February 11: the most pivotal day in my life (part two)

by Dan Phillips

My problems

So, as I explained, I had two problems. The minor problem was Jesus, the major problem was me.

How can I say Jesus was a "minor" problem? As I explained, I had this nagging awareness that his teaching wasn't really quite what my cult made it out to be. But in itself, that wasn't huge. Jesus was one religious teacher among many. A really impressive one, true; but just one. Knowing that He disagreed with me was not, in itself, shattering.

But when conjoined to the major problem, it took on a different significance. See, I had realized that I basically was the founder of my religion. I was my authority, my judgment and character were the basis. And I'd come to see that this foundation was irredeemably corrupt.

Praying, but not "through"

So I actually prayed, which was new. We Religious Scientists (like Christian Scientists) did not pray. To speak to God implied separation from God, and we believed we were one with Divine Mind. So we meditated, we affirmed. We didn't pray.

But now I did, as I became increasingly gripped with a desire to know God, and be saved—though I'd not have used the word—from the wretched heap of my internal life.

I remember praying once, in my darkened room, "Father--" I got no further. It was as if a voice came back: "Who said I was your Father?"

I had to admit, "I did." And that was the problem.

So I prayed that God would lead me to know Himself on His own terms, as He really was, whether he was such as I wished Him to be, or wholly other. I was willing to do anything, be anything. "Even if it means becoming a Jesus Freak," I said, because that was the worst thing I could think of.

Well.

God's mole

Meanwhile, as they say in the movies, I had been befriended by this Christian named Greg. He'd seen me walking home from school and offered me a ride. We went to the same high school, but I hardly knew him. Still, it was nice of him, and became a daily thing.

I asked Greg early on what his religion was, and he told me he was a Christian. "If you ever want to know why, or have any questions, just let me know," he added.

"You bet," I replied. That was never going to happen.

Fast-forward a few months of this agonizing process I've described, and that all changed. I had shared with Greg about some of the garbage—though this was not my exact term—that I was finding within. Greg sympathized and commiserated. He was a very real person, not like most sloganeering, plastic Jesus people I had known.

Greg gave me a gospel of John in some modern translation, which I read. He also gave me C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. I liked to think I was smart, but most of it was well over my head. Except one part. You know the part.

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

I remember reading this with a sinking heart. Lewis was talking about me. I was always insisting that Jesus was a great teacher, the greatest—yet I had kept running into things that this "great teacher" taught, that I did not believe, did not want to believe.

And what of that? I'd already established that I, and my judgment, were no fit foundation for life and thought. But what of Jesus? Here was someone we held to be the greatest teacher, the greatest example, the greatest mystic. His life was a life of integrity. The unparalleled symphony of miracles in his life, with the crescendo of the Resurrection, made perfect harmony with the claims He made for Himself. It all fit. If I was no fit foundation, was He?

So somewhere here I surely shocked my friend Greg by telling him I wanted to talk. And talk we did. For hours, and hours. First, at my parents' house. Then the next day, a rainy Saturday, after I'd been at a meeting for the Religious Science church youth group (I was a co-leader; also, I'd taken two of the four-year ministerial training course).

I threw every question I had at Greg, and he kept telling me about Jesus and what the Bible said.

At the end of our second talk, Greg said, "Why don't you just ask God? Ask God if He wants you to believe in Jesus, in order to know Him. What would you be out?"

Made perfect sense to me. So ask I did.

...and the roof didn't cave in

The next day, I went to church with Greg. It was Van Nuys Baptist church, pastored by Harold Fickett. I remember that Fickett preached like a lawyer building an airtight case. I felt myself to be the defendant, and guilty as... well, as sin. I wish I could tell you what he preached. I can't. But I can tell you it was as if Fickett had read my journal. He absolutely nailed me to the pew. And as it all fell apart, it all fell together.

At the end, Fickett gave an invitation. If you wanted to find out how to know Christ as Savior, come up front, someone would help you. Greg said he'd come with me if I wanted. I did want. So up we went. They may have been singing "Just As I Am," which would have expressed my longing exactly.

The man who talked with me used the Four Spiritual Laws. I remember with crystal clarity when the counselor talked about how my sin separated me from God. This described and made sense of exactly what I'd been coming to see within myself.

Then he showed how Jesus was the sole mediator between God and man, and this made sense of the unbridgeable gap I'd come to see between God and me. It also connected so well with that stubborn text, John 14:6, which had so bothered me (as I mentioned in the first part, and discussed more fully elsewhere). Jesus was the way, none could come to the Father but through Him. Including me.

