Truth worth dying for? Anyone? Bueller? Today, anyway?

by Dan Phillips

Privately and publicly, Phil Johnson and I have marveled at the spirit of some moderns regarding God's truth. We've wondered how Christianity could have survived, had it been animated by this spirit at its inception. We've wondered what the early martyrs would think of today's sofa-sitting latte-sippers.

One breed that apparently considers itself exempt from All That has long been the Academy, on which subject we've offered some thoughts previously. These are scholars; they're a breed apart from, well, from the folks who pay their salaries. That's because they've had the benefit of special training and special discipline, and thus are privy to special knowledge. They're specialists. They know facts and truths that mere garden-working pastors and ditch-digging churchgoers just can't understand.

It is important (to these folks) that we respect these folks, that we not malign or criticize them or make them feel or look bad. No matter what they say or write, we mustn't challenge their convictions or character. If they tell us that they fit in with a school's doctrinal position or confession, we must take their word for it. If they tell us that their books or lectures or articles are sound and orthodox, well then, they wouldn't lie or dissemble, would they? They're academics.

Their defenders and enablers surely communicate to all that not much is at stake, that it isn't anything to "get het up" about. They'll spill equal amounts of ink lauding the Christian characters of those who depart from anything the great unwashed would recognize as a commitment to inerrancy, and casting aspersions on less sanguine critics or opponents. Because it isn't as if we should expect someone to commit himself to a position as being binding on his conscience, as being something... oh, I don't know... worth dying for, or anything so drastic.

For instance, we recently read this:

Belief in the truthfulness of the Bible, then, like belief in the truthfulness of Christianity or materialism or anything else [!], is provisional—scholars hold to it (or not) on the basis of the evidence they've seen. Affirming the Bible is true, just like affirming the Christian creeds, is a statement of current conviction: “Based on what I know now, I believe that the Nicene Creed/the New Testament is correct, when properly understood.” It doesn't prevent individuals from researching carefully, nor from abandoning or adjusting their commitment if the evidence takes them that way; the changes of conviction, affiliation, and worship practices of many of the “aha” scholars, as well as those who have moved the other way, should be evidence enough. In some cases, no doubt, belief in inerrancy is associated with fearmongering, closed-mindedness, misrepresentation, and rudeness. But the same is true of evangelicalism, and Protestantism, and Christianity as a whole, let alone atheism, Islam, feminism, materialism, and virtually all beliefs held by human beings. I’ve seen a fair bit of it on Pete Enns’s own blog, and I imagine he’d say the same of mine.

Where did I see that? Patheos? BioLogos? Huffington Post? No; in the rarified air of TGC — which, I remind you, ostensibly stands not for The Great Clubhouse, but The Gospel Coalition; and which, I am sure, is funded and read and has its conferences swell with people who certainly are fiercely committed to the Gospel and the truths that underlie it.

This was a post at that site. And since one of the commenters dubbed this article "incredibly thoughtful and nuanced," well then, from one perspective, it must be considered a rousing success, a paradigm of carefulness and all that.

I made a comment in the meta; Phil shared this in Twitter:

“Belief in the truthfulness of the Bible…is provisional…” Wow. Quite a startling thing to read on the TGC website. http://t.co/jBUF0zEyoE
— Phil Johnson, ن (@Phil_Johnson_) August 27, 2014

Which provoked this wounded-sounding, bemused response from the author:

Woke up this morning to some pretty angry misrepresentations of my @TGC article. Why do Christians do this, I wonder? pic.twitter.com/wGwFhI7H6x
— Andrew Wilson (@AJWTheology) August 27, 2014

Now, ponder that, for a moment. Here's a scholar, who knows more than we all know. He professes Christian faith, at least "provisionally," according to what he knows right now. (Well, it's what he knew when he wrote the article; I suppose that may have changed since then.) Yet, speaking of his own fellow-believers ("Christians") in the third person, he professes bewilderment at Phil's eleven-word comment.

Remarkably enough, though, while unable to make sense of Phil's eleven words out there in print, he can read Phil's mood from the unknowable privacy of Phil's heart— and it's angry. Perhaps Phil is one of those scholarship-despising, progress-slowing fearmongerers lamented in the article? Phil certainly isn't being treated to the paeans of praise that the author heaped on those "thoughtful, insightful Christian brothers and sisters" and "good guys" in the Academy who find fault with the Bible.

So: It's all well and good to tell the unwashed that the fear of Yahweh is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom (Prov. 1:7; 9:10). For them, maybe it is. For academics, however, it is at best a provisional conclusion tentatively reached, perhaps, at the end of investigation. It is held as today's conviction, which may be overridden tomorrow, depending on what our real starting-point dictates tomorrow.

Seriously: where would we be, had Doctor Martin Luther said "Here I stand —provisionally. At the moment. I think. Today. But tomorrow... who knows?"

Regardless, I wasn't going to say anything further about it — knowing the waves of anger and offense and indignation that it will provoke from folks who already haven't much use for me, if the usual "ignore it and it will go away" method employed for our posts doesn't serve as well as it usually does for them.

But then I came on this from Spurgeon. As so often, once Spurgeon says a thing, it can't be much improved on. So I'll give him the closing word, and he speaks for me:

I have often wondered whether, according to the notions of some people, there is any truth for which it would be worth while for a man to go to the stake. I should say not; for we are not sure of anything, according to the modern notion. Would it be worth while dying for a doctrine which may not be true next week? Fresh discoveries may show that we have been the victims of an antiquated opinion: had we not better wait and see what will turn up? It will be a pity to be burned too soon, or to lie in prison for a dogma which will, in a few years, be superseded. Brethren, we cannot endure this shifty theology. May God send us a race of men who have backbones! Men who believe something, and would die for what they believe. This Book deserves the sacrifice of our all for the maintenance of every line of it.

[C. H. Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, vol. 35 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1889), 264.]

Aha, indeed.

And amen.

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Nondenominations of abomination: the split, in under 90 words

by Dan Phillips

Don't word-count this part.  Over at Cripplegate, the Rt. Hon. Rev. Prof N. Busenitz offered a rationale for parting denomination from abomination (i.e. Christian group from cult), in under 200 words. I offer two responses:

First: I agree. His point's well-made. This is not a disagreement. It's a valuable, useful post.

Second: I think it could even be further focused, though Nate's fuller development (and still-fuller developments than his) are also necessary.

So what follows is my attempt to shave the difference to one point of less than ninety words. (If I moved the Scriptures to footnotes, it would be under sixty-five words.)

Ahem.

This part counts, starting...next word!

False teachers have a deficient view of Christ. They deny that He is God incarnate (Jn. 1:1, 14), the Father's eternal and distinct Son (Jn. 1:1-2), giver of the Spirit (Acts 2:33), who saves by grace alone through faith alone by merit of His penal,

substitutionary sacrifice alone (Matt. 1:21; 20:28; Eph. 2:8-9), witnessed by His bodily resurrection (Jn 20—21), and who kept His promise to bring revelation to completion through the Spirit's work in His apostles (Jn. 14—16; 1 Jn. 1:1-3).

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The word and the Word: do not sunder what God has joined

by Dan Phillips

Ask a group of Biblically faithful Christians how God is known. Some will likely answer, "In Christ." Others, "Through the Bible." I had just such an array when I asked the other day, as we have been studying how God reaches out to us and how we must respond.

Well, which response is right?

