled.

I told one person about him at the evangelical blog, Pyromaniacs, who was giving him big time kudos. He too was a former "fundamentalist" and he had a website bashing them called the Texas Underground. For the most part, I would have agreed with his opinion of that branch of revivalism. I thought he was pushing this young man, a neophyte, way too much. I wrote him privately and he essentially told me off. He could care less about the porno problem that Bill had recently had. Then one day I noticed that this man's name just disappeared off of the Pyromaniac roll along with all his posts. He dropped off the face of the earth. He had a problem that was akin to Bill's, and he had it when I wrote him about Bill. This man was one of the most popular men on the evangelical internet at the time.

Bill is still going about bashing fundamentalism, blaming his own problems on them. I know that his problems have zero to do with fundamentalism. He has told "his story," and none of this is in there. None of it. Instead, he goes after fundamentalism and the people from his past. And people validate him for it. They accredit it. They are doing that because what he says makes them feel good in some way. He doesn't go through the biblical basis of gaining that kind of credibility spiritually. He says the things that many, many want to hear.

Of course, by giving people those credentials, they also feed a major problem for Bill, his pride. He is able to move up to what he really wants to attain without having to do the real things that it is supposed to take to get there. He need only talk a particular talk, say what it is that people really want to hear. He is skilled at that. That is where his talent set is at. He can get it done there. And so he can be that big fish in an even bigger pond. This also justifies the decisions he has made, despite what a church has done for him. And in the end, the church that has done so much for him is the villain in the story. Those church people get to read him and see him all the time and really know the truth. Others are associating with that and they don't even know it.

Some may wonder why I tell this story. For one, it is the story. It is my story about his story. His story leaves out most of the important details. I tell it because of the credentials that are gained on the internet without anything that resembles anything scriptural in the real world. A person can gain a following because he knows the right buttons to push. He doesn't have to earn it with years of faithfulness, not sinless perfection. None of us are claiming that, especially not me. However, a young man shouldn't be put up into such a place of honor without proving himself in a local church, just because he can find a niche among other disgruntleds that are out there. This is one of the major blind spots on the Christian www.

The Erroneous Epistemology of Multiple Version Onlyism part six

Recently I preached for 3-4 years on Sunday mornings through the book of Isaiah. As I went through that monumental book of all human history, I got a feel for the problems that men have with God. What we read there can serve as a microcosm for men of all eras. A major issue for Israel in the book and for all mankind before and after has been the lengthy periods of divine silence. Israel had been surrounded by enemy nations seeming intent on her destruction. And she was not hearing from God. During those times, she looked around for another means to assure her. Of course, God wasn't silent. He was speaking. They weren't listening.

God has proven His faithfulness in the past, spanning two millennia. He formed Israel, grew her, and protected her. She was the apple of His eye. To do so, God often did what no one but He could do. He acted in a way that connected the past with the present, the present with the future, and the future with the past. God showed that He was working all things together for His glory.

After the contents of most of the first half of Isaiah, hearing and reading God's destruction of Israel's enemies, especially Assyria, Israel could find satisfaction that God had indeed done what she desired for her protection. She could feel safe. But at the end of the first half of the book, God introduces a new problem for Israel---Babylon. The second half of Isaiah answers the question posed by the presentation of this new enemy and her thoughts of a precarious future.

The Evidence of God

To comfort the hearts of His people, so that they would wait on Him, God presented evidence of His care and concern to them. This evidence would indicate that God was working during these periods they thought were silent. Sometimes men want more than what God has to offer, even though God gives men far more than what they deserve. God wants men to take Him into serious consideration in His credentials as God, even to make comparison with other potential gods that might be deserving of equal credit with Him. In Isaiah 41:17-20 God describes what He does that sets Him apart from all others:

17 When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the LORD will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them. 18 I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. 19 I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the shittah tree, and the myrtle, and the oil tree; I will set in the desert the fir tree, and the pine, and the box tree together: 20 That they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together, that the hand of the LORD hath done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath created it.