Then the counselor showed the picture of the chaos of the self-ruled life, and this described me to a "T." I hadn't indulged in some of the particular vices of my generation. But had I loved God above all? Never. Had I taken His name in vain? Constantly and with gusto. Had I dishonored my father and mother? Since I could talk. On and on it went.

And then we prayed together, and I implored Jesus Christ in His fullness to be my Lord and my Savior, to make me His own, and to forgive me of all my sins.

Was it an emotional experience? The emotion I remember feeling first was relief, in the sense that I had come to rest on a real and true foundation in Jesus Christ. "Rock of Ages" was very meaningful to me, as was "How Firm a Foundation." That I now could know God, on His terms, and be forgiven my sins. The next I remember was how new everything was to me—God, me, my world, the Bible.

Almost especially the Bible. It was as if someone had come and stolen that dusty, depressing, dead, irrelevant history-book, and replaced it with something that was electric, something that was alive. I could not get enough of it. On my knees, reading and reading, delving, diving, exploring, trying to absorb the whole of it. It was God! Talking to me!

And my, how I needed Him to talk to me. Everything had to be re-thought, re-learned: the meaning of God, of things, of people, of self; how to think and decide; how to pray; how to live. I was conscious that I had had it all wrong, and needed to get it right. Because it mattered now.

Everything changed for me on that day, and since that day: February 11, 1973. Thirty-four years, and counting. The progress has had ups and downs, lags and leaps, "many dangers, toils, and snares." But the Christ I prayed to that day became my Lord that day, and by His grace He remains my Lord, and by His grace and covenant will so remain.

Afterthought

But some of that was done "wrong," wasn't it? Altar call? C. S. Lewis? A "voice"? Four spiritual laws?

Some thoughts on that, and more, next time.

UPDATE: see here for part one; see here for part three.

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Simeon. Cool.

by Phil Johnson

ur friends at Logos Bible Software (an all-around excellent program) have just announced the coming release of Charles Simeon's Horae Homileticae Commentary (21 volumes). Spurgeon said of this work:

Horae Homileticae; or, Discourses digested into one continued series, and forming a Comment upon every book of the Old and Near Testament; 21 vols. 8vo. Seventh edition. Lond., H. G. Bohn. 1845. S.f2 10s. [Being the entire works of Charles Simeon, with Copious Indexes, prepared by T. Hartwell Horne.] Not Commentaries, but we could not exclude them. They have been called "a valley of dry bones": be a prophet and they will live.

Spurgeon read Simeon and occasionally quoted from him. He began his commentary on Psalm 11 with Simeon's summary. Our favorite Superstar Brit blogger, Dr. Warnock, apparently had a hand in encouraging this edition of Simeon's works.

Our own Dan Phillips wrote a bit about Simeon and Wesley just a month ago.

This looks like a great resource. I haven't read Simeon, because his works have always been so hard to find. So I'm glad Logos will be making these works available in this excellent, fully searchable format. Projected release date: "7/10/2007" (Is that July 10, or October 7? I don't know. How you read a date like that depends on whether you're American or not.) In any event, perhaps when we've had a chance to review them, one of us Pyros will write a more complete evaluation. We're going to lobby for some pre-release review copies.

But I can tell you already: this would be a much better way to spend your birthday money than loading up on Frank's Pyro-junk.

And I really love my Pyro-T-shirts, so that's a pretty strong recommendation for the Simeon works.

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These words [1 of 23]

by Frank Turk

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I enjoyed Dan’s post yesterday in that it shows us the power of God’s word to reform sinful men—and they don’t come any more sinful than Dan and I, so let’s not get too puffed up here. But there’s an issue underneath Dan’s post which is sort of running around the blogosophere right now and, since Wednesday is my day, I thought I’d drop in a few words on the subject here at TeamPyro.

What’s at issue is the matter of whether the word of God means something in particular or not. By that I mean, the Bible is an object in the world—a literary object—and we encounter it as people in the space-time continuum, right? On my desk right now is a Coke, a coffee mug, my Palm Tungsten E, a $19.99 1 GB USB stick I picked up at WMT, a Bible, and a pen. It would be somewhat absurd to pick up my Coke and try to discern what saith the Lord—and it would be equally absurd to pick up my Bible and try to get a swallow of sugary, caffeinated heaven from it.

So just on that superficial level, the Bible’s not very good to get a snack from. It’s also probably not a great handbook for fixing my beater Nissan. So whatever is in that book, there are some things it does tell us, and some things that it doesn’t tell us. But here’s the kicker: how will we ever know what it is actually good for?

