Blaming the losers

http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2019/05/blaming_the_losers.html

Keener/Horton dialogue on cessationism

http://www.craigkeener.com/very-friendly-dialogue-between-craig-keener-and-michael-horton/

The old boy network

Perry Robinson has a final "substantive" (in his words) post on the Hank Hanegraaff scandal:

https://energeticprocession.wordpress.com/2018/08/02/a-divided-dividing-line-james-white-and-the-hankamess/

Topically, it's basically two posts in one, linked by the Dividing Line episode. Perry's view of parachurch ministries forms a kind of segue. A lot of his is about philosophy and theology, some of which I agree with and some of which I don't. Then there's the ethical indictment, which may be the ultimate target. I'm going to discuss the ethical indictment in this post, then the philosophical/theological issues in a separate post. 

I've quoted some representative samples. But Perry's post has additional supporting material. If you wish to see all his documentation, you need to read the original post. 

Modern Reformation goes off the rails

The current issue of Modern Reformation (September-October, 2016, 25/5) has an article by Jerry Walls promoting purgatory: "The Imagery of Heaven in C. S. Lewis". I'm curious as to why an ostensively Reformed periodical is providing a platform to boost purgatory. The same issue has an article by Arminian Scot McKnight. How very ecumenical. Makes you wonder who's minding the store at Modern Reformation these days. 

“Metaphysical Religion” and “Becoming One with God”

In a work that Lane Keister of Green Baggins considers to be “the best book on Roman Catholicism I have read”, Leonardo De Chirico describes what he believes to be the “core” of Roman Catholicism:

This core is a composite one and entails the ways in which the relationship between nature and grace are worked out and the Roman Catholic self-understanding of the Church which is the main subject of the system itself. The Roman Catholic system can be seen as emerging from the range of the nature-grace motifs which are allowed to coexist within it and serve to enrich it, and expressing itself in the paramount role of the church which is basically understood in Christological terms as the prolongation of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ (p. 24).

That, of course, is an over-simplified version of “what Roman Catholicism is”. At its heart, the Roman Catholic Church, hierarchy and all, considers itself to be “The Mystical Body of Christ”. You can find that idea in all the most recent Catholic literature out there.

Lumen Gentium states it this way:

Is 2 kingdom 2 queer?

When Lee Irons posted Misty's now infamous case for homosexual marriage on his church website, he eventually lost his job over the ensuing firestorm. Now, years later, here's what Horton has to say:

Third, in my own wrestling with the political debate, love of neighbor looms large. Some on the right may offer arguments that reflect more the same demand for special rights as those on the left of the issue. The legal aspects of that are beyond my pay-grade—and they are important. Others may treat this issue as irrelevant: “Look, it doesn’t affect me. I just don’t want to live next door to some creepy home like that.” However, in terms of specifically Christian witness, love of neighbor (as God’s image-bearers) should be front-and-center. We have to care about our non-Christian neighbors (gay or straight) because God cares and calls us to contribute to the common good.

The challenge there is that two Christians who hold the same beliefs about marriage as Christians may appeal to neighbor-love to support or to oppose legalization of same-sex marriage.

On one hand, it may be said that if we can no longer say that “Judeo-Christian” ethics are part of our shared worldview as a republic, then the ban seems arbitrary. Why isn’t there a campaign being waged to ban providing legal benefits to unmarried heterosexual couples? Or to make divorce more difficult? It just seems more symbolic than anything else: it looks like our last-gasp effort to enforce our own private morality on the public. On the other hand, we might argue that every civilization at its height, regardless of religion, has not only privileged marriage of one man and one woman but has outlawed alternative arrangements. Same-sex marriage means adoption, which subjects other human beings to a parental relationship that they did not choose for themselves. Are we loving our LGBT neighbors—or their adopted children—or the wider society of neighbors by accommodating a move that will further destroy the fabric of society?