You may have skipped the text itself to get here. Go back and read it. The Lord does things about the needs of men. He alone can break into man's box of space and time and rescue, because He alone stands non-contingent from the frailty and futility of an unredeemed universe. But God does invade this dimension to save. In doing so, He wants me to see His goodness and uniqueness, that there is none like Him and that He did create earth and men. This obviously wasn't enough for many, if not most. They needed God to do more. God out of His mercy puts Himself to other possible gods in a contest, beginning in v. 21:

21 Produce your cause, saith the LORD; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob. 22 Let them bring them forth, and shew us what shall happen: let them shew the former things, what they be, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare us things for to come. 23 Shew the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods: yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it together.

Again, make sure you read the verses. God asks for evidence and if He gets it, He will know that they are gods. He would give them credit if they could produce God-like proof. The evidence He asks for is prophetic. He wants these to show what will happen and how the things in the past relate to those things that will take place in the future. He wants that from them, because this is something God can do. Surely if one is god, it could do the same. Of course, these predictions would be about things that a god itself would be able to then follow through and make happen. God asks for something good or evil (in essence, nasty), that will blow everyone away, something that no one could miss. God not only predicts, but predicts events that are beyond human comprehension. He can do those types of acts. The assumption in v. 24 is that they could not produce such evidence:

Behold, ye are of nothing, and your work of nought: an abomination is he that chooseth you.

They couldn't fulfill such criteria and win this contest, because they were nothing. They were not gods at all. Because of that, God says that those who choose them are an abomination. However, God could produce evidence, and at the end of chapter 41, beginning in v. 25, He makes a prophecy Himself to show that He had that ability. You can read the prophecy there to the end of the chapter.

God's Words Are Evidence

So what God is saying is that He backs up what He says by fulfilling what He says that He will do. He can do that because He is God. That is a basis for believing in Him. If He says He will do something, He will do it. He providentially works. We look for Him working, even if He hasn't announced how it is He is accomplishing what He promised.

Now sometimes God will say He is doing something or that He will do something and the evidence is not quite so evident. God still wants to be believed. Why? Because His Words themselves are evidence. If God says it, it counts as though it has already happened. This is the way that we place faith in Him. It doesn't please God when we don't believe what He said. We can see in several places in scripture that He is angered by those who need signs or some other tangible means to indicate the reality of what He has promised.

The history of God's people is a chronicle that is peppered with men who acted on God's promises and believed based upon Who He said He was and upon what He said He would do. He is pleased by that faith. He is not pleased when men require something more than that. This is not how He has chosen to operate, that is, where men keep requiring external evidence, over and above God's promises.

Many of the truths that God expects us to believe, we have no means of believing except what He said. I've never seen resurrection. I've never seen ascension. I don't know what God's justification looks like. I don't have the original manuscripts as a basis for checking on the copies to see if He actually did preserve the Words like He said He would.

Going door-to-door last week, I had a Roman Catholic who told me that he would take my King James Version and throw it in the fire. It wasn't the Bible. Why? It didn't have all of the books. It should include the apocrypha. He believed the Douay-Rheims Version, which was translated from the Latin Vulgate, was the only acceptable Bible. So why only sixty-six books? Because those are what the church handed down to us. Believers accepted only those sixty-six, no more, no less, even though God didn't tell us what their names were. They received those books, therefore, they were His Words. God's people receive His Words. That's how they come to a knowledge of which ones are God's.

God said He would guide His children into all truth. We assume that they would have accepted and then made copies of the apocrypha if those were legitimate books of scripture. Instead we think that those are imposters based upon the testimony of believers. Those books, besides containing error, maybe not enough to reject the gospel or Christ (but error nonetheless), also were not recognized by God's people as the books of Scripture. Only sixty-six were recognized as such.