Anyone?

Maybe we rub it on our foreheads?

I don’t know if this is my college egjookayshun showing here or what, but it seems to me that we have to read the Bible to figure this out. You know: like you’re reading this blog right now.

Now, the complaint will inevitably come back, “cent, you disasterous Baptist, how do we read the Bible? By what means? With what method? Doesn’t your somewhat-stoopid affirmation here overlook the problem of the text?”

Actually, I think it turns out that this particular criticism is startlingly self-ignorant. Do I have to rehearse why right here—that someone writing has the audacity to assuming that someone reading what they have written doesn't know how to read?

That said, “by what means” is also a very fair question when we realize that reading is not just like connecting H/O scale train cars. The phrase:

METHOUGHT I saw my late espousèd Saint
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,
Whom Joves great Son to her glad Husband gave,
Rescu'd from death by force though pale and faint

is not as transparent, for example, as the phrase

When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out." The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go."

You shouldn’t read the first one the way you’d read the second, and vice versa.

But how do you know? Seriously—how do you know whether it’s poetry or historical narrative or something else?

Well, let me ask you: how do you know how to read the newspaper vs. how to listen to the lyrics of a song? That’s question is not as simple as it seems—because most of us, I imagine, know to read the newspaper with a certain degree of skepticism, and to listen to song lyrics with some other kind of detachment, but we still derive some enjoyment from that. This is something everyone does every day, btw, and it doesn't cause chaos in the streets.

But we know, don’t we? The first time you heard the insipid “Jesus take the Wheel”, you knew it wasn’t a news report, right? And when you read Dan’s post yesterday, you knew it was a historical report of sorts as well—in spite of the fact that he referenced God’s action in eternity past?

So what’s the clue? What’s the high sign? Is there just one?

Here are some suggestions:

[1] The author tells you in some way. With the patch of Milton, above, Milton is writing in a recognizable verse form, and we know to read poetry. In Dan’s post yesterday, he said, “this is my testimony”. Now, you can call Milton a hack and Dan a liar if you are inclined, but doing that before you try to read what they have written is a little less than engaging.

[2] The text itself tips you off. This is another way the author tells you something, but sometimes they are telling you something they don’t intend. For example, when you read the newspaper, it gets tired when the same reporter/columnist makes the same factual error for the 10th time this quarter. When someone is being dishonest, or disingenuous, or biased, or on the positive side transparent, or exhuberant, or is simply enjoying himself, it’s in the text. The words, the phrasing, the pace, the diction, the technique simply gives itself away.

[3] You’re not the only one who “gets it”. This can cut both ways sometimes, but more often than not, in any text, when you are coming up with a unique or paradigm-shattering understanding of some text, you’re probably out past the safety bouys.

And these are things you didn’t need me to tell you. You’re doing it right now.

But think about this, please: the Bible, above all other pieces of literature, needs to be read with the same degree of honesty you would use to read any other text. There is a great reason for this, and you can find that reason in Deu 6:

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

And when the LORD your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you--with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant--and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. It is the LORD your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you, for the LORD your God in your midst is a jealous God, lest the anger of the LORD your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth.

See: God gives us this word, He charges them with it (Paul says He “entrusted” this word to Israel), in order for us to use it for the purpose of not forgetting who and what God is.

God gave us His word for the purpose of telling us who He is in order that we would never forget. Implicit in that is the notion that somehow the words are the foundation of that “memory”.

So reading the words ought to be more meaningful to us than having a good well which we didn’t dig for ourselves; it ought to be better than a vineyard we didn’t plant but that we come into possession of; it ought to be better than a safe wall which protects us even though we didn’t build it. Listen: that's a lot more transparent than what Paul says to Timothy about what Scripture is good for. Paul sounds downright seeker-friendly in comparison to what God has told Moses here.

That criticism—we don’t know how to receive the Bible, or that we have this lavish liberty to receive it a variety of ways—is more than a little disconnected from what the Bible says about itself. And I have a testimony about that, but this is already 3 pages single-spaced, so we’ll have to come back to that another time.

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February 11: the most pivotal day in my life (part one)

by Dan Phillips

Can you name dates on which your life literally turned around, forever?

Significant dates. Pardon my duh, but the most obvious is one's birthday. That's rather a sine qua non, on a personal level. We'll just stipulate that we've all had one, and move on.

For those to whom it applies, another has to be one's wedding anniversary, and I'd certainly second that as mine approaches. Though a lot led up to that date, for a Christian, the date itself signals changes that affect virtually every region of one's world. No longer can one think in terms of one; one must think in terms of two in finances, socializing, use of idle time, everything.