I take the second view, but I recognize the former as wrestling as much as I’m trying to with the neighbor-love question. Legal benefits (“partnerships”) at least allowed a distinction between a contractual relationship and the covenant of marriage. However, the only improvement that “marriage” brings is social approval—treating homosexaul and heterosexual unions as equal. Although a contractual relationship denies God’s will for human dignity, I could affirm domestic partnerships as a way of protecting people’s legal and economic security.

http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2012/05/11/should-we-oppose-same-sex-marriage/

What's the substantive difference between civil marriage and civil unions/domestic partnerships? Why was Lee (rightly) drummed out of the OPC (although he only lost by one vote) while Horton's compromise position is acceptable?

Exposing Ehrman’s whoppers; affirming the reliability of the New Testament

Michael Horton and New Testament Scholar Daniel Wallace discuss Bart Ehrman (and provide tremendous resources to correct his erroneous ramblings) in this edition of the White Horse Inn:

http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2013/05/12/whi-1153-has-jesus-been-misquoted/

It has seemed to me that of all the many attacks that Christianity faces in our modern culture, the most egregious and harmful come in the form of the sensationalisms that Bart Ehrman has espoused. Ehrman, who is someone who ought to know that the sensationalisms he espouses are simply not what he publicly says they are, and yet he has “caught the popular imagination”.

Playing clips from Wallace/Ehrman debates (so we hear Ehrman’s whoppers in his own words), Horton and Wallace provide a popular-level response to some of the more egregious misconceptions that Ehrman has spread in his work “Misquoting Jesus” and others.

For example, when Ehrman says “we don’t have the original manuscripts” – he treats the issue as if we are playing the ‘telephone game’ in which errors become multiplied. But Wallace points out that when you compare the copying of the New Testament to the ‘telephone game’, first, the copies were done by hand, not orally, and second, it was not just a single line of transmission.

One of the things he doesn’t say is that we don’t have our earliest copies because they must have worn out. But he doesn’t say how they wore out. They would have worn out from people copying them.

Wallace relates that, off of the first generation of manuscripts, there may have been many multiple copyists making copies of that original manuscript. And the manuscript evidence is that we have a proliferation of imperfect first-generation copies, not a single lineage of them, enabling us to make comparisons of those manuscripts. And by comparing the manuscripts that we have, we can see scribal errors, categorize them, know what they are. Wallace provides this example:

Imagine we came across an early manuscript copy of the Constitution of the United States, and the preamble said, “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect onion …” If we were to see that line, we would know that “union” was the original word, not “onion”.

Those are the kinds of mistakes we have find in the early manuscripts. They get corrected early on, leaving us with a far higher degree of reliability than in “the telephone game” or as Horton says, “the bigger fish game”.

As texts and copies proliferated, there is “an enormous amount of agreement among all these texts”. Also, when there are early copies with scribal errors, there is a constant re-correction early on.

The fact is, the more copies of manuscripts we have, the better, because the more we compare them, the more we are able to get back to the original texts.

As well, some manuscripts were in use for 100 or more years. Some of the original manuscripts may have actually lasted to the end of the second century. So it’s possible or even likely that some of the papyri we have may have been first or second generation copies of the original manuscripts.

Ehrman also makes the claim that 94% of the manuscripts we have are from the 9th century or later. In fact, more than 15% of the manuscripts we have are from prior to that time, and he ignores that from the 4th century on, we have complete manuscripts of the New Testament. So by the 9th century, we have six hundred or seven hundred manuscripts or more, and even by that time, we are already on very sound footing.

Ehrman also points out that there are more than 400,000 variants in these manuscripts. Wallace notes, however, that the reason why we have so many variants is because we have so many different manuscripts. In addition to the 5,500 Greek manuscripts, there are more than 10,000 Latin manuscripts, some from the second century, plus Coptic, Syriac, and other Asian and European languages from which to compare. And more manuscripts give you greater certainty as to what the original manuscripts said. Wallace estimates that there are perhaps more than 22,000 manuscripts in existence.

The nature of the differences, the vast majority (70% or more) are spelling variations, in which the wording is not in question. Definite articles, “more perfect onions”. A huge number of variations simply involve the use of the definite article in Greek. The word “the”, for example, there are 16 different ways in Greek to say “Jesus loves Paul” – but all of them get translated in exactly the same way.