God Fulfills His Promises

The Holy Spirit works through righteous men for agreement upon what His Words are. They unify around truth. They believe He has preserved every Word. They believe that all the Words are accessible so that none that are not accessible could be His Words. They know of copying errors. They know of variants between manuscripts. But they believe that God's promises override those issues---that what mistake may be made in one copy is corrected by another. This was established and settled in the sixteenth century. This is what men of God believed.

During the nineteenth century men left this standard based upon scripture. As part of the new enlightenment thinking, they were convinced that those promises weren't good enough. The text received by the churches, led by the Spirit of God, based upon the promises of God, needed to be exposed to the correction of man's reasoning. What God said, connecting the past with the present and the present with the future, that wasn't good enough. And so rather than bow to the Bible as found in those promises, men submitted the Bible their own reasoning. Responding to promises was not good enough any more.

Are God's promises evidence? Can we count on His providential working in history? When Israel couldn't see what God was doing, she went out looking for her own solutions to give herself her own assurance. It was during those times especially that God wanted her to understand that He was working, accomplishing His will just as He said. And especially as it applies to His Holy Word, we should not question it or determine it based on man's reasoning bereft of scriptural doctrine. We should trust that God would do what He said He would do. He did it in the past, so He can do it in the future too.

Does God do what He says He will do? Yes He does. And the just shall live by faith.

Big Talk with Little to Show at Evangelical Textual Criticism

The blog called Evangelical Textual Criticism referenced my epistemology series and some discussion ensued in the comment section. Imagine a 50 gallon aquarium with several fish swimming around in it, thinking that they represent the whole ocean. Things that are said are credible in the fish tank. That doesn't mean they actually do stand up anywhere else in the world.

These are some of the devices that I noticed. I can point out where if you ask. Ad homenim. Appeal to ridicule. Circumstantial Ad hominem. Sarcastic questions. Smug dismissal. Argumentum ad populum. False dichotomy.

To start, Tommy Wasserman, who is one of the blog contributors, seems to be a very nice, very fair guy. That doesn't mean we wouldn't disagree on this subject, but he seems like he might be more open-minded. Mike, who commented here on the series, commented over there with a fuller reprentation of himself. Mike Aubrey, full name. The first comment out of the box, was this, from a Dr. Rod Decker (that's how he refers to himself), who teaches at Baptist Bible Seminary in Clarks Summit, PA. He writes:

I assume the link to the Brandenburg post was for entertainment purposes? :) You certainly wouldn't want to offend his fedeism (sic) with evidence.

I would go after it with Rod Decker any day. He is the doctor of the logical fallacy in the comment. He is wanting to equate presuppositional epistemology with fideism.

Then a "Ryan" writes this:

I had trouble getting very far into Brandenburg's writing. I think it's one of the sadder and less helpful features of fundamentalism that holding onto a doctrine in defiance of empirically proof to the contrary is somehow thought to be the more pious or faithful thing to do.

The second sentence takes some deciphering. At the word "empirically" it spun out of control. What I think he is saying though is that he's got empirical proof that I'm defying because I think it is more faithful, but that this defiance is an unhelpful quality to fundamentalism, assuming that I'm a fundamentalist. Moral of the story. It's bad because it is sad and unhelpful. So stop defying empirical evidence! What evidence? Textual criticism, of course.

Several of these comments help make my point for me about evangelical textual criticism as a kind of paradox. He writes:

To my mind they're sacrificing truth on the altar of doctrine.

"They're" (fundamentalists) sacrificing "truth" (conclusions from theories) on the "altar of doctrine" (notice doctrine and truth different to him). He thinks his empirical evidence is superior to the teachings of scripture.

And finally Ryan introduces a quote from Roman Catholicism:

They could learn from Catholicism, which learned from its mistake with Galileo and in Providentissimus Deus.

He's saying that we should learn a lesson from the Catholics, which got it right when they started looking at science and stopped looking at theology. Hmmmmm.