Then I'd list the day I enrolled in my first pastoral training course, the day I started learning Greek, ditto for Hebrew; the day I enrolled in Talbot, the day I graduated, the day I took my first senior pastorate (and the day I left it). A host of dates argue for inclusion.

My most important date: in pre-history.

But granted the foreordained necessity of my existence, my first pivotal date is itself undatable. It takes place in eternity past, in the counsels of the Trinity. It is that moment when the Father saw my helpless and hopeless estate, "knew" me, set His eternal love on me, and gave me to the Son for the securing of my salvation (John 17:6; Ephesians 1:4-11; 2 Timothy 1:9, etc.). At that moment, the course of my life forever was assured (Romans 8:29-30), as on the Cross it was secured (Matthew 20:28; Acts 20:28; Hebrews 9:12).

How this played out in my life is of no great global significance, though its impact in my life is literally incalculable.

Caveat: please read through to the end, or don't bother to read at all, and no hard feelings. The incomplete story will be the wrong story.

Back-story

I was born to dear, devoted parents who professed no Christian faith as I grew up. For my father, that profession had been left in his youth; for my mother, it lay in her future. (I have reason to hope that Dad literally made a deathbed return to the faith in Christ he once professed; a story for another day, perhaps.)

But I was raised without Christian witness at home. In keeping with my culture and the media I developed a growing and deepening contempt for Christianity in general, and Christians in particular. I passed through a very young atheist phase, to agnosticism, then at the start of the '70's to a pre-new-age cult known as Religious Science (or Science of Mind) in my early teens.

My cult. The message of Religious Science, founded in 1927 by Ernest Holmes, was what I wanted to hear. God was in all of us, expressed itself as all of us, demanded nothing, gave everything. There was no sin per se, and any harm we did to others, they brought on themselves by their state of mind. There was no Hell nor sin to be saved from, so no salvation to be sought, nor any Savior to be chained to.

"Deeper sense." Jesus was the perfect embodiment of this divine principle, but any human being could be the same as He. Christians, idiots that they always have been, hopelessly muddled the Bible in general and Jesus' teachings in particular. We Religious Scientists reclaimed those teachings by seeking and finding the "deeper sense" in His words, a deeper sense which often turned out to be the opposite of their plain sense. But that wasn't surprising. Jesus was a mystic, and men have always botched the teachings of mystics.

All of this held great theoretical promise and relief for me. I really was the center of the universe, and my desires really were paramount. I was blamable for nothing, beholden to no one, and could have everything merely by developing my consciousness of the I AM within me. My own heart held the key to all; to find myself was to find God, to delve within myself was to be one with Him/Her/It.

There were only two catches in my journey.

Minor catch: Jesus. The minor "catch" in my seamless picture was Jesus. When I was about 16, I actually wrote a play based on the four Gospels, from the Religious Science perspective. I found that I kept having to "help" Jesus out, because He expressed Himself (to my mind) so poorly. Let me explain.

Jesus meant to say what we Religious Scientists said, but He kept saying it so badly. He meant to say that Hell was unreal, not a place of God's wrath, just a phase of consciousness; and that we could save ourselves from it at any time. But He kept speaking of it as if it were an objective place of immense and eternal torment (Matthew 5;22, 29-30; 10:28; 18:9; 23:33; Mark 9:43, 43, 47). He even spoke of fearing God for His ability to throw us into this Hell (Luke 12:5).

And Jesus seemingly kept harping on Himself, making Himself the issue, when He should have been making it clear that we're all the same, all equally manifestations of God. Jesus kept saying things such as that He would give himself as a ransom for many (Matthew 20:28), pouring out His blood to secure forgiveness of their sins (Matthew 26:28). This was all wrong, to us—both the implication that sin was an objective reality, and that His death would do anything about it. He kept teaching that knowledge of the Father was dependent on personal knowledge of Him—Jesus—and calling men to Himself (Matthew 11:25-30).

John's Gospel in particular was full of such wrongheaded teaching. The worst of it, to me, was John 14:6—"Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." I knew it couldn't mean what it seemed to mean... but it sure was obnoxious. Particularly because those idiot Jesus Freaks kept harping on it.

Most of us in the Science of Mind tried to "help" Jesus by explaining what He really meant when He said all these things, bringing out the "deeper meaning" of His words. I knew that the words couldn't mean what they seemed to mean. That was my story, and I stuck to it.

Until I tripped on the major catch.