Less than 1% of “textual variants”, in fact, are what Wallace calls “meaningful”, that is, it affects the meaning of the text in some way, and “viable”, which means that it can be traced back to the original wording. About ¼ of 1%. In about 1000 places there are variations that are m

But in fact, not one doctrine is affected by these “meaningful” or “viable” variants.

A couple of Ehrman’s “whipping boys” involve such things as Mark 1:41, in which different variations say “Jesus was moved with anger” or “Jesus was moved with compassion” to heal the leper. It’s not out of the ordinary to think that Jesus was “moved with anger” about a disease.

Another is 1 John 5:7, the Trinitarian formula, was not in Erasmus’s original manuscripts.

He also compares the NT manuscript evidence with the number of Greek and Latin “classics”. For example, we have more copies of Homer – with a 900-year head start, we have 2200 copies of Odyssy and Iliad, only 10% as many manuscripts

In fact, for other Greek writers like Aristotle or Plato, the number of manuscripts is far, far smaller. And yet we don’t contest whether we’re really reading those individuals. The earliest MSS of the New Testament come within decades.

This caught my ear because my 14-year-old daughter was asking me about “the telephone game” with respect to New Testament manuscripts. I highly recommend that you give this a listen, and even spread the word among popular circles like Twitter and Facebook (see the links immediately below this article).

This is an area where a discussion like this one can really help to correct some popular misconceptions and restore confidence in the textual transmission of the New Testament that Ehrman and others have undermined.

“Family Feud”; or, “Our American Christian Heritage”

Steven Wedgeworth has posted a brilliant review of John Frame’s The Escondido Theology: A Reformed Response to Two Kingdom Theology.

It’s brilliant not merely because he addresses (in an irenic way) the substance of all the contentions that are made in that book, not least of which is Two Kingdoms theology. He discusses the issue of who is the proper bearer of “the Reformed tradition”. He brings a sharp focus to bear upon “Christless Christianity” (and it’s “Gospel-Driven” counterpart, the “Lost Soul of Protestantism, and more). He discusses Protestant Scholasticism and Richard Muller (the real heroes of this story); and lots, lots more. (The whole thing is more than 7500 words, but still, I highly recommend giving it a look).

But beyond the issues, he talks about something that’s a lot deeper:

Michael Horton, who ends up bearing the brunt of the critique, described the book as “a new low in intra-Reformed polemics.”

To be the nastiest and most unfair polemicist in the Reformed community would be quite the accomplishment. Prof. Frame would have to outpace several of the Escondido men themselves, along with any number of Clarkians and theonomists – and that would only take into account the American cranksters! As biting and even sometimes inflammatory as some of Prof. Frame’s writing may be, this book does not take the prize for nastiness. And it is certainly a long way off from the battles of those golden years of Reformed confession-writing. We should never forget that the debates carried out by our Reformed ancestors, even the men now idolized by the Reformed gatekeepers, at times involved literal hatchet jobs.

Wedgeworth is spot-on when he says “We should never forget that the debates carried out by our Reformed ancestors, even the men now idolized by the Reformed gatekeepers, at times involved literal hatchet jobs”.

I’ve been hanging out at D.G. Hart’s blog recently because of his fun interactions with Bryan Cross. I came to Reformed theology largely through Hart’s books about Machen, whom I came to regard as the heir of Calvin through “Old Princeton” (though I tend to tune out Hart’s disagreements with Turretinfan over 2K views). While I agree with Steve Hays that “natural law” fails to address some very difficult moral issues, I don’t think anyone is going to hell over the Westminster “Two Kingdoms” theology, either.

I’ve known Scott Clark for about as long as there has been an Internet through which we could email. I’ve met Michael Horton. I write for a blog where Steve Hays, who calls himself a Biblicist, has been strongly influenced by the writings of John Frame (and presumably his “Something Close to Biblicism), which I like a lot, and with which I fundamentally agree. Clark writes scathingly about Frame. Clark is not well-regarded by Hays, but I’ve learned more about historical theology from Scott Clark than anyone else, I think.

Cyril of Alexandria was apparently a pretty good theologian. But he was just simply a thug as well. He can be a lesson for folks today.