Then Dr. Rod Decker comes back and he comments, not quite in agreement with Ryan about fundamentalism:

Generalizing based on one (or even a few) glaring case(s) of obscurantism commits a fallacy similar to Brandenburg's.

I guess my fallacy is generalization. Ironically, Decker calls me an obscurantist. "Obscurantism" is "the practice of deliberately preventing the facts or full details of something from becoming known." He's a yellow backed dingo, so there! That would have had about the same effect. What's ironic about it is what facts these textual critics prevent from being known in doctrine and even in their "science."

Rod and Ryan go back and forth a little and Dr. Rod adds that I'm (and others like me) "anti-intellectual." Bubbles in the aquarium.

A Darrell comes on and writes to Dr. Rod:

I went to the same school as Brandenburg, but am a avid NT textual criticism fan. Go figure.

I is not a intellectual and is not an fan of textual criticism. Go figure.

A man with the handle, "The White Man," comes on and actually supports what I wrote. No one actually does deal with what he says. That's not something they seem to do at Evangelical Textual Criticism. Mike Aubrey (our Mike) answers him with this jewel:

Not everyone has time to spend hours discussing and arguing about Brandenburg's views just because "someone is wrong on the internet."

He does have a point, that is, if I'm wrong. Not every wrong on the internet must be discussed. Yes Mike!! Good point!!

There were then about four comments that were not derogatory, especially when Paul Ferguson comes in and makes a very well written comment to them. He even spurs Daniel Wallace to comment, and Wallace says:

One reviewer criticized my views as follows: "Wallace looked at evidence and then changed what he believed about Scripture." Actually, I don't take that as a criticism, because the evidence I looked at was what informed how I should understand the text. It was both exegetical and empirical in nature. But one thing I found curious about Brandenburg's four-part treatment of my views is that, in spite of claiming that he had dealt with my views exhaustively, point for point, he only interacted selectively with my article. To see why fundamentalists don't care for my non-doctrine of preservation, it's best to read the original essay for yourself. It's at http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=1221.

These kinds of things are humorous and I don't mean that in a disrespectful way to Dr. Wallace. Here's what's funny. First, he's commenting on the wrong series of blogs that I wrote. He thinks we're commenting on the four part series that I did about his article. Ooops. That gave me a chuckle. He's a little behind on that one. Then when he leaves me anonymous by calling me "one reviewer" and then cuts and pastes ones sentence I wrote. He couldn't type my name. That's even a laugh-out-loud for me. Daniel Wallace does fit very nicely in the club though. He does nothing to deal with what I wrote....still. He says that I claim to deal with him exhaustively, but I really don't! (mad scientist laugh here). He said I interacted selectively with his article.

Let's review on the four part Wallace series. He sent me to it from his blog when he and I were discussing something there. He said that he dealt with the doctrine of preservation there. I read his whole article and found he only got into scripture in just a few paragraphs. I criticize those and find some amazing blooper-like mistakes there. Everyone should read my review of his article. It's supposed to be his definitive defeating of the doctrine of preservation and what incredible blunders! His first reaction to it was: "You cherry picked!" And now, "He was selective!" You'll find that I wasn't selective at all with the section on preservation. So do go look and read his article and read what I wrote about it. No one has come on to defend him. Someone started to defend him at a forum called CARM, and then stopped abruptly and suddenly once he got to the first argument. Then it was a deafening silence.

Then comes on another big named textual critic, Maurice Robinson. And he really does embarrass himself (of course in my opinion) with what he wrote. He makes a lot of extreme and inaccurate statements that go nowhere. His last sentence does sum it all up very nicely:

Our trust in the accuracy of the biblical text should rest upon a foundation more secure than the highly questionable theological claims of modern KJV/TR-only scholasticism which ultimately demand a response wholly based on blind faith apart from hard evidence.

Again, moral of his story: don't trust theology, but trust hard evidence. Which is what? Textual criticism. Especially his.