Major catch: me. So (we believed) God is within all of us, and to know God, we must go within. Well, I did that. With great gusto, determination, absorption, and confidence. It was a great theory.

The problem was that what I found within was nothing like anything I'd ever want to call "God."

For the first years, I diligently applied the rationalizations explanations of Religious Science to what I found. These dissonant thoughts and attitudes were capable of many explanations. And I tried them all.

But I finally did a rigorous, unblinking, warts-and-all inventory of myself. What I found appalled me. Everything circled around me. Every relationship, every endeavor was sheerly selfish. Friends, family, things, all arrayed on a hierarchy of utility to me.

And what of that me, at the center? Selfish, bitter, moody, avaricious, lazy, arrogant, loveless. Lustful, but loveless. Dumb as a dung-beetle, on the large scale of things. Dumber.

And God? In my universe, God existed to serve me. Concocted to fulfill my demands, and customized to my desires. Created in my own image.

So, my religion was designed by me, to serve me, and rested upon me. It was from me, though me, and unto me. I just found a "church" that agreed with me, confirmed my opinions, told me what I wanted to hear. But I was the foundation.

And what a foundation!

Crash. I was seventeen, and the impact of these realizations was devastating. I was undone. I was plagued by a sharp yet foglike sense of guilt, detachment, and dread. The foundation and authority for what I believed was destroyed. I was rocked to the core of my being.

What happened then?

Next time, Lord willing, I'll talk about how the minor became the major, and everything changed.

UPDATE: see here for part two; see here for part three.

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Schmeradactylwear

by J. Peterman



Now available at the Pawn Shop.

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Sola Scriptura and the Proliferation of Protestant Denominations

by Phil Johnson

"That they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us; that the world may believe that Thou didst send Me." (John 17:21).

n a videotape titled "The Pope: The Holy Father," Catholic apologist Scott Hahn claims the proliferation of Protestant denominations proves the Reformers' principle of sola Scriptura is a huge mistake:

Do you suppose that Jesus would say, "Well, once I give the Church this infallible scripture, there really is no need anymore for infallible interpretations of scripture. The Church can hold together just with the infallible Bible."      Oh, really? In just 500 years, there are literally thousands and thousands of denominations that are becoming ever more numerous continuously because they only go with the Bible. It points to the fact that we need an infallible interpretation of this infallible book, don't we[?] (Here's a link to a full transcript of the videotape.)

A tract titled "Pillar of Fire, Pillar of Truth" (published by Catholic Answers) makes a similar charge:

The "Bible alone" theory simply does not work in practice. Historical experience disproves it. Each year we see additional splintering among "Bible-believing" religions. Today there are tens of thousands of competing denominations, each insisting its interpretation of the Bible is the correct one. The resulting divisions have caused untold confusion among millions of sincere but misled Christians. Just open up the Yellow Pages of your telephone book and see how many different denominations are listed, each claiming to go by the "Bible alone," but no two of them agreeing on exactly what the Bible means.

That is a favorite argument of Catholic apologists. They are convinced that the unity Christ prayed for in John 17:21 is an organizational solidarity that is incompatible with both denominationalism and independency. As far as the Roman Catholic Church is concerned, the only way true Christian unity will be fully and finally achieved is when "separated brethren"—non-Catholic Christians—reunite with Rome under the authority of the Pope.

Keith Fournier, Catholic author and Executive Director of the American Center for Law and Justice, sums up the typical Roman Catholic perspective:

Throughout Christian history, what was once intended to be an all-inclusive (catholic) body of disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ has been fractured over and over. These fractures threaten to sever us from our common historical and doctrinal roots. I do not believe that such divisions were ever part of the Lord's intention, no matter how sincere or important the issues that undergirded the breaking of unity. [Keith A. Fournier, A House United? (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1994), 37.]

Fournier says he is "not advocating a false non-denominationalism or superficial irenicism that denies distinctives of doctrine or practice." [Ibid.] But he is suggesting that doctrinal differences, "no matter how . . . important," should not cause organizational divisions. Moreover, fewer than five pages earlier, he had berated those who "fight over theology." [Ibid., 25.] And (ironically) just a few pages before that, he had expressed outrage at John MacArthur, R.C. Sproul, and Jim McCarthy for saying they believe Roman Catholicism's rejection of justification by faith alone is "doctrinal error" [Ibid., 21-22.]

Notice carefully, then, what Fournier is saying: He claims he wants unity without "superficial irenicism," and yet he objects when anyone contends for sound doctrine or (worse still) labels Roman Catholic doctrine "error." It seems the "unity" Fournier envisions is merely the same kind of unity the Roman Catholic Church has sought for hundreds of years: a unity where all who profess to be Christians yield implicit obedience to Papal authority, and where even individual conscience is ultimately subject to the Roman Catholic Church.