Yes, I cringe when I watch Joel Osteen. But I found the graphic nearby on the front page of his website. I can honestly say, I know someone who has turned to Christ because of Joel Osteen. And while Osteen’s particular messaging is, I think, not helpful in ways that have been amply described, what would happen if he were to do a sermon series on, for example, “the history of the Reformation”? His audience is probably bigger than several whole Reformed denominations.

American Christianity certainly has its problems. But Christianity has always had problems. And despite the problems in American Christianity, it is our Christianity now.

I’m no fan of things like “bishops”, but I’m a very big fan of an old fart who goes by the handle “Embryo Parson”. There was a time when I despised him, but our more recent friendship shows us how (“in the Lord”) such transformations are possible. And I do think he has a very healthy attitude toward American Christianity.

Wedgeworth does not simply point out the problems. He points to a solution:

Instead, we do need a Reformed ressourcement. It needs to move forward by building upon the tradition. It should be a Reformed irenicism that is really Reformed, having clearly-stated and definitively Reformational principles. It should be an irenic catholicity that achieves peace through courageous and rational dialogue and debate, charitable but assertive. And it must always be truth-telling, with regards to itself and its opponents. Prof. Frame possesses the latter qualities of peace and honest integrity. The Escondido men aspire towards the former qualities of consistency with the great Reformed tradition, ….

Closing:

We think we have begun to point to a way beyond the dead ends and impasses of ultra-confessionalism on the one hand, and a Neo-Calvinism so “neo” it is no longer really Calvinist on the other. And we are finding that many young pastors and churchmen, seeing the problems of the two opposing camps which have so far dominated the American Reformed world, are quite ready to step out onto that road.

“God needs our help”

I’d like to take off on something that Joshua Lim said, and the hope is that it will have some value in showing what some of the differences are here.

Only what the Catholic Church teaches as binding is binding. The Church is fairly clear as to what is binding and what is not binding. If you have a particular issue in mind it might be better to speak of it specifically rather than in generalities. A Protestant confession or teaching authority has no authority to say what is binding--the only authority a pastor has is to say that he (or she) thinks that Scripture teaches that such-and-such a thing is binding, but going back to the first question, it is not always clear from Scripture whether certain things are binding or not and it ultimately comes back down to the issue of who has the authority to interpret Scripture…

This phrase caught my eye: Only what the Catholic Church teaches as binding is binding. The Church is fairly clear as to what is binding and what is not binding.

Consider this scenario, which I offer as a summary:

1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.


2. God created merely by speaking things into existence. God said “Let there be…” and there was.

a. What God says has power; it actually accomplishes things.

b. This is the point at which the Roman Catholic insistence on “interpretation” presses itself, saying “God’s word is insufficient; therefore, you need an infallible interpreter”.

c. Protestants accept (a), and resist (b).


3. “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen 1:31). I suppose you would say “this is a verse that requires interpretation”.

a. An exegetical understanding of this verse is given in John Currid, (“A Study Commentary on Genesis”, Volume 1, Genesis 1:1-25:18, Darlington, UK an Webster, NY: Evangelical Press ©2003). “And he pronounces a verdict: ‘Behold it was very good.’ The term ‘Behold…’ [Hebrew hinneh] often serves to call special attention to a declarative statement. And when the word for ‘very’ [Hebrew meod] occurs after an adjective it is an absolute superlative. Therefore, the writer is describing God’s judgement of his own creation with great emphasis – it is perfect in every detail, even down to the very intricacies of its being.” (Currid, pg 89).

b. Creation being “very good”, language also is “very good”.

c. Man, as created, was also “very good”.

i. Roman Catholic Church holds that man was somewhat less “very good” than God says he was, and introduces a “ donum superadditum”, some kind of “superadded gift” of grace an “ontic” (or “ontological” gift) that “elevates” man into supernatural fellowship with God.

ii. Protestants, however, accept that Man was “very good” and reject the notion of a “superadded gift” of grace. Man, in the condition in which God created him to be, was lacking nothing “ontologically” necessary to be in “fellowship” with God, and was already in a “very good” [“perfect in every detail”] fellowship with God.


