The "Gospel" of Judas

James Still of The Secular Outpost as put up the following post:

“For those of us interested in ancient Christianity, the National Geographic Society has announced a new manuscript find. Those don't happen everyday (or even every decade) so it's pretty exciting news. The text is of the gospel genre, written in Coptic around 300 CE like those found at Nag Hammadi, and is entitled Gospel of Judas. The codex is said to be a copy of an older work written in Greek around 200 CE. At this time in Christianity's development, there was already a thriving oral tradition in which communities swapped, told, and retold stories about Jesus. These pericopes took the particular shape with which we're familiar during this period. Eventually Christians wrote these stories down. This effort, beginning with Mark at around 75 CE (or the theoretical Q gospel even earlier), sought to codify the stories swirling around among the various communities into a more solid form. The noncanonical Gospel of Judas contains a different spin on Judas' role in the days leading up to the Passion. In this version of the tale, Jesus approaches Judas and asks that he turn him into the authorities. By doing so, Judas is fulfilling his role in the master plan.”

Loftus has also drawn attention to its publication.

A few comments are in order:

1.this is not a “new MS find.” Rather, it’s a new publication of a MS known for decades.

2.Okay, so we have a copy of an apocryphal gospel dating to c. AD 300, which may be traceable to an original dating to c. AD 200.

Since this material historically worthless, who cares whether it puts a different spin on the role of Judas?

3.What evidence does Still have that Mark codified oral dominical tradition around AD 75?

Does Still suppose that 1C Jews were a band of illiterate hunter-gatherers who only discovered the art of writing after the Jewish revolt?

4.What evidence does Still have that pre-Marcan communities were swapping and retelling stories about Jesus?

5.BTW, I don’t deny that many liberal pastors seem to be preaching from some version of the “Gospel” of Judas. Clearly they’re not getting their material from the canonical gospels.

I’d add that liberal bishops enjoy a very impressive claim of unbroken apostolic succession going all the way back to Judas. It is clear, for instance, that the See of Judas antedates the See of Canterbury in the affections of many Episcopal prelates. Pope Judas has a wide following in mainline denominations.

Having our baptismal cake and eating it too

The traditional assumption in the debate between Presbos and Baptists is that the NT church did one or the other: either baptized infants, or else it baptized believers.

Perhaps that is so.

But this assumption neglects the fact that there were two very differences classes of coverts in the NT church: Jews & Gentiles.

Since Jews had an entrenched and immemorial practice of infant circumcision, it would be quite natural for them to baptize infants.

Since Gentiles had no universal practice of circumcision, or fixed age for circumcision in those cultures which did perform it, there would be no such presumption.

Indeed, as we know, one reason many Gentile converts to the faith were God-fearers rather than full-fledged proselytes was due to a distaste for adult circumcision.

One authority says the following:

"Circumcision is practiced by man peoples in different parts of the world. In biblical times it was a custom among the West Semites (Hebrews, Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites) but was unknown among the Eastern Semitic peoples of Mesopotamia. In Egypt, as indeed generally in the ancient world, circumcision was a rite performed either at puberty or in preparation for marriage. Among the people of Canaan the Philistines were exceptional in their nonadherence to the practice, and of them alone is the term 'uncircumcized' customarily used. An additional example of uncircumcised Canaanites is given in Gen 34:13-17, but there is the possibility that the Shechemites also were of non-Canaanite or non-Semitic descent," ISBE 1:700.

So, to the extent that Gentile Christians associated baptism with a rite of passage, they might well perform it at the same age as they used to perform their traditional rite of passage.

Of, if it was a culture which did perform circumcision, and associated baptism with the sign of the NT covenant, in contrast to the Old covenant sign, they might well perform it at the same age as they customarily administered circumcision, such as puberty or the onset of marriage.

It would be useful, in this regard, to do a systematic study of circumcision and other rites of passage in the Roman Empire leading up to the 1C and into the post-Constantinian era.