Although Fournier politely declines to state who he believes is to blame for fracturing the organizational unity of Christianity, [Ibid., 29.] it is quite clear he would not be predisposed to blame a Church whose spiritual authority he regards as infallible. And since the Catholic Church herself officially regards Protestantism as ipso facto schismatic, Fournier's own position is not difficult to deduce. Although Fournier manages to sound sympathetic and amiable toward evangelicals, it is clear he believes that as long as they remain outside the Church of Rome, they are guilty of sins that thwart the unity Christ prayed for.

Of course, every cult and every denomination that claims to be the One True Church ultimately takes a similar approach to "unity." Jehovah's Witnesses believe they represent the only legitimate church and that all others who claim to be Christians are schismatics. They believe the unity of the visible church was shattered by the Nicene Council.

Meanwhile, the Eastern Orthodox Church claims the Church of Rome was being schismatic when Rome asserted papal supremacy. To this day, Orthodox Christians insist that Eastern Orthodoxy, not Roman Catholicism, is the Church Christ founded—and that would make Roman Catholicism schismatic in the same sense Rome accuses Protestants of being schismatic. One typical Orthodox Web site says, "The Orthodox Church is the Christian Church. The Orthodox Church is not a sect or a denomination. We are the family of Christian communities established by the Apostles and disciples Jesus sent out to proclaim the Good News to the world, and by their successors through the ages."

All these groups regard the church primarily as a visible, earthly organization. Therefore they cannot conceive of a true spiritual unity that might exist across denominational lines. They regard all other denominations as schismatic rifts in the church's organizational unity. And if organizational unity were what Christ was praying for, then the very existence of denominations would indeed be a sin and a shame. That's why the Orthodox Web site insists, "The Orthodox Church is not a sect or a denomination."

Furthermore, if their understanding of the principle of unity is correct, then whichever organization can legitimately claim to be the church founded by Christ and the apostles is the One True Church, and all others are guilty of schism—regardless of any other doctrinal or biblical considerations.

That is precisely why many Catholics and Eastern Orthodox have focused their rhetoric on "unity." Both sincerely believe if they can establish the claim that they, and no one else, are the One True Church instituted by Christ, then all other Protestant complaints about doctrine, church polity, and ecclesiastical abuses become moot. If they can successfully sell their notion that the "unity" of John 17:21 is primarily an organizational unity, they should in effect be able to convince members of denominational and independent churches to reunite with the Mother Church regardless of whether she is right or wrong on other matters.

The plea for unity may at first may sound magnanimous and charitable to Protestant ears (especially coming from a Church with a long history of enforcing her will by Inquisition). But when the overture is being made by someone who claims to represent the One True Church, the call for "unity" turns out to be nothing but a kinder, gentler way of demanding submission to the Mother Church's doctrine and ecclesiastical authority.



Nonetheless, in recent years many gullible Protestants have been drawn into either Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy by the claim that one or the other represents the only church Christ founded. Having bought the notion that the unity Christ prayed for starts with organizational unity, these unsuspecting proselytes naturally conclude that whichever church has the most convincing pedigree must be the only church capable of achieving the unity Christ sought, and so they join up. Many recent converts from evangelicalism will testify that the proliferation and fragmentation of so many Protestant denominations is what first convinced them that Protestant principles must be wrong.

In a series of posts over the next couple of weeks, I want to examine the topics of like-mindedness, disagreement, and divisiveness; the culpability of popes, feuding bishops, and differing denominations when it comes to causing schism; and the kind of unity Christ prayed for.

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Before We Open for Regular Bidness. . .

by Phil Johnson

ere is an item or two for your amusement:




Star Wars in Chinglish

So there's this guy in Hong Kong who purchased a bootleg copy of Revenge of the Sith, dubbed in Cantonese and then subtitled in English with captions translated from the Chinese version back into English. Do that with the movie's title, and it becomes "The Backstroke of the West."

That's not all. Translate the phrase "Jedi council" into Chinese and back again, and apparently it comes out "Presbyterian Church."

Seriously. If you want to see some typical screen captures with subtitles included, click here. Unfortunately, the translation-and-back process makes Sith into an R-rated movie, so don't look too far beyond the links I have given, or you are likely to find language that will offend you.