Broadly, one could say that three answers have been given in the history of the Christian church. Taking "A" as representing "In Christ," and B as "Through the Bible," we can treat them thus:

A, not so much B. This would be broadly the view of Christianoid liberalism of all stripes. Like virtually all false teachers, they do want to be seen as on the Jesus bandwagon, so they would claim Him. "Christ, not doctrine" would be their rallying cry. It might be neo-orthodox shaped with a sprinkling of existential spice, but it would amount to this: "We must encounter the living Christ. The Word witnesses to this Christ, but it is just the words of men witnessing poorly and fallibly to the Christ. It is inadequate. All that matters is the soul's contact with the living Christ, a contact that can't be tied to dogma or reduced to doctrines."

This is useful, of course, because this "living Christ" usually fits in pretty well with wherever the professor wants to go. This "living Christ" gets down with the world just fine. He's for evolution, "a woman's right to choose," "marriage equality," "social justice," "empowering women"; He's green, He voted for Obama, He loves Huffington Post, He's not so sure about literal Adams and Jonahs and falling walls and man-swallowing fish. In other words, He pretty much hates and loves what the world hates and loves. The  professor need not deny himself, much less take up anything as distasteful as a cross.

Machen killed this monstrosity decades ago but, like Freddy Krueger, it just keeps coming back. Unlike Freddy, it does change its shirt from time to time. But it's always the same nonsense, under the skin.

Both A and B. Many orthodox Christians would sign onto this, and it's a vast improvement. It at least recognizes that Christ and the Word are not opposed to each other. In fact, I wouldn't quarrel too insistently with this answer, as long as its view of B matched B's witness to itself.

However, I think this isn't the best way to put it. It still envisions a parting between the two that doesn't do justice to the role Christ Himself (A) gives to the Word (B). That is better expressed as...

A, by sole means of B. Of course and always, the intent is to know Christ truly and intimately (Ephesians 3:17-19; Philippians 3:10). And this can happen only as we are born of the Spirit (John 3:1ff.), and the Lord opens our hearts (Acts 16:14). But by what means, through what instrumentality, is this accomplished?

As I've been studying closely with my church on Wednesday nights, God has always had but one means of making Himself known, from the first moments when there was sentient life: by His Word. This has always been the case. Adam's first recorded experience of God is of God speaking to him; and so it goes through redemptive history. The grand trans-covenantal paradigm of Abram is that his right standing before God came through his saying "Amen" to the word of God (Gen. 15:6 and context).

Nothing has changed in the coming of Christ. He preached, He preached and preached; He was known as "the teacher." His miracles showed that his preaching had power, but their meaning was known through His preaching. When people came for his miracles, He moved on so He could preach more, say more words about God and His Kingdom (Mark 1:33-38).

This is what He said would be the norm. The mark of someone who was a genuine disciple was that that person continued in His word (John 8:31-32). That person who experienced God and knew God personally would be the person who kept Christ's commands and word (John 14:21, 23). Christ's abiding in the person would flourish by means of His word abiding in him (compare John 15:4 and 7).

And so it continued after He ascended. When Peter was surrounded by inquiring unbelievers, he preached God's words to them and used those words to urge them to salvation (Acts 2). The saved — reconciled to eternal fellowship with God — were those who embraced his word (Acts 2:41). Again and again, Luke describes the spread of Christianity as the spread of the word of God (Acts 6:7; 12:24; 13:49). In fact, how would we today have fellowship with the Father and the Son? Through the words of God through the apostles (1 John 1:1-3).

This is but a brief sample. I could just put it like this. You say the really important thing is to know Christ. I say "amen." And then I ask, "Who is this 'Christ'? Where do we learn of Him? Where do we find out infallibly who He is, what He taught, what He did, what He offers and demands, how I can know Him, and how He wants me to live and think?"

You know the answer.

A, by sole means of B.

Don't sunder what God hath joined.

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Bigger on the Inside

by Frank Turk

First things first today -- you may have noticed that your comments don't automatically plaster the basement of our posts anymore.  All comments now go into moderation when you post them, so the crack-like rush of getting your comment into the conversation is now delayed by what I am choosing to call, "a moment to think it over a bit."  Now, I grant you: it means Dan and I get to think it over a bit more than you do, but in the interest of everyone's peace of mind we will still have comments -- they just won't explode onto the internet like a pumpkin falling off a truck at 85 MPH anymore.

As you all may recall, Phil Johnson has helped write a lot of books, and Dan Phillips has written a couple of books.  In fact, most of the bloggers you have probably read, and a few you haven't, have all written books.

I have not written a book.  I wrote a Graduate Thesis on Wallace Stevens back at the end of the 1980's, but in spite of receiving a 4.0 grade and concluding my career as a professional student, that was only just under 100 pages.  I have written something like the equivalent of 1500 pages blogging, but so what? Am I to repackage that like some sort of Mad Magazine annual?  I would think less of you if you bought such a thing.

So while I have my complaints about what is able to be published these days, and my own regrets about what a useless peanut-roaster of a blogger I am, I have to admit that anyone who can sit down and gin up (more-or-less) 200 pages in one attempt for publication has to earn from me something which is a mix of bitter-and-sweet, respect-and-envy.

I work with a fellow named Michael Belote -- I talk to him almost every day.  He blogs at Reboot Christianity, and he has published a book called Rise of the Time Lords: A Geek's Guide to Christianity.  It's available on Kindle and as a Paperback, and as you will expect from me, I'm not going to write you a book report about it.  That sort of review can be found here or here.  What I am going to do is to recommend you read this book for your own good just to get you out of the Reformed ghetto for a couple of hours one Saturday.

There are plenty of shortcomings to Michael's book.  From my desk, while I enjoyed the analogy of Flatland to help us understand the great-than-nature-ness of God, I always worry how we try to make those sorts of analogies work with the Trinity.  Will we gravitate to modalism rather than Trinitarianism as we discuss how God, infinite above creation, can be and is three persons and one essence.  Michael's attempt to explain Free Will through Quantum Mechanics left me, um, blinded with science.  But: in spite of the things I think a few readings of the WCF and the longer and shorter catechisms might have helped Michael avoid, there is something legitimately-gripping about this book which most books published about theology these days simply don't have.

Michael's book has a gigantic heart.  There is an earnestness in his approach and his prose which is surprising.  It's almost like Michael wasn't trying to sell anybody anything -- not a book contract, not a page of text, not a single copy of his book.  But instead, he was trying to invite the reader into something -- to use the conceit of his title, something that turns out to be bigger on the inside.  That is: when Michael fails at analogy to systematics, he is failing because he's trying to express something that is just true.  He's aiming at Truth.

What I like about Michael's book, in spite of its flaws, is that somehow in his exorbitantly-geeky delivery he demonstrates something bigger than his analogies.  He speaks to something greater than creation -- and he does it in a way that works on people and what they already know.  This book isn't any kind of poetry, and it isn't written to be more than the simple prose that it is.  But it does something that good poetry usually does: it speaks past the metaphor and out of the truth which the author is trying to demonstrate.

If you read this book you will certainly see its theological flaws, and frankly its literary flaws.  But you will find something that 99% of our reformed books can't seem to muster: a sense of real wonder and real curiosity about the God who saves us.

That's worth reading.  When you're done, you can hold a study group to uncover all the anti-confessional statements Michael makes if that's what it takes to make you feel smart again -- but maybe what you need is not to feel so smart.  Maybe you need to feel like you have no idea how this faith can actually be bigger on the inside, and to ponder that for a little while as if you just discovered it for the first time.