5. As the early church achieved legal standing (e.g., Constantine; Theodotius), greater centralization (monarchical episcopacy), and the rising authority of episcopal sees situated in the Eastern & Western capitals of the Roman Empire (Rome, Constantinople), standardization occurred.

Perhaps it's possible to have our baptismal cake and eat it to.

Infant Baptism in the early centuries

Infant Baptism in the early centuries
David Wright, Professor of Patristic and Reformed Christianity at the University of Edinburgh, responds in particular to the articles by Colin Buchanan and Michael Saward.

Among the things that do disservice to the case for baptizing babies is exaggeration of the historical evidence from the early church. This, I fear, is the temptation Michael Saward (and even, to a lesser extent, Colin Buchanan) has succumbed to. It would be a healthy development if we were content to defend the practice as theologically consistent with the teaching of Scripture, without feeling the need to prove that the apostles did it.

As an undergraduate I remember Professor Charlie Moule commenting on J. Jeremias’ Infant Baptism in the First Four Centuries (1960): that it contained ‘at least all the evidence’. Well, scholarship has not stood still since 1960. The careful statement in Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (1982) sums up a growing consensus: ‘While the possibility that infant baptism was also practised in the apostolic age cannot be excluded, baptism upon personal profession of faith is the most clearly attested pattern in the New Testament documents’. I am not aware of any poll among professional New Testament scholars, but my clear impression is that many, perhaps a clear majority, are at best highly uncertain about paedobaptism’s apostolic origins.

At the other end of the Patristic period, numerous writers could be cited in support of the judgement that in the West infant baptism did not become normative practice until some time after Augustine (d. 430), in the later fifth or the sixth or seventh centuries. The irony is that it became universal practice on the back of a theology that hardly any of us endorse today.

Between the times of the New Testament and Augustine, there is the little problem of the eclipse of infant baptism in the fourth century and into the fifth – far longer than Jeremias recognized, and longer than Saward’s ‘short period of reaction’. Virtually all, if not absolutely all, of the children of Christian parents about whose baptism we have information during this century were not baptized in infancy. They included most of ‘the golden age of the church fathers’.

The evidence is often less straightforward than apologetically- driven interpreters suppose. Jeremias believed that the first child of Christian parents known not to have been baptized as a baby was Gregory of Nazianzus, born around A.D. 328/9. In fact Gregory is the first child of Christian parents about whose baptism or non-baptism we have firm knowledge either way. There is no earlier case. Identifying the first offspring of Christians who was definitely baptized as a baby is not easy. Nestorius (born. around A.D. 381) may be a serious candidate.

More worryingly, Saward seems to assume that infant baptism either was or was not practised – all or nothing. But if one had to come up with a single verdict on the early church as a whole it could only be that dual practice held sway. In fact, we need a much more carefully differentiated evaluation of different kinds of evidence. Which (kinds of) infants were baptized, and when, and where? What does a liturgical text tell us about practice? Why is no adjustment to baptismal liturgy to accommodate non-responding infants attested until c. 400?

Why do burial inscriptions that record the baptism of babies or young children in perhaps every case fix their baptism shortly before their death? This was infant baptism, in the sense that dying infants were thought suitable recipients of baptism, but it was not normative except as clinical baptism – and seems to tell us that infants were not being routinely baptized at birth.

It is not only in the New Testament that the explicit evidence points to the baptism of responding believers. The same is true throughout vast reaches of Patristic writings.

There is very little theology of infant baptism in the early centuries until one gets to Augustine – and he started out not knowing why babies were baptized. (His godly mother Monnica showed no knowledge of it.) Shortly before Augustine began teaching the West that because of original sin babies dying unbaptized went to hell, John Chrysostom in the Greek East was telling catechumens that babies were not baptized for remission of sins because they had none to be remitted. (The many volumes of Chrysostom’s writings mention infant baptism only a couple of times.) If infant baptism had been universal practice from the first, it was for long a rite in search of a theology.