The comment section ends with something written by a Brazilian who is trying to say something in English, what seems not to be his native language. It was hard to understand what he wrote.

I'm giving this report, because I would rather deal with their comments here than there. I would love to discuss things with them, but they're not likely to interact, even as seen in what others wrote in their comment section and they ignored. Why do they ignore these almost every time? Robinson says it is because all of our arguments have been answered elsewhere. I've never read where our arguments are answered. Answers may be given, but they are similar to what I read in that comment section. They are so many bubbles rising to the surface. But that's the way it all looks inside the aquarium.

My Only Son Goes to College

My only son, Kirk, my oldest child of four, 18, will graduate from high school this year. At some point, I may write about the whole process of decision making at this time of life, but for now I'm going to announce to you the decision. We've known now for about two weeks. Many of you may be surprised to hear about the results of this decision. He is going to college. He will be leaving home to do so. Where is he going? To reveal that to you, I'm going to give you some clues. Don't google. You're in trouble if you do.

The college was founded in 1802.

The buildings were first built in 1778.

1200 are admitted every year and about 1000 graduate.

Its football team has won three national championships.

Its students adhere to this honor code: "[He] will not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate those who do."

Some of you savvy ones may already know what school I'm talking about.

Two presidents of the United States have graduated from this college.

Four years at this institution cost over $250,000 per student.

U. S. News and World Report and Forbes in 2008 ranked this as the number one public college in the United States.

Forbes ranked this college in 2008 as the number six school over-all in the United States.

This second list may not have helped you too much.

About 12% of those who apply are admitted.

Candidates for admission must receive a nomination, usually from a congressman.

More than 80% who attend are men.

The college is fourth on the list of Rhodes Scholar winners.

The campus sits in New York state 50 miles north of New York City on the Hudson River.

The unofficial motto of the history department is: "Much of the history we teach was made by people we taught."

Every student is required to play a sport.

I think the third list probably helped a lot, but let's get more obvious.

The motto of the college is : "Duty, Honor, Country."

Edgar Allen Poe attended, but was expelled in 1834.

In 2009, this college has won the national titles in Boxing, Orienteering, and Pistol.

These men coached at this college: Vince Lombardi, Bill Parcells, Bob Knight, and Mike Krzyzewski.

74 graduates have been awarded the medal of honor.

The students are called "cadets."

The alumni are known as "the Long Gray Line."

These are graduates: Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, George Armstrong Custer, John J. Pershing, George S. Patton, Omar Bradley, Douglas MacArthur, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Norman Schwarzkopf, Buzz Aldrin, William Westmoreland, and David Petraeus.

The college is known as West Point because of its location on the Hudson River.

The college is the United States Military Academy.

Harvard Joins the Audience of Brandenburg and What Is Truth

Harvard University has included What Is Truth in its curriculum as part of "The Pluralism Project." Harvard researcher Ellie Pierce quoted a post on What Is Truth as part of a case for class discussion and education. She titled it "Fliers at a Peace Parade." It seems that Harvard agrees that Brandenburg and What Is Truth should be read by the students of Harvard University. The alma mater of the President of the United States and the Forbes top ranked university in the U. S. includes What Is Truth in class discussion.

The Erroneous Epistemology of Multiple Version Onlyism part five

Gregory Boyd in his book, God of the Possible (2000), wrote in a section (p. 107) entitled, "Integration of Theology and Recent Scientific Advances":

As Christians, we of course want our worldview to be fundamentally derived from God's Word, not the climate of opinion that happens to prevail in the world in which we live. Still, since "all truth is God's truth," as Aquinas taught us, we should assume that whatever is true about the views of our culture, including the views of science, will be consistent with God's Word (assuming we are interpreting it correctly).