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The Actual Agenda

by Frank Turk

When I sat down this weekend to come up with a stunning post for today, I had maybe a dozen ideas, including lampooning this utterly-awful post from Mark Driscoll which, in my view, demonstrates what sort of fellow he is -- and not in a good way. Maybe we'll get back to it eventually because it would be worth thinking about what sort of fellow writes that post when he's got so much to actively and publicly apologize for to the other fellow who helped him go mainstream.

However: do not let that derail the comments to this post.

This post is a bit from 2005 which I have slightly reworked for one purpose only: it still needs to be said.

Enjoy.

In my experience, it always comes back to this question: "Does Orthodoxy matter in the life of the Christian?" "It", in this case, is any discussion in which the name of Jesus Christ is used to advance an agenda.

Let's clear something up before I go on: having an "agenda" is not a bad thing. Anyone who has ever been in a meeting knows that an agenda keeps the meeting from lasting forever and also keeps the meeting facing some goal. Listen: I know that a lot of people frequently use the word "agenda" to mean "an underlying often ideological plan or program", and intend it to imply some evil motive. I don't intend it that way. When I say that someone has an agenda, simply read it to mean that I think this person does what they are doing intentionally. That is to say, they have thought about what they are doing and choose to do it for specific reasons.

God willing, we should all have an agenda. God willing, we all have the right agenda. Don't get all squirrelly because I say someone has an agenda.

So in any discussion where someone is using an agenda and part of that agenda is "Jesus Christ" -- either as an end or as a means -- I wonder if anyone considers the complex matter of Orthodoxy? I ask this because when this matter comes up, it seems like it always causes a wicked stir. For example, someone might say, "I admire Pope John Paul II as a Christian leader of historic proportions," and someone else might ask, "I am unaware that praying to Mary 'Possess my soul, Take over my entire personality and life, replace it with Yourself, Incline me to constant adoration, Pray in me and through me, Let me live in you and keep me in this union always,’ was actually 'Christian'. What do you mean by 'Christian'?"

Now think on this: the second person not saying that this Pope did nothing of any geopolitical "good". The question being posed is one of orthodoxy, in the same way, for example, that the men at Nicea posed the question of orthodoxy to Arius. The question is not a matter of political usefulness or even humanitarian usefulness. The question is whether the Gospel is being preached when the spiritual things otherwise hidden were brought to light.

What seems to come up quite often is this: apparently, that question is irrelevant -- or perhaps it is actually the wrong question to ask at all because of other mitigating factors. Some people advocate that there is no right way to determine orthodoxy because of the state of the church; others advocate that the demand for orthodoxy is itself a flawed pursuit because it is abstracted from the good works in evidence. In that, we should be able to call John Paul II, or Bono, or Mother Theresa, or Johnny Cash, or TD Jakes, or Oprah, or the Apostle Paul all "heroes of the faith" because their work was done in some orbit around the center-bound name of Jesus.

Yet it never fails to upset the advocates of this position when one asks anyway, "well, I happen to personally know a fellow who spent 2 years in South America as a missionary building hospitals and teaching school to children -- but he was a missionary for the Latter Day Saints. Is he a Christian hero also?" If you're lucky, after you sort through all the hyperbolic rhetoric that comes back, you might find the retort, "oh heavens -- he's not even a Trinitarian. That's a stupid example." If you're not as lucky, you'll find a respected Seminary President who gives your question the high-brow pish-tosh, as if Joseph Smith never renounced all of Christendom as abhorrent to God, declaring himself and his golden tablets the only true prophetic utterance.

Somehow those who will reply in that way simply cannot see the matters of orthodoxy at stake. I would actually agree that being non-Trinitarian (like a Oneness advocate, or a Mormon) excludes one from Orthodoxy -- which is my point in asking the question. What it underscores, however, is the larger issue that the Trinity is not the only matter of orthodoxy. If one is outside the faith for rejecting the Trinity, can't one be outside the faith for adding Mary, de facto via prayers to her that ask her to do the work of the Holy Spirit, to the Trinity? What about worshiping the Eucharist as God? Or for that matter, what about changing Jesus' declaration "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except by me," to mean that anyone who says he worships the God of Abraham must by implication be brought there through Christ -- even if he explicitly rejects Christ? What if someone was doing all of the above?

Or worse: what if someone has made the work of the Cross merely into a means of making money, or making himself important or popular?

All of these questions are matters of orthodoxy -- that is, matters of what is and is not "the Gospel", what is and is not the Good News of Jesus Christ. So if someone finds the cure for cancer and gives it away for free, and dies a beggar for doing so, he may have done something historically, ethically exceptional. If someone takes a high-profile stand that flies in the face of both Capitalism and Socialism but it is actually the right moral stand, Amen. But let's not confuse that with Christianity -- which is discipleship to Christ for the sake of the cross and the Gospel.

To be a disciple of Christ for the sake of the Cross and the Gospel means that we are actually referring to "Christ", "Cross", and "Gospel." That is: we are referring to that real person and those real things which are the ones which do all the unbelievable things we say they do. If we say "cross" and we mean a piece of jewelry, or "Gospel" and we mean a kind of campy folk music, we are not talking about truth but rather mere fashion. But when we are talking about truth, Orthodoxy -- that is, conformity to the faith delivered once for all time to the saints -- has to matter.  Conformity to that cannot merely be on the agenda: it has to be the the actual agenda, the singular objective and only check-box.

Especially, since it needs to be said, when we're talking about the men who lead the church both by proxy and by example.

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Check your Jesus

by Dan Phillips

It's funny how terrible I always have been at predicting results. Posts that I was certain would create a broad, energetic discussion have fizzled, while posts I virtually knocked off in a few minutes become Best. Post. EVAR in the eyes of some.

Same with Tweets and hashtags. I've started some I thought would really take off (and didn't)... and then yesterday, I came up with an idea. It was pretty much offhand. Here's the first:

If the "Jesus" you worship isn't too jazzed about every bit of God's Word, you might want to #CheckYourJesus
— Dan Phillips (@BibChr) March 5, 2013

One of the most retweeted was:

If the "Jesus" you worship wants everyone to have his "best life now," you'd better #CheckYourJesus
— Dan Phillips (@BibChr) March 6, 2013

A few others (I'm still adding):

If the "Jesus" you worship doesn't love the church, you'd better #CheckYourJesus

— Dan Phillips (@BibChr) March 5, 2013

If the “Jesus” you worship says "Love" and you think "Statist bureaucracy confiscating & redistributing wealth," you should #CheckYourJesus

— Dan Phillips (@BibChr) March 6, 2013

If your Jesus wouldn't have cared about the RCC perverting the Gospel and the Word bec they're pro-life, you should #CheckYourJesus

— Dan Phillips (@BibChr) March 6, 2013

If the “Jesus” you worship teaches you to stay home from churches tht aren't as perfect as you (think you) are, you'd better #CheckYourJesus
— Dan Phillips (@BibChr) March 7, 2013

If your Jesus taught you to call everyone who actually does take His words srsly a "hater" or "self-righteous," you'd better #CheckYourJesus

— Dan Phillips (@BibChr) March 6, 2013

If the “Jesus” you worship keeps handing you "God told me" cards without Bible verses on them, you'd better #CheckYourJesus
— Dan Phillips (@BibChr) March 6, 2013

I told Pirate Christian Radio's Chris Rosebrough, and he joined in and ran with it, along with a bunch of other really terrific contributions. The hashtag is #CheckYourJesus, and the Biblical background is 2 Cor. 11:4 -- "For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough."

Read them through, there are a lot of great contributions, and it's still growing. Here's a sampler.