There is much more to be said, not least on almost every item of evidence cited by Saward. The historical debate is now far more open than it was in Jeremias’ day, not least because there is far less prejudice abroad among paedobaptists against believers-baptists and their baptism.

Jeremias’ critic, Kurt Aland (in ‘Did the early church baptise infants?’ 1961), argued that the practice of infant baptism did not start until the second century, but that it was theologically justified today. This seems to me a wiser position to adopt. I believe that a credible biblical-theological case can be advanced for baptizing the babies of Christians, but I doubt if one can be made to rest on historical grounds, among which I include New Testament texts allegedly attesting practice. At best the biblical arguments suggest to me that infant baptism should be viewed as an adiaphoron, a matter on which Christians may validly on scriptural ground hold different positions. This, I take it, is precisely the stance of Baptismal Integrity.

http://www.baptism.org.uk/wright.htm

Being Mocked

I’m a little late on handing this over to you guys, but it’s worth the wait:

Being Mocked by John Piper:

We saw last week in the Islamic demonstrations over Danish cartoons of Muhammad another vivid depiction of the difference between Muhammad and Christ, and what it means to follow each. Not all Muslims approve the violence. But a deep lesson remains: The work of Muhammad is based on being honored and the work of Christ is based on being insulted. This produces two very different reactions to mockery.

If Christ had not been insulted, there would be no salvation. This was His saving work: to be insulted and die to rescue sinners from the wrath of God. Already in the Psalms the path of mockery was promised: “All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads” (Psalm 22:7). “He was despised and rejected by men . . . as one from whom men hide their faces . . . and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:3).

When it actually happened it was worse than expected. “They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head. . . . And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ And they spit on him” (Matthew 27:28-29). His response to all this was patient endurance. This was the work he came to do. “Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7).

This was not true of Muhammad. And Muslims do not believe it is true of Jesus. Most Muslims have been taught that Jesus was not crucified. One Sunni Muslim writes, “Muslims believe that Allah saved the Messiah from the ignominy of crucifixion.” Another adds, “We honor [Jesus] more than you [Christians] do. . . . We refuse to believe that God would permit him to suffer death on the cross.” An essential Muslim impulse is to avoid the “ignominy” of the cross.

That’s the most basic difference between Christ and Muhammad and between a Muslim and a follower of Christ. For Christ, enduring the mockery of the cross was the essence of his mission. For a true follower of Christ, enduring suffering patiently for the glory of Christ is the essence of obedience. “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account” (Matthew 5:11). During his life on earth Jesus was called a bastard (John 8:41), a drunkard (Matthew 11:19), a blasphemer (Matthew 26:65), a devil (Matthew 10:25); and he promised his followers the same: “If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household” (Matthew 10:25).

The caricature and mockery of Christ has continued to this day. Martin Scorsese portrayed Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ as wracked with doubt and beset with sexual lust. Andres Serrano used National Endowment for the Arts funding to portray Jesus on a cross sunk in a bottle of urine. The Da Vinci Code portrays Jesus as a mere mortal who married and fathered children.

How should his followers respond? On the one hand, we are grieved and angered. On the other hand, we identify with Christ, embrace his suffering, rejoice in our afflictions, and say with the apostle Paul that vengeance belongs to the Lord, let us love our enemies and win them with the gospel. If Christ did his work by being insulted, we must do ours likewise.

When Muhammad was portrayed in 12 cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, the uproar among Muslims was intense and sometimes violent: They burned flags, torched embassies, and stoned at least one Christian church. The cartoonists went into hiding in fear for their lives, like Salman Rushdie before them. What does this mean?

It means that a religion with no insulted Savior will not endure insults to win the scoffers. It means that Islam is destined to bear the impossible load of upholding the honor of one who did not die and rise again to make that possible. It means that Jesus Christ is still the only hope of peace with God and peace with man. And it means that his followers must be willing to “share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (Philippians 3:10).

Evan May.

The missing link?