His approach is classic evidential epistemology. Presuppositional epistemology is not the absence of evidence, but evidence being interpreted in light of scriptural presuppositions. The veracity of the evidence is judged by the Bible. Boyd interprets scripture in light of his so-called evidence. To support his view, he refers to a statement most often attributed to Thomas Aquinas, "all truth is God's truth."


All Truth Is God's Truth


"All truth is God's truth" has become the mantra for the integration of the Bible and man's observations. But what does it really mean? And is it true? "All truth is God's truth" is credited to Thomas Aquinas, a Roman Catholic priest and philosopher. Living in medieval times, he grappled with the integration of revelation and ideas reflected in the teaching of great philosophers before him, such as Aristotle and Plato. Aquinas insisted that there are "mixed articles," truths that can be learned from both nature and revelation.

Aquinas, however, also believed in the unity of truth with the perspective that all truth is consistent and coherent. If we understand nature or science and the Bible properly, they won't deny one another. Thomas Aquinas would not subordinate the Bible to science or nature. The highest source of truth is God's revelation, God's Word. What is known from nature through man's observation, science, can supplement what is known from the Bible, but never contradict it.

What I'm saying about "all truth is God's truth" as it originated was that it didn't promote integrationism. When it is used that way, it is being used in contradistinction to its historical usage. The truth meets at God and whatever isn't consistent isn't truth. That's how it is God's truth. If it gets to Him and upon meeting Him isn't truth anymore, than it isn't truth at all.


General Revelation


The Bible is not the only source of God's revelation. Besides special revelation, which is what the Bible is, we also have what we call "general revelation," and it comes to us from nature. Scripture talks about this. There are things that we can know because God has revealed them through His creation. Douglas Bookman in the chapter, "The Scriptures and Biblical Counseling," within the book, Introduction to Biblical Counseling, on pp. 77 defines general revelation:

[G]eneral revelation is truth that is manifestly set forth before all humanity (Rom. 1:17-19; 2:14,15); it is truth so clear and irrefutable as to be known intuitively by all rational beings (Ps. 19:1-6; Rom. 1:19); it is truth so authoritative and manifest that when people, by reason of willful rebellion, reject that truth, they do so at the cost of their own eternal damnation (Rom. 1:20; 2:1, 15).

Bookman refutes the notion that somehow human observations could be consigned to the same level as revelation (pp. 74-75):

My contention is that by reason of the proper definition of the theological category “general revelation” and by reason of the intrinsic and [JCA 2:1 (Summer 1998) p. 17] divine integrity and authority that must be granted to any truth-claim that is placed under that category, it is erroneous and misleading to assign to that category humanly deduced or discovered facts and theories. The issue is larger than appropriate taxonomy. In fact, to assign such humanly determined truths to the category of general revelations introduces a two-fold fallacy into the argument when it is used as a rationale for the integrationist position.


First, there is the fallacy that might be termed falsely perceived validity. Revelation is from God; thus it is by definition true and authoritative. To assign human discoveries to the category of general revelation is to imbue them with an aura of validity and consequent authority that they do not, indeed, they cannot merit. Thus, to assign a concept to the category of general revelation when that concept is in fact a theory concocted by a person is, in effect, to lend God’s name to a person’s ideas. That is fallacious, no matter the intrinsic truth or falsehood of the theory under question.


The second fallacy might be called crippled accountability. That is, once it is acknowledged that these theories are revelatory in nature, the issue of challenging them becomes moot. Much may be said about testing the ideas thus derived before acknowledging them as part of that august body of truth that God has communicated in the natural order of things, or about honoring the distinction in intrinsic authority between general and special revelation but to craft an argument for integration based upon the equal merits and authority of general revelation and special revelation is functionally to short-circuit such efforts and to deny such distinctions.


Very simply, if it is revelation, then God said it; if God said it, then it is true; when God speaks truth, mankind’s responsibility is not to test that truth but to obey it. It is self-contradictory to insist that general revelation can include truths that must be studied and examined for their trustworthiness.