4. Man fell

a. Roman Catholics hold that sinful man is only “wounded” in his nature – only having lost this “superadded gift” in the fall. The result of this is: “original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam’s descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin - an inclination to evil that is called ‘concupiscence’”.

b. Protestants hold that sinful man is far worse than wounded:

i. WCF: By this sin [our original parents] fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and so became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body.

ii. They being the root of mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed, and the same death in sin and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity, descending from them by original generation.


5. God’s remedy:

a. in Roman Catholicism: “Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ’s grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.” God’s “grace” comes through an “infusion” [“ontological”] and man must “co-operate” with this “grace”.

i. An imperfect metaphor of this is that “grace” is a kind of “oil” that provides for a kind of “healing”; it “enables” the parts to get moving again. But it is imperfect, of course.

ii. Eschatologically, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger looks at the “ontological” meaning and asserts: “we are inserted into Christ and united with him as a single subject” (“Called to Communion” Herder and Ignatius ©1991, 1996, pg 25), a “fusion of existences”; just as in the taking of nourishment the body assimilates foreign matter to itself … in the same way my “I” is assimilated to that of Jesus”.

But as I’ll relate below, this is a misunderstanding of the eschatological end that God has in store for us.

b. Michael Horton, in “Covenant and Salvation” (Louisville, KY and London, UK: Westminster John Knox Press ©2007), [summarizing Reformed theologians] posits that what really happened to man in the fall was not “ontic” – no “loss” of “superadded grace”, but rather, it is an “estrangement”, a broken fellowship based on a judgment of “guilty”.

i. Man, being created “very good”, did not change ontologically in the fall; hence, God’s solution, “forensic justification”, re-enables the koinonia, or “fellowship”, that man lost with God.

ii. This restored fellowship manifests itself not in a “fusion of existences”, but rather, a restoring of the original fellowship [again, rejecting the need for some “superadded grace”]. The “unity” of fellowship is rather a gathering together by God, and his everlasting covenant:

This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I will surely gather them from all the lands where I banish them in my furious anger and great wrath; I will bring them back to this place and let them live in safety. They will be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me and that all will then go well for them and for their children after them. I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me. I will rejoice in doing them good and [I] will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul.

This is very simple, I admit, again, it is only an outline, and it only contains the emphases I’d like to make here.

The Protestant theologian Herman Bavinck (“Reformed Dogmatics”, Vol 1, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, trans. John Vriend, ©2003, pg. 359) speaks of this:

The doctrine of a supernatural end … is integral to the entire Catholic system, which is constructed, not on the religious antithesis between sin and grace, but on the graduated scale of the good, on the ranking of creatures and virtues, on hierarchy both in a physical and an ethical sense.

The Reformation, by contrast, had but one idea, one conception of human beings, that is, of human beings as the image bearers of God, and this was true for all human beings.

The question comes down to, “what is God doing?” And in this, we need to be very careful to understand what he is doing, and not to “read into” what he is doing, things that he is not doing. (See Deuteronomy, as I have cited it above, says: “You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you … Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to it or take from it.”

Bryan qualified this to say “another possible interpretation of those verses is that they are prohibiting adding to or subtracting from divine commands. And the existence of a divinely authorized oral Tradition and Magisterium is fully compatible with that interpretation of these passages.”

Nevertheless, I would rather rely on an exegesis of the text, using a hermeneutic that seeks to understand the original meaning of the text – what the writer wrote, in the cultural context, with an eye toward understanding it as the original readers would have understood it.

In this context, the “donum superadditum” is something that is “added” by the Magisterium; if you’re Roman Catholic, you accept it, and if you are a Protestant, it is just one more reason to ask, “how infallible is the Magisterium if it’s adding such things all the way through the Scriptures?”

Just how “binding” should something like this be?

[This notion of a “donum superadditum” has an element, too, that touches on the idea of “special revelation”; it is the notion that “God’s revelation is not sufficient” – in the Genesis 1 sense. What the Roman Catholic Church adds to this is something like the notion that its own “interpretation” is required as a kind of “superadded gift” because God’s own word is somehow not able to be understood properly by God’s own creation. I’ll talk more about this at some future point, Lord willing.]