If your "Jesus" is OK with you hating his bride, #CheckYourJesus

— Machel (@trogdor42) March 6, 2013

#checkYourJesus if He doesn't forgive your sins, but rather justifies them.
— Frank Turk (@Frank_Turk) March 6, 2013

If you claim Christianity but don't know the gospel #CheckYourJesus
— ❂Captain Morgan ⚓ (@MorganSteelman) March 6, 2013

If your Jesus wants you to pray to his earthly mother, you need to #CheckYourJesus
— Chris Rosebrough (@piratechristian) March 6, 2013

If you think grace can forgive your sin but not mortify it, time to #CheckYourJesus
— Machel (@trogdor42) March 6, 2013

If your "Jesus" has a generous orthodoxy & claims He has followers who are practicing Buddhists, Hindus & Muslims U need to #CheckYourJesus
— Chris Rosebrough (@piratechristian) March 6, 2013

It's really hard to pick, and once I've started it is hard to stop. So just peruse and enjoy.

Some sad souls tried to derail now and again with bitter little squawks, but they only set off new rounds of robust response. All in all, it's been a great ride.

Join in!

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A Peculiar Kind

This Friday, to commemorate the stellar contributions to internet apologetics and punditry made by our founder and benefactor, Phil Johnson, the unpaid and overworked staff at TeamPyro is posting a "best of Phil" post to give your weekend that necessary kick.

This excerpt is from the original PyroManiac blog on 24 June 2005, but was originally published in Pulpit Magazine.

Comments are closed.

Let me be more explicit: I fear that many (perhaps most) of the religious people whom Christianity Today and Ron Sider want to sweep into the evangelical movement aren't even true Christians.

CT's interview with Ron Sider begins precisely where Sider's book begins: citing data from a controversial 1999 survey conducted by evangelical pollster George Barna. Barna's figures supposedly demonstrate that the divorce rate among evangelicals is no better than the divorce rate among the total population of America. The problem with Barna's survey is his watered-down concept of what constitutes "evangelicalism." (See the lead section of "The Good the Bad, and the Ugly" in this issue of Pulpit for more on this same subject.)

Pollsters like Barna, aided and abetted by Christianity Today, have systematically been moving the boundaries of the evangelical movement outward for years. It's pretty hard to imagine any theological opinion so deviant that one could not hold it and credibly claim to be an "evangelical," given the paradigm for evangelicalism used by people like Barna, Sider, and CT's editors. The evangelical fringe has become so large and all-inclusive that old-style mainstream evangelicalism frankly seems like an oddity when you look at the whole of the visible movement. Historic evangelicalism is now under fierce attack on several sides from within the "evangelical" camp. As a result, the group Barna and company label "evangelical" is filled with people who don't even understand the most basic truths of the gospel—justification by faith, the authority of Scripture, the lordship of Christ, and all that. Their real problem is not that they don't live up to their beliefs, but that they don't really even have a biblical belief system.

Ron Sider himself is part of the problem. He denies that orthodoxy takes precedence over orthopraxy. He would claim, of course, that sound doctrine and good works are equally paramount. That's essentially the argument he attempted to make in his 1993 book One-sided Christianity (republished in 1999 as Good News and Good Works), where he claimed that evangelism without social action is "lopsided Christianity." Throughout the book, he treats sound doctrine and good works as disparate virtues to be balanced.

He is wrong on at least four counts.

First, in practice, Sider himself does not place nearly as much stress on sound doctrine as he does on humanitarian works. Virtually all his books tend to neglect the issue of faith (or take it for granted) while emphasizing the importance of good deeds. Far from attaining "balance," he has reversed the proper priority between faith and praxis.

Second, Mr. Sider is obsessed with a peculiar kind of "good works." For some thirty years he has talked incessantly about social activism, political justice, environmental protection, government-based anti-poverty programs, and similar liberal public policy issues—as if these were the epitome of all truly "good works." He actually seems to regard political support for a liberal social agenda as the true barometer of authentic Christian piety.

Third, it is a serious mistake to think either truly sound doctrine or genuinely good works can stand alone. The two are not distinct features to be set in balance by weighing them against one another.

Which is to say, fourth, that authentic good works flow from sound doctrine; not the other way around. Orthodoxy is what gives rise to orthopraxy. It never works in reverse. This, after all, is the basic message of Christianity: good works are a fruit of genuine faith. Faith, not any kind of work, is the sole instrument by which we lay hold of justification (Romans 4:4-5). And the practical righteousness of sanctification follows that (Hebrews 11:6; Galatians 5:6). Genuinely good works do not—and cannot—precede faith (Romans 8:7-8).

In other words, orthodoxy does take precedence over orthopraxy. That is an essential ramification of true biblical and evangelical doctrine. Orthodox doctrine really is more important than social action.

That is not to suggest that good works, human compassion, or godly virtues are optional. Far from it. (That certainly ought to be clear; for more than 35 years, our ministry has opposed the kind of antinomianism that portrays good works as irrelevant to authentic faith.) But good works are secondary to faith and sound doctrine, because they flow from it. They are caused by it. They are never the cause of it. Social action and political causes (whether on the right wing or the left) are simply not as important as the truth of the gospel message, and every Christian's personal priorities ought to reflect that principle.

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Compare, Contrast, Caterwaul (1 of 2)

by Frank Turk

When I ran into these older videos last week, I knew I would be blogging about them this week because of the topical nature of the subjects they cover.  What I did not remember (saying I did not know this would be false, but I always hope for the best) is that Satan controls my scheduled work load, and when I have a great blogging subject like this I wind up having more work than 5 people can accomplish, and my blogging takes a back seat.

So here's the deal:  This is the first of a 2-part post.  Today I'm posting two videos by well-respected men speaking on the same subject, and here's my ground-rule for keeping the comments open: you must find all the good things from these videos this week -- because there is something good in both of these videos.  Negative comments will simply be deleted without any warning or recourse.  Next week we'll talk about whether or not one of these videos is better than the other, and in what way, and what the other video can teach us both from a positive example and from its shortcomings.

First, from John Piper:



Second, from Tim Keller:



Mind your manners.

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After the Circus Parade

by Frank Turk

Yes, part 3 of my conference notes are already posted, so you can see them below.  However, yesterday T.D. Jakes (apparently) came clean as a fully-throated Trinitarian, and suffered a round of brotherly acceptance from James MacDonald and Mark Driscoll, so the whole matter is settled and now you people seem to owe everybody an apology for your godless, cessationist carping about orthodoxy and such things.

Right?

Oh wait: James MacDonald resigned from the leadership of The Gospel Coalition just days before Bishop Jakes' revelation that "manifestations" and "persons" are, pretty much, the same thing as long as you make sure your footnotes are properly added (you know: there are things the Father does which the Son did not do, and so on).  And the question of whether or not the Prosperity Gospel is in any way problematic with regards to the preaching of Christ, and Him crucified, (especially when it comes to the consequences of giving and, in the actions of a pastor, taking) just didn't come up.

So here's the deal: Phil is in deepest, darkest Eastern Europe this week, and I gave Dan the week off so I could post my conference notes here and link to the audio.  That means I get to post the first response to the Elephant Room 2 content.

Ready?

Ahem.

1. Someone needs to check the date for Mark Driscoll's shelf life as a reliable person.  In the past month, he utterly disgraced himself on the "Unbelievable" podcast by interrogating this host, Justin Brierly, and accusing him and the whole British Christian church of being a flop because they also don't have a Mark Driscoll, and they have a few women pastors.  But, when the other shoe drops and he has Bishop Jakes sitting before him in a place where there are supposed to be hard conversations, Bishop Jakes gets the velvet gloves -- including a complete whiff at the issue of egalitarianism in Jakes' own theology and church.  Of course, Jakes was not criticizing Driscoll's book, so the question of whether he's a good egalitarian or a bad one seems to fade in the distance.