The question here is: "what do we do if it seems that man's observations do contradict the Bible, that is, that science and the Bible disagree with each other?"

One supposed example that some will use to argue for an integrationist approach to Scripture and evidentialist epistemology is the case of Galileo and geocentrism. Of course, for this to work, we have to assume that heliocentrism is true. To do that, we have to trust science. Most people who are talking about heliocentrism don't even understand it. They couldn't make a presentation of Copernicus or Kepler if their lives depended on it, but they are happy to ridicule anyone who is a geocentrist. I think it would be an interesting debate to set these evangelicals and fundamentalists up against the best-known geocentrist in the world today, Gerardus Bouw, who has been a professor at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio for many years. Even if Christian heliocentrists could pick out their best scientist, I believe that most people who have a hard time even understanding the science that they would be talking about.

Fallacious Example

Even with heliocentrism being true, it isn't as if at the time of Copernicus that this overturned a position that originated from biblical theology. Here's what Danny Faulkner at Answers in Genesis has to say about it:

In the middle ages and well into the Renaissance, the Roman Catholic Church did teach geocentrism, but was that based upon the Bible? The Church’s response to Galileo (1564–1642) was primarily from the works of Aristotle (384–322 BC) and other ancient Greek philosophers. It was Augustine (AD 354–430), Thomas Aquinas (1224–1274) and others who ‘baptized’ the work of these pagans and termed them ‘pre-Christian Christians’. This mingling of pagan science and the Bible was a fundamental error for which the Church eventually paid a tremendous price.

Confusion persists to today in that nearly every textbook that discusses the Galileo affair claims that it was a matter of religion vs science, when it actually was a matter of science vs science. Unfortunately, Church leaders interpreted certain Biblical passages as geocentric to bolster the argument for what science of the day was claiming. This mistake is identical to those today who interpret the Bible to support things such as the big bang, billions of years, or biological evolution. Therefore, any evangelical Christian misinformed of this history who opines that the Bible is geocentric is hardly any more credible a source on this topic than an atheist or agnostic.

So the heliocentrism-geocentrism issue wasn't a matter of science versus theology, but science versus science. When the quote above talks about "church," it means Roman Catholicism.

The Truth

Truth by definition meets at God, Who is Truth. Without that context, some human observation, even that finds agreement from God's Word is less than truth. We exist to glorify God and if knowing "truth," does not result in God's glory, it cannot rise to the level of truth. If what is called truth does not result in the glory of God, it has missed the context necessary to be truth. We can be happy that someone knows scientific facts, but he doesn't know the truth until that fact can lead Him to the one and true God. What he knows may contain some of the pieces that make up truth, but while he remains self-confident and self-serving, what he knows can't yet be called truth.

God has promised to help man understand His Word (1 Corinthians 2:12-16). He hasn't given the same promise to man for comprehending and explaining science, nature, or the universe. This is why theology was once understood as the "queen of the sciences." Biblical theology, the revelation of God in Scripture, supercedes all other sources of information and knowledge. And so, for centuries what the Bible concluded about nature and man's observations was science. Any observation that is at odds with what Scripture says should be reassessed and reinterpreted to fit God's Word.

Before the enlightenment and before biblical criticism and before evidential epistemology, Christians made conclusions about the text of God's Word based on the science of Scripture. The Bible says it is pure. It will be. The Bible says it is perfect. It will be. The Bible says every Word is accessible to every generation of believers through God's providential working. It will be. Based on those presuppositions, they concluded the perfection of their one Bible. Just like God didn't say how many books of the Bible there would be and what the names of them would be, He didn't say what the name of the Greek text is. They knew that would have every book and every Word. That's what He said, so that's what they believed. With that science, believers were convinced it was the textus receptus of the New Testament.

The rationalism of enlightenment led to the two-book, integrationist approach to knowledge and truth. The teachings and text of scripture became submitted to man's thinking and theories. The certainty of faith turned to the uncertainty of external evidence.