I wouldn't mention Sith in Engrish at all, but a thought suddenly struck me: Once you posit a parallel between the Jedi Council and the Presbyterian Church, Star Wars® makes an interesting and excellent metaphor for the Federal Vision controversy. I won't work out all the details for you, but in my version Doug Wilson wears a black cape and makes mechanical breathing noises—and I wouldn't give up on the possibility that he could eventually be turned away from the dark side.


Speaking of funny Back-Translations...

Back when I was writing weekly posts about esoteric and offbeat things, I was planning to write a post about English as She Is Spoke, the famous 19th-century Portuguese-English phrasebook that was mostly plagiarized and quite literally translated from a French-English phrasebook by two authors who knew nothing whatsoever about English. Mark Twain called the book's unintentional absurdity "perfect."

Anyway, in preparation for that post, I collected a few graphics illustrating the difficulties of translating into a language whose idiom you are unfamiliar with. And while I'm no proponent of an unbridled application of the "dynamic equivalence" approach to Bible translation, these signs illustrate why wooden literalism is no better:






















Want more? Here you go.

PS: (Added 13 Feb 2007) Here's a funny post that goes perfectly with this topic.

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It's right to hate heresy. But don't neglect the delights of Christ.

"The discerning propensity ought not to destroy the enjoying faculty."

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson

The PyroManiacs devote space at the beginning of each week to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from "A Sermon for Men of Taste," delivered on Sunday morning, July 6th, 1862, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle.

ertain critics have a faith which is very good for discerning, but never for enjoying. They have a fine nose for heresy; the moment it comes anywhere near them they discover it; and if there be half a word in a sermon they do not like how sure they will be to take it home.

One bad fish in our basket, and it will be cried all round the town before tomorrow; but let us offer never so much that is good we can scarce win a notice.

Dear friends, I would have God's people discern, but the discerning propensity ought not to destroy the enjoying faculty. I bless God I love the doctrines of grace, but I never considered the doctrines of grace to be like drawn swords with which to fight every man living.

I know it is a good thing to be like the armed men about the bed of Solomon, each with his sword upon his thigh because of fear in the night; but for my part, to recline upon that royal bed, and sleep with Jesu's bosom for a pillow, is better still. I pray you, dear friends, delight yourselves in Christ! Let your faith so taste Jesus as to make you glad. Let your joy be as the joy of harvest, and sing ye with Zechariah, "How great is his goodness, and how great is his beauty! Corn shall make the young men cheerful, and new wine the maids."

Better is Christ to you than all earth's harvests. He is the cluster of Eshcol, so heavy that one man can never carry all of Christ! He is not one grape; but a cluster of sweetness is our beloved unto us! Feed to the full; eat, yea drink abundantly, O beloved! Be ye satiated with delight, and let your soul rejoice as with marrow and fatness; so shall ye understand in the fullest degree what this taste is which so delighteth the soul of man.

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What we have here is failure to communicate

by Phil Johnson

Note: If you need a PyroFix while we're gone, visit Dan's blog, "Biblical Christianity," or Frank's blog, "And His Ministers a Flame of Fire."      If Pecadillo ever posts again at his blog, "I Drank What?"—we'll put up a special notice. Click here for the home-schoolers song. Click here for Sean Higgins's world-famous video, "Water."

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Weighing God's Yes and No

by Dan Phillips

[And now, for something completely different from yesterday's fun and goofiness....]

If I were you, as soon as I detected that this is a post about unanswered prayer, I'd probably skip it. Is there anything new — and true — to say about unanswered prayer? It's hardly a fresh-minted topic. The saints of old, even the saints of very, very old (Genesis 15:3), would take a "been there, done that" view of the subject. The odds that I have anything new to say are slim to none.

Besides, as Spurgeon might say, if I did have anything new to say, it would probably be in error, anyway.

Nonetheless I share some of my own reflections, in the hopes that what gives me some comfort might do the same for you (2 Corinthians 1:3-4). But that depends in part on how similar you and I are.

If you are one of those people who naturally just loves prayer, and takes great comfort out of the act itself, you may not find much help here. Just being able to pray make you happy, encourages you, reassures you—no matter what does or doesn't come of it. God bless you, other things being equal; don't let me detain you.

But perhaps some of you have had crushing, specific needs for years. You are at the end of your resources, and beyond. If there's one more thing you can do, you haven't the faintest echo of the hint of a clue what it might be. But you have prayed. Oh yes, you have prayed, and you have prayed, and you have prayed. Specifically, fervently, earnestly, quoting Scripture, taking God's promises to Him as so many greater men of God have done in ages past (Numbers 14:13-20; 2 Samuel 7:18-29, etc.). You do not have, but it is not because you have not asked.