2. The Gospel Coalition's response to MacDonald's resignation is par for the course for an organization that, frankly, values unity above the means to achieve unity (which is: sharpening each other with the truth).  The dodge that they are a "center-bounded" organization also needs to be checked for its shelf-life date as this kerfuffle demonstrates exactly what it means to be "center-bounded" -- you can hang out with us as long as you don't embarrass us, and when you do embarrass us, you just have to excuse yourself and we'll smile and wave.  If what happened yesterday was that Bishop Jakes exonerated himself from the charges of, as they say, bloggers, then credible people should embrace his clarifications (they certainly weren't any kind of recanting), and we happen to know of a group who are qualified to do just that.  If Jakes' chat with Mark Driscoll does not finally clear things up, then what's the best way for the council of TGC to handle Mark Driscoll's (non-resigned council member) endorsement of Jakes' orthodoxy?  I don't have any suggestions, but I think ignoring it is the way old-school Fundamentalists acted when their leaders did stupid things, and we know that TGC is not a group of Fundies, right?

3. TGC is not the only organization that has bacon in the fire after yesterday.  Acts29 is full of men who, if you ask me, are serious and sober guys with theological convictions that the Gospel matters -- which is why they bring it to the least of these, wherever they are.  I know Acts29 guys.  I know they abhor the Prosperity Gospel, anti-trinitarianism, The Oprah/Osteen axis of feel-good pep talks (which passes directly through the center of Jakes' church), using the Bible like a fortune cookie generator, and phony expressions of anything, including unity.  I'm looking forward to them helping us understand what happened yesterday because they, too, are not old-school Fundies who support their leaders no matter what, and the "matter what" has presented itself as if the circus parade has just come down Main Street.

So there you go -- you're going to miss a great post on what the Gospel means to marriage and the church today because you're going to get totally absorbed by this post.  Good thing nothing ever disappears on the internet.

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Open Letter to Kent Shaffer

by Frank Turk


Dear Kent;

First of all, thanks for your e-mail this weekend about your new project, OpenChurch.  Your infographic to raise awareness for the huge race, gender, and geography gap among global Church influencers for the purpose of positioning OpenChurch.com is interesting as a representative of a few statistics, and also because somehow my name wound up on the same page as people like Mark Dever, Jack Graham, Kay Arthur and Doug Wilson.  What might be even more interesting is that names like Lisa Bevere, Phyllis Tickle, Don Miller, and Ed Young Jr. also appear on that page, but names like James White, Don Carson, Graham Goldsworthy and Greg Koukl do not.

Let's start someplace safe rather than dive right into the Cat-5 bandwidth devastation: I think you're about right when you say that "A $300 resource downloaded 10,000 times saves the global church $3 million … [money] to be used for orphans, widows, outreach, or creating new, free resources."  In my view of it, giving away $3 million in teaching resources will like cost a "rich" church something it could afford to give away, and provide "poor" churches with something they probably would never have thought to seek out.  It's actually probably much better that $3 million impact from a strict economic analysis.

And I also think you're right-minded here to say that there's a massive upside which the church can find when somehow the churches with resources are not mining other churches for reimbursement for their efforts.  The workman is certainly worth his wages, but there's a vast difference between, for example, James White charging what it costs to support his downloadable content literally at no profit while Benny Hinn …

The TBN Mod Squad

Um, wait a minute.  Benn Hinn is in your list of global influencers. The self-disgracing Eddie Long is in your list.  T.D. Jakes is listed along side Voddie Baucham as if these two men shared the same faith.  Tony Campolo is found right next to Kirk Cameron -- and I'd love to see the video of those two talking about Christ, one evangelizing the other.  Erwin McManus is there; Rod Parsley; Joel Osteen; Hal Lindsey; Jay Bakker.

Wow.

OK: let's say that $ 3 million is a lot of money in the Global church.  It would certainly be a lot of money to most local churches, but let's just call it a lot of money -- and consider that saving it would be a blessing to the church at large.

What if by saving the church at large $3 million, we taught 10,000 fledgling churches that the primary message of the Gospel was "Don't give into your emotions and let them keep you from God's blessings and promotion." (a classic from Osteen)  Would that have been worth the savings?  Would you be proud of that?

My gut tells me, "no."  I don't think you're a fool.  But look at your list -- look at the people you have listed as influencers without any filter  for whether they are presenting good or ill.  And, I think, it gets worse when we think about the trajectory you are mapping with your slogan that we should learn "from 100% of the church."  This worries me because when I think of 100% of the church, I can call out plenty of people with whom I agree with theologically whom I would hope never will get a global pulpit because they are lousy ambassadors for Christ -- and heaven forbid that people who can't even affirm the Nicean Creed would get a global pulpit to spread their free samples to people who, frankly, need something better than what those unorthodox rich people are selling.

Kent: here's my bottom line, and you can take it or leave it.  If you really think that the church benefits from an opensource approach to discipleship and theology, I can't stop you from doing what you're about to do.  But I can caution you from the authority you and I both believe has the authority to not only warn us, but reform us.

There are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers.  To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled. They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work.

People will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.  For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.

Certain persons ought not to teach their different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith. The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.

The church is supposed to be a pillar and buttress of truth, Kent -- not a wind tunnel where everything can blow through and is blown around.  While the call to offer more resources for free from reputable ministries is a great idea -- an idea long since past the tipping point in this digital age -- the question has to be what exactly is the message in the medium.    And your approach here intentionally does not (and perhaps cannot) ask that question well.

Be careful, my friend, that in seeking to open the doors to all whom God has gifted to teach you do not also open the doors to those who are servants of a lion who is looking everywhere for someone to consume.  To even give over one soul to that lion is not just unfortunate: it is complicity in the eternal death of a soul in God's image.

I hope this note finds you in good spirits, and able to receive what I mean here in good faith.  I honestly wish you well, and am praying for you.

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The Folly of Doctoring the Gospel

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from "Faith," a lecture delivered at the Conference of Ministers and Students educated at the Pastors’ College, Tuesday 16 April 1872.

ear brethren, you and I believe in the doctrines of the gospel. We have received the certainties of revealed truth. These are things which are verily believed among us. We do not bow down before men's theories of truth, nor do we admit that theology consists in "views" and "opinions." We declare that there are certain verities, essential, abiding, eternal, from which it is ruinous to swerve.

I am deeply grieved to hear so many ministers talk as if the faith were a variable quantity, a matter of daily formation, a nose of wax to be constantly reshaped, a cloud driven by the wind. So do not I believe! I have been charged with being a mere echo of the Puritans, but I had rather be the echo of truth, than the voice of falsehood.

It may be want of intellect which prevents our departing from the good old way, but even this is better than want of grace, which lies at the bottom of men's perpetual chopping and changing of their beliefs.

Rest assured that there is nothing new in theology except that which is false; and that the facts of theology are to-day what they were eighteen hundred years ago. But in these days, the self-styled "men of progress" who commenced with preaching the gospel degenerate as they advance, and their divinity, like the snail, melts as it proceeds; I hope it will never be so with any of us.

I have likened the career of certain divines to the journey of a Roman wine cask from the vineyard to the city. It starts from the wine-press as the pure juice of the grape, but at the first halting-place the drivers of the cart must needs quench their thirst, and when they come to a fountain they substitute water for what they have drank. In the next village there are numbers of lovers of wine who beg or buy a little, and the discreet carrier dilutes again. The watering is repeated, till, on its entrance into Rome, the fluid is remarkably different from that which originally started from the vineyard.