Jim Still of The Secular Outpost has put up the following post:

“According to a story published in today's New York Times, scientists have discovered a "missing link" between fish and land mammals. The transitional fossils are "so clearly an intermediate 'link between fishes and land vertebrates,' they said, that it 'might in time become as much an evolutionary icon as the proto-bird Archaeopteryx,' which bridged the gap between reptiles (probably dinosaurs) and today's birds." Since creationists have made it a central point to argue that no such transitional fossils exist, this is definitely a blow to their argument.

Of course, I've always thought that any young-earth creationist who drives a car ought to be ashamed of his own ignorance. How do they suppose that geologists figure out exactly where to look for oil? Do they just start drilling any old place and hope they get lucky? Of course not. Geologists have such high probabilities of finding oil because they exploit their knowledge of platetectonics, evolution, and the millions of years it took for the earth to turn megatons of plankton into petroleum.”

I’m afraid his post raises more questions than it answers.

1.How is a fish-like mammal—or is it a mammal-like fish?—evidence of a transitional species?

Why is it not merely evidence of a species which inhabited a swamp?

As a natural swamp-dweller, it has a body plan that maximizes its ability to exploit its particular environment.

How is it inconsistent with creationism to have creatures naturally suited to different ecological zones? It’s not as if Moses never had a chance to see a Nile crocodile.

2.Is continental drift or plate tectonics inimical to creationism?

3.I’m not a petroleum geologist. Unless I’m mistaken, neither is Still.

What is his evidence for the rate of fossilization and localization of fossil remains consistent with extensive oil fields and coal deposits? Could he favor us with some hard data?

Proper basicality

Ben Joseph continues his defense of Catholicism.

Let me say that I appreciate his civility as well as his patient and painstaking analysis.

Moving along:

“The point I am making therefore (contrary to Steve’s claim about it) does not need to be defended by the view that the historical arguments for the Primacy of Peter are not as complex as the exegetical arguments that are used to generate theological constructs like the Trinity; rather, it is concerned with showing only that by virtue of a subject’s placement in a certain set of circumstances, and by virtue of the properly basic beliefs which he should hold in these circumstances, he would be acting within his epistemic rights in believing in ‘sola ecclesia’; and that when this happens, it would then be rational that he should then profess belief in constructs like the Trinity; but that by contrast if he were instead to believe in the same set of circumstances and in the light of the same set of basic beliefs that ‘sola scriptura’ is true, then even though he would not on this score be acting beyond the bounds of his epistemic rights, he would yet, however, not be serving to place himself in a position wherein it will be possible for him to have rational warrant for affirming that the aforesaid constructs are true (unless, of course, he supposes himself capable of fashioning these constructs out of the conceptual structures alluded to in vi)).

In other words, Steve is assuming that one can only have rational warrant for believing in ‘sola ecclesia’ if he is conversant with whatever complex historical arguments may be used to establish Catholic claims about Roman primacy; and in so doing he is leaving out of account the possibility that a subject may have warrant for believing in ‘sola ecclesia’ by his placement in a set of circumstances wherein he feels himself confronted by a set of properly basic beliefs; and that under these conditions, the said subject could then rationally believe in ‘sola ecclesia’ and indeed be able to do this without recourse to extrinsic arguments.

Thus Steve’s objection is undercut since this assumption need not be granted; and so it would accordingly follow that such a subject could well feel himself induced to exercise a fundamental option in the matter of his electing to believe ‘sola ecclesia’ in preference to ‘sola scriptura’, by his consideration of the fact that whereas in his circumstances he would be within his epistemic rights in believing either ‘sola scriptura’ or ‘sola ecclesia’; and whereas he would also be within his epistemic rights in believing both ‘sola ecclesia’ and a construct like the Trinity; it would yet however not be within his epistemic rights that he should in these circumstances believe in both ‘sola scriptura’ and the Trinity, if he were not to be able to comprehend the relevant rational processes by means of which the Trinity will have been derived.