This one area—or these areas, or this cluster—does not seem to change. It doesn't budge. In fact, it may worsen. It is as if the situation taunts you, your faith, your powerless and ineffective prayers. "Prayer changes things," folks say. "Yes, right," you are tempted to snort. "It makes them worse."

The other day, as I drove to work in the early-morning darkness, I was bringing just such matters to the Lord. I was tired of hearing myself pray about them, and I told Him so. Not for the first time. I didn't even have anything new to say about them. When I began praying about them, years ago, they were urgent and vital needs. And now, years later, they are just as vital, just as urgent; in fact, more so. They need God's intervention; yet on that score, I haven't even seen a cloud the size of a man's hand.

So why does my heavenly Father seem so disinterested in needs that are vital, pressing, pivotal, and real? Why does He show no sign of care for something so horrendously momentous to me? Why is it as if He is asleep, as we rattle on about our screaming needs?

I put that very question to God.

Now, if that language shocks you, you might just review Psalm 13 in toto, the psalm Spurgeon almost called "the Howling Psalm, from the incessant repetition of the cry 'how long?'" You might look afresh as well Psalms 7:6 and 35:23 (Yahweh seems asleep?), 44:24; and even the prayers of the saints in glory, in Revelation 6:10, for starters. I concluded long ago that there is simply no point being disingenuous with God.

And as I prayed that morning, my mind ranged to the many things I often pray. And I reflected anew on them.

Every morning as I leave my house, my dear family, I feel an uneasy lurch, and I pray that God watch over them and protect them. And every time, hundreds of times, thousands of times, without exception, He has graciously said "Yes." Not so for many others in the broad world.

Every week (at least) I pray "Give us this day our daily bread." And every day, every week, for years and years without exception, God has said, "Yes." Not so for many others in the broad world.

Every week I pray that God will bless our pastor with a truthful, passionate word from the Word. And every week without exception, God has said "Yes." This is not to be taken for granted.

Every time I have dug into Scripture to bring something to the pulpit myself, I have asked God to open it to me, and to guide my thinking, and to give me something of His truth to say. And every time, He has graciously stooped to say, "Yes." This is not to be taken for granted.

Thinking of our last two children, and some worrisome concerns that arose during pregnancy, I remember that I prayed for my wife Valerie's safety, and for God's kind hand on our babies. And in both those cases, God graciously said, "Yes." This is not to be taken for granted.

In all the thousands of miles our family has traveled together, and the thousands we've traveled apart, I've prayed for safety on land, in the air, at sea. And every time, without exception, God has said, "Yes." This is not to be taken for granted.

But most pivotally for me, thirty-four years ago next month, I prayed to God for Jesus to be my Lord and Savior, that He would make me His own, to put His blood on me and forgive me all my sins. And God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit said, "Yes."

Those are some seriously whopping-big "Yeses."

So why do these other, undeniably critical unmet needs seem so much larger? It is because they are as yet unmet. Because I haven't yet seen what God is going to do in those situations, finally. Because I'm living in the not-yet.

But suppose any one of those yeses had been a no. Suddenly what seems like a small facet of my life would become THE overwhelming and all-absorbing throb of all existence to me. One phone call at work, lost employment, disaster, and suddenly the entire landscape of my world would alter.

Then that would become the need I felt most keenly, elbowing all else aside.

Am I saying that my ongoing crises aren't critical? No, I'm not; nor that yours are any less so.

What I am saying is that we characteristically forget that every critical, crying Not-yet is floating on a vast, billowing sea of Yes and Yes and Yes. If you are a Christian, reading this, God has said Yes to you far more often than He has said No; and you have every reason to believe that every No conceals a because I have a better idea. Behind our every prayer, our great Mediator, our Savior, our great High Priest the Lord Jesus Christ, pleads for us before the throne (Hebrews 7:25), adding His intercession to that of the blessed Holy Spirit (Romans 8:26).

I am saying that we all, on occasion, make the most spoiled-rotten brat look like a Model Child, through our bursting, thunderous ingratitude. At the very least, I am saying that for myself.

Indeed, what I'm trying to say has already been said better than I could ever phrase it:

Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and all that is within me, bless his holy name!
2 Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits,
3 who forgives all your iniquity,
who heals all your diseases,
4 who redeems your life from the pit,
who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
5 who satisfies you with good
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.
(Psalm 103:1-5)

I leave you with that, and with the wish that you all be with God's people in church this weekend, hearing His word, loving His people, and thanking Him for his literally innumerable mercies.

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