There is a way of doctoring the gospel in much the same manner. A little truth is given up, and then a little more, and men fill up the vacuum with opinions, inferences, speculations, and dreams, till their wine is mixed with water, and the water none of the best. Many preachers—and I speak it with sorrow—have built a tower of theological speculations, upon which they sit like Nero, fiddling the tune of their own philosophy while the world is burning with sin and misery. They are playing with the toys of speculation while men's souls are being lost.

Much of human wisdom is a mere coverlet for the absence of vital godliness. I went into railway carriages of the first class in Italy which were lined with very pretty crochet-work, and I thought the voyagers highly honoured, since no doubt some delicate fingers had sumptuously furnished the cars for them. The crochet work was simply put on to cover the grease and dirt of the cloth. A great deal that is now preached of very pretty sentimentalism and religiousness is a mere crochet-work covering for detestable heresies long since disproved, which dared not appear again without a disguise for their hideousness.

With words of human wisdom and speculations of their own invention men disguise falsehood and deceive many. Be it ours to give to the people what God gives to us. Be ye each of you as Micaiah, who declared: "As the Lord liveth, whatsoever the Lord saith unto me that will I speak." If it be folly to keep to what we find in Scripture, and if it be madness to believe in verbal inspiration, we purpose to remain fools to the end of the chapter, and hope to be among the foolish things which God has chosen.

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The One who is not Offended

by Frank Turk



Some of you will read this post as a break from the series on the issues with BioLogos. That would be an error on your part.

On my morning walk (I've been back on the horse for 2 weeks now that it's below 80 at 5:30 AM in Little Rock) I've been catching up on podcasts, and I've been listening to Tim Keller's sermons from back in February. He has a fine sermon on "Literalism" that I commend to you, but the one I listened to today was called "Meeting the Real Jesus". In it, Pastor Keller is preaching on an excellent passage from Matthew 11:

Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, "Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?" And Jesus answered them, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me." [ESV Mat 11:2-6]

I could transcript it for you, but then my point would be buried under his very-good teaching on this passage. Turns out that this is actually a sermon from 1996 according the the Redeemer web site. You will get my version of this story instead -- and why it matters to the BioLogos controversy.

Here's the place in Scripture where John the Baptist -- the guy who Jesus later in this very passage called "the Elijah who is to come" -- is in prison, and he's actually giving God some sassy lip. You know: the real Elijah burns up all the prophets of Baal, and just because he missed Jezebel he runs off to a cave to ask God to let him die because the evil queen is still threatening him. So the Elijah who is to come at least comes by it honestly.

So John sends his disciples to Jesus to ask him, "listen: I'm in jail, and I thought you were the savior of Israel, so are you going to set me free here, or is there someone else who's going to set Israel -- and by 'Israel', I mean 'me' -- free?"

So Jesus says to them, "Tell John ... blessed is the one who is not offended by me." Think about that a second: Jesus is telling camel-cloth prophet John (who baptized him) in much the same way as he tells everyone earlier in Matthew's Gospel, "blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek, blessed are those hungry for justice, etc.," except that rather than addressing the crowd, ("blessed are they") he's addressing one guy ("blessed is he").

But how does he say that? It's all in the ellipsis, isn't it? The blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. See, John: I'm the one saving the ones who need to be saved. Pastor Keller does a very keen job of getting you there in his sermon by focusing on that key phrase I underlined -- that the poor have good news preached to them.

In fact, he makes it a point to say that this is really the central matter of the Gospel which most churches that call themselves "Christian" miss out on. Most "respectable" churches are preaching a Gospel not for people with no hope but a message for people who just need to try harder. They don't need to be saved: they just need a good example.

And in that, he says, they have lost the supernatural, culture-spanning power of the Gospel -- because they want to be for the respectable and not for the helpless. The poor, you see, understand their plight better than the comfortable: they cannot save themselves.



And this, I think is where we turn this passage of Scripture to the problem of being intellectually respectable. It seems to me that this is the central matter for the BioLogos folks: they do not want to save anybody. They want to merely do better as the world might see it.

It comes out when they say stuff like this:

The creation story of BioLogos is compatible with many faith traditions, and there is no way to give a scientific proof for one monotheistic faith over another. Therefore, this response will simply show the compatibility of Christianity with BioLogos.

Or this blurb from a "coming soon" essay:

Over the past few decades, sociobiologists have begun applying Darwin’s theory to many aspects of human behavior, including altruism. If evolution selects only traits that promote reproductive success, then altruistic behaviors seem contrary to the underlying principle of evolution. Sociobiology and evolutionary models can account for some elements of altruism, but radical altruism poses additional challenges.

That is: science can and does offer an explanation which we don't have to be ashamed of.

But Jesus here tells John that the one who is not offended by Jesus -- the one who doesn't necessarily protect us from persecution, but in fact saves us to take up our cross and die daily to sin -- is the one who is blessed.

It's funny that BioLogos sort of makes Isaac Newton out to be a rube because when he observed the planets in motion, he wrote this:

The six primary Planets are revolv'd about the Sun, in circles concentric with the Sun, and with motions directed towards the same parts and almost in the same plan. Ten Moons are revolv'd about the Earth, Jupiter and Saturn, in circles concentric with them, with the same direction of motion, and nearly in the planes of the orbits of those Planets. But it is not to be conceived that mere mechanical causes could give birth to so many regular motions: since the Comets range over all parts of the heavens, in very eccentric orbits. For by that kind of motion they pass easily through the orbits of the Planets, and with great rapidity; and in their aphelions, where they move the slowest, and are detain'd the longest, they recede to the greatest distances from each other, and thence suffer the least disturbance from their mutual attractions. This most beautiful System of the Sun, Planets, and Comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being. And if the fixed Stars are the centers of other like systems, these, being form'd by the like wise counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One; especially since the light of the fixed Stars is of the same nature with the light of the Sun, and from every system light passes into all the other systems. And lest the systems of the fixed Stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other mutually, he hath placed those Systems at immense distances from one another.

It seems to me that this sort of thing speaks plainly to their objectives -- which are not nearly and Bible-friendly and Gospel-friendly as they want to let on.

They are, in fact, offended by this sort of faith. It speaks to the kind of faith and blessing they are looking for.

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Weekend Extra: The Heresy of Orthodoxy

by Frank Turk



My series on Biologos is sort of a multi-headed beast because that's the problem with error: it's never a linear sliver in the body of Christ which you can extract with a sharp razor cut and the quick pinch of a tweezer, or a tick which you can pull off at once if you get a good grip on it the first time. Error, as the New Testament tells us, is more like leaven -- or maybe more like Athlete's foot: you don't just remove it, but you have to clean house and treat the afflicted in order to get it all out.

One of the key matters at BioLogos is the idea of a diversity of readings of the OT -- which is an interesting ploy as already shown in this series. The root of it is the slogan that if guys as diverse as Origen and Augustine could read Genesis non-literally, we can too and still be in the great cloud of witnesses.

My opinion is that this reasoning comes from an application of what is called "the Bauer Hypothesis", or "the Bauer-Ehrman Hypothesis" (hereafter, BEH). For those of you who live in the real world and don't find esoteric battles over the retelling of history either compelling or actually-interesting, BEH was established in the first half of the 20th century by Walter Bauer -- the same eponymous creator of the most significant lexicon of NT Greek in use today, the BDAG. Bauer's thesis -- which he never really substantially proved -- was that if you surveyed the cities in the first three centuries of Christian faith, you would not find Christianity, a unified body of beliefs and practices. You would instead find christianities, a loosely-connected body of beliefs which were not consistent from place to place and which did not all teach the same thing. This is relevant to Bauer because this is reflected in the texts of the New Testament -- there is not one orthodox faith reflected in the texts of the NT, but a diversity of confluent teachings which may or may not harmonize but are nevertheless accepted as all part of the same general faith in this fellow Jesus.

The theory is now called "BEH" because the ubiquitous Bart Ehrman resuscitated the theory after it had been widely disproven in the 70's and 80's. Ehrman's, um, improvements to the theory include the idea that the variation in texts and text-types demonstrates Bauer's thesis, and that we should see the sociological history of Christianity as one in which the narrower view co-opted the ground of "orthodoxy" from the diversity of the earlier age. If we are to return to the source, we should return to a more-diverse Christian faith in which many views -- even conflicting views -- be welcomed in as family.

So when it comes up that Augustine didn't read Genesis literally, (in the view of the BioLogos advocates) we should see that first as part of the diversity which orthodoxy ought to represent -- and not to read too closely to see that Augustine's view is actually much more radically-supernatural than the one BioLogos promotes. When it comes up that Origen read Genesis "spiritually" and not historically, and therefore BioLogos is just doing the same thing, it should not be inquired too deeply what Origen's view includes:

Origen theorized that before God created the universe, he created — before the start of time — a group of rational beings which he called logika, but which might be thought of today as “souls.” These rational beings, Origen suggested, had God-like qualities. With eternity on their hands, they passed time endlessly contemplating divine mysteries. Finally, however, these beings or souls tired of their contemplation and started drifting away from God. Time began. Souls began to have an existence separate and apart from God. The only soul who escaped this fate, Origen argues, was “the soul of Christ” who returned to point the path back to the true function of all souls, all rational beings: contemplation of divine mysteries. [source]

Certainly, the advocates at BioLogos wouldn't accept this as even remotely credible -- and whether this is an orthodox view I leave to the open discussion about Origen's own place in the history of Christianity.

The point being that BEH resides among the primary supports of the BioLogos approach -- and BEH is, frankly, a disreputable approach to the history of the faith.

Now seriously: don't take my word for it. Earlier this year, Andreas Köstenberger and Michael J. Kruger, through Crossway, published the excellent book, The Heresy of Orthodoxy, which exposes BEH for the unsustainable opinion that it is. D.A. Carson says it "patiently, carefully, and politely [exposes] this shameful nakedness for what it is." I honestly could not have said it better myself.

Köstenberger and Kruger take the time to dismantle the textual and historical misunderstandings which compose BEH, and they do it in a way which any reader can understand. Their well-documented research and arguments frankly outshine the object of their investigation because of the sobriety with which they approach the task.

So as you engage this topic, approach it with this book in-hand. Educate yourself on the history of the text of the Bible and on the origins of orthodoxy -- especially of the text of the Bible and how it was received. But don't let someone who is allegedly serious about "orthodoxy" tell you that that "orthodoxy" is about how inclusive you can be.

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More than a Mere Distinction

by Frank Turk

So last night I was reading more of Christopher Benson’s apologetics for BioLogos over at Evangel, and I was reading his responses to the many people disagreeing with him – “many” not being “most”, though it was nice to see Joe Carter actually say publicly that his finds BioLogos to be a non-starter. And as I read Chris’s reponses to people (me among them), I posted my curt resignation from Evangel.

I got one e-mail afterward which said this:

I don't know where evangelicalism has ever been bound together with belief in a literal 6-day creation. We have our significant disagreements among us on that question, but it ought not be something to break fellowship over, and still less something to use to brand a brother or sister as you seem to have done.

Believe it or not, that really was said in real Christian love and concern for what I said and did, so it gave me a moment of pause to think about whether I said all I had to say about the subject – and whether I said it well enough to let it lie.

What I said was this:

And with that, sadly, I am out of here.

Note to Joe Carter: please close my Evangel account. If this is the sort of thinking FirstThings wants to represent as “Evangelical”, we are all shamed by it.

God be with you all, and may he shine His light of grace on you.

And, of course, hilarity ensued. I was accused of all manner of things for doing this, and some think I should not leave Evangel for the sake of this disagreement -- which some perceive as splitting over the interpretation that Genesis 1 talks about a 6-day creation.

This is why I think it's necessary to make this post today, so pack a lunch.

First, let me make it clear: I think it's plain that there are people saved by Jesus Christ who have faith in Him who do not believe in a 6-day creation. When Peter preached to the Jews at Pentecost that they needed to repent and believe, he made no references to the number of days in creation, and his emphasis was of course on this Jesus, whom they crucified, who they could now know for certain was both Lord and Christ -- therefore, repent and be saved from the coming judgment.

People who believe what Peter preached to believe are saved -- which is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, in his name which is the only name by which we must be saved. Period.

Second: In that group of people, there are some who do not hold to the inerrancy of Scripture. I think you could make the case that a lot of people who are saved by faith are not saved to a high view of Scripture. I think it's a common occurrence, but it is a shameful thing -- a shame to their pastors, and to themselves because they do not consider what it means to have that which God said as a reference.

Third: This is because in that group of people, there are some who are not great systematic thinkers -- as I discussed here. Having a fallible confession of faith does not mean you have a broken confession of faith.

Fourth: That said, the important corollary to my third point is that denying critical parts of Scripture is not the same thing as being rudely ignorant of them. For example, perhaps you have never read John 1 and you can't really define in what way the Word, the Lamb of God, was present and active in creation. I'm really OK with that. What I am not OK with -- and what I think historically the church has never been OK with -- is the abject denial of something the Bible says clearly and unequivocally. So to say, for example, that science teaches us that no persons were present at the moment of the beginning of the universe because nothing existed at that moment so we have to rethink our "literal" interpretation of John 1:1-14 is to say, "I reject the historic Christian faith," not "I trust Scripture differently than you do, and my way is better because it builds bridges to modern and post-modern philosophical and political bedrock."

Fifth: That distinction is the one which, frankly, is the place where the definition of "Christian" and "not Christian" resides. It does not reside in some sociological analysis of all people loosely committed to series of historically-related traditions. If this is not the place where this distinction is established, I think we have misunderstood at least the essential writings of Paul, but probably all of the New Testament.

You know: in Antioch, where the first people were actually called "Christians", they had some kind of belief system which started with the loose evangelism made by converted Jews who were escaping persecution in Jerusalem, followed by the exhortations of Barnabas, followed by the teachings of Paul when Barnabas sent for him to come and teach those in Antioch. But what this part of Scripture says at least in part is that there is a place where what the world believes is substantially different than what the church believes. There is a distinction between being merely someone from Antioch, and being someone who is a "Christian" -- and it does lie someplace in the mix of what a persecuted post-Jewish believer would tell people, and what Barnabas would tell people, and what Paul would tell people.

My suggestion is that none of that is found in what we see in the BioLogos agenda and writings -- against their protests to the contrary. This assertion deserves its own post, which I do not have time to complete today. Look for it in the near future.

Sixth: It is simply irrefutable that the BioLogos project is deeply entrenched in obliterating what's described in my fifth point, and in engaging in activities covered by my fourth point. This is their chief aim -- as it is the aim of every cult, post-orthodoxy, which finds itself wanting to appease some other authority apart from or above Scripture. This assertion requires more than just saying it is so. Look for my exposition of this in the near future.

Seventh: That is bad enough in its own right. But when someone is willing to take up for those engaged in activities in that sixth point, and call those activities orthodox and faithful, and to do so in a flippant way without personally engaging clear objections based on documented facts and rudimentary critical thinking, that person is himself working to damage the faith of others.

My opinion is that this is what Christopher Benson is participating in -- he's endorsing BioLogos as a "middle way" approach to mend fences with "science", but he is in fact giving up what must be called the home field of orthodoxy to do so. In every way, he endorses the POMA approach to authority where "partially overlapping" turns out to be a cover for simply allowing Science to have the first and last word, and Scripture must have only a say which is consequential to the current findings and edict of science.

So the problem is not the lack of full-throated endorsement of a 6-day creation. The problem is not even a failure to endorse a robust doctrine of scriptural inerrancy. The problem is that there are members of the Evangel masthead who are, frankly, engaged in damaging the faith of others by defending rank apostates -- and not merely defending them, but endorsing them as faithful members of the larger church.

When I joined Evangel back 10 months ago, Phil gave me the advice that because the basis for unity was too broad and too shallow, and that the objectives of the bloggers too diverse, there's no way to make a clear-throated stand for the Gospel there and be anything but overwhelmed by the other voices. I think I made a good show of it, and I stand by all my own contributions there. However, because it's obvious to me that I am at a disadvantage because I expect others to have a good conscience about how they participate there -- including engaging topics where we disagree rather than essentially retorting, "read a book" -- I resign. I withdraw.

Let me go on the record to say without any hesitation that my objectives are not the objectives of Evangel -- and I can say honestly I don’t know what those objectives really are anymore. When this sort of hard-press apologetics for the acceptance of a world view which can and does damage the faith of others is made and is not rebuked or restrained, I don't belong there.

God bless Joe Carter for inviting me, and for putting up with my personal flavor of mayhem for the last 10 months. May God bless him with a sharper vision in the future for making the content of Evangel more actually-evangelical and actually-Gospel-filled rather than a mixed bag of politics and secular scientific apologetics.

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Something more Sleek and Functional

by Frank Turk

So I ask you: how much faith do you need, really, to be saved?

One answer the NT gives us is this: you don't really have to know anything to be saved. That is, you can the faith of a little child, and God will welcome you (cf. Mt 18:1-6, for the proof-texters and OGs everywhere). You can have a simple faith, a milk-drinking faith (cf. 1Cor 3), and be saved.

But there's another piece of the NT which frequently gets soft-soaked, and it's the answer which James gives: while a simple faith saves, it does not save only in the eternal sense. That is: it saves you to maturity:

the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

That is, your simple faith is also a living and breathing faith which grows you through trials to a "complete faith".

Many folks read this – rightly, btw – to mean "a right faith does works", and that's fine. That's a good application. But is it the only application? Is it the only one James intends here?

For example, when James says,

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

isn’t James saying that God's word is there so that we can take action upon it, and learn how to live in faith?

And glancing up this post a second, isn’t it also Paul's point in 1 Cor 3 that the Corinthians ought not to be forever babies in the faith, but that eventually they have to move on to the meat of the word? That is: their faith ought to make more of them, and be more to them than (as Paul implies) baby food.

So in that, there is a second answer to what you ought to know to have a saving faith: it ought to be true, and correct, insofar as you are mature and maturing in your faith.

Here's what I mean by that – by way of example. Let's think about math for a second. My son loves math (thank God – please Jesus make him a man who has a heart for God and people who is an accountant), and we are working the flash cards. He can add, he can subtract, and he's mastering "times". Which is great, if you ask me: he ought to learn how to do "times" as if it was written in his heart.

The other day, he asked me, "Daddy, do you do math at work?" And the answer, of course, is yes – I do a lot of math at work, a lot of it requiring advanced algebra. So I told him, "yes, son: I do a LOT of math at work."

"Can you show it to me?" he asked.

Well, sure I can show it to him – so I opened up my laptop, opened up some spreadsheets, and I showed him the greek-like formulas we have either borrowed or invented at work to discover things like how many dollars we are earning per hour given the rate of production vs. the standard work for a given work center. And then there's the statistical stuff I have to do verify and compare forecasts. And then there's the financial comparisons vs. plan and vs. last year. And so on.

(hey: wake up. The boring part's over)

So he said to me, "but where are the numbers?" See: in his understanding of math, you need two numbers to make an equation, and those two numbers yield a fixed answer – which, factually, is the right view of arithmetic, and ultimately the right view of how a formula yields an answer you can use.

So I tell him, "Son, we fill in the numbers when they come by. This kind of math shows us how to think about certain problems, and when a problem comes up, we change out the letters for numbers to get an answer."

"WHAT?!" he yelled, sort of laughing. "Daddy, you can't add up two letters!? You can't add 'A' plus 'B' and get 'C' – they're LETTERS!"

Well, really: he's right. Even in algebra II, the formula gets solved down to its simplest state, or most useful state, and you don't really get numbers at the end – you get formulas. But understanding that requires a leap from linear, arithmetic thinking to something more conceptual – something which is taking in the big picture of how adding 2 + 2, or making 3 "times" 4, works.

So my son can have a completely -correct- view of arithmetic, and be -unable- to grasp algebra yet. That doesn't make his view of math "false": it makes it incomplete. He's not a heretic to the math community: he's a student. His view is correct insofar as it is advanced, but it doesn’t account for all of math.

Now, if in 10 years my son and I sit down and he says to me, "Dad, open up your laptop for me – I want to see what you're doing at work," I'll be glad to oblige. My fatherly optimism will be that he's just completed Trig and he's about to show me how to simplify some of my 3-legged-dog formulas into something a little more sleek and functional.

But if we open up the laptop and when he looks at the spreadsheets he says to me, "You know what, Sir Dude? [he uses 'sir' out of respect because he was raised right] I still don't buy the algebra thing. I know what you call it – I just don't buy it. It doesn’t work. 2 + 2 = 4; A + B doesn't equal anything. All this stuff you say you've been doing for the last 10 years is just guff. And there's no way for you to prove to me that it does work."

At that point, we have crossed over from incomplete knowledge to something else – a knowledge which refuses to grow, refuses to receive more. It's willful ignorance.

In Biblical terms, it's what Paul called the "shipwreck of faith" – that is, when someone rejects "love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith." "Love" is certainly the product, but one of the components of that love is a "good conscience". In my example, my son can’t be said to have a good conscience – because he establishes what cannot be true apart from the facts which are plainly in evidence. In our faith life, we cannot be said to have a good conscience if we are unwilling to receive the facts of faith.

That's a big deal, for example, for Catholics – because the right-minded Catholic view is that Protestants who willfully refuse the teaching of the Church are unrepentant sinners. And if they are right about what kind of final authority the Church as an institution holds, they're right: you can't have a good conscience when you reject the truth.

But for Protestants – not merely evangelicals, but confessional Protestants – what Scripture teaches us is what we must accept as the truth about our faith. And as we advance out of spiritual immaturity to spiritual maturity, the burden upon us to accept and demonstrate the truth in Scripture becomes a greater responsibility. This is why the warning to teachers is such a serious thing; that's why the anathema against a different gospel – and the criteria for knowing what that is – is an anathema and not just a rebuke.

And for good measure, think about this: that's why John called the Pharisees who came to see him a brood of vipers, and why Jesus called the same men whitewashed tombs -- because the Gospel had not changed, but these men, who ought to have known better, did not know it when they saw it.

You don't need a perfect confession to save you, but you do need a faith which is perfecting you, not leading you into more error.

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