I don’t deny, of course, that properly basic beliefs can be falsified and that therefore extrinsic arguments can be appealed to, for the purposes of either falsifying or confirming the relevant beliefs (indeed my own probabilistic argument is a specimen of the sort of extrinsic argument which may be relied upon to serve such a function); but I contend nonetheless that in the absence of a subject’s having any recourse to such arguments, he would then be within his epistemic rights in holding to the basic beliefs that he feels himself confronted by, and that this sort of subscription on his part to the beliefs in question would then deserve to be described as a specimen of rationality.”

This raises some intricate issues. Ben is operating here within what I take to be a broadly Plantingian framework of justification. Let me begin by stating what I think are some of the working assumptions:

i) If we simply knew what was true or false or right or wrong, then that would be self-warranting.

The rationale underlying the justification of belief is that our belief may fall short of knowledge. Or else, we may know something, but be unable to prove it.

In the absence of knowledge, or demonstrable knowledge, the question is how, in part, to rate the doxastic options. We fall back on justification in the absence of knowledge, or demonstrable knowledge.

ii) And, in fact, most of what we believe is probable rather than certain. In many or most cases, apodictic proof is unobtainable.

iii) What is more, we have no choice but to form a belief which may fall short of knowledge. As a practical matter, we are confronted with far more obligations than we have time to prove or even probabilify. We have to make snap decisions. We have to go with our gut.

iv) If a belief falls short of knowledge, but if I still have a duty to form a belief and act on my belief, then the question is whether some beliefs are justified, and other beliefs are unjustified.

It would be implausible to hold us to some inhuman standard of apodictic proof, especially when we have a standing duty to believe certain things and act accordingly in the absence of apodictic proof.

v) I don’t need any special warrant for believing what is true, especially if I believe it for all the right reasons.

vi) But if I cannot always, or even ordinarily, be sure that I’m right, that doesn’t give me free license believe anything at all. Some beliefs are more reasonable than others.

vii) Would I ever enjoy prima facie warrant for believing something which is false? Would I ever enjoy prima facie warrant for accidentally believing something, which is true?

Suppose I’ve driving through a strange neighborhood. I see a man breaking into a house. I dial 9-11 on my cell phone and report the burglary.

It turns out that the homeowner locked himself out of his house.

I was wrong, But w as I wrong to report the incident?

Even though I was wrong, it would have been wrong of me not to report the incident.

Given the evidence I had, I made the morally right decision even if it proved to be factually wrong.

That’s the basic framework, as I understand it. And I largely agree.

However, its “intuitive” appeal depends in large part on what illustrations we plug into the framework. In the case of the apparent house-burglar, our intuitions go one way.

But there are other examples that may confront us with conflicting intuitions.

i) Is a teenager in the Hitler youth justified in supporting the Holocaust?

He’s been placed in a social and epistemic environment in which only the heroically virtuous could resist his conditioning. Membership is mandatory. Peer pressure is overwhelming. The doxastic environment is quite coercive.

It’s easy to dream up analogous cases:

ii) Is a Confederate justified in believing in race-based slavery and white supremacy? Is he within his epistemic rights to lynch “uppity” blacks?

iii) Does a Baal-worshipper the enjoy rational or moral warrant to commit child-sacrifice or sodomy or bestiality?


Given his socialization, these beliefs are properly basic. His circumstances powerfully predispose and virtually predetermine his outlook. That’s all he’s ever known. He has no recourse to a more enlightened position. And he would be ostracized or worse for bucking the system.

Different respondents will give different answers. To the doctrinaire libertarian, for whom freewill is the all-important condition of praise or blame, any sin or any crime, however heinous, can be excused if you can pile up enough attenuating or mitigating circumstances.

That intuition trumps all other considerations.

The libertarian begins with the agent, and proceeds to exculpate the deed in relation to the agent.

Others begin with the crime and reason back to the complicity and culpability of the agent from the nature of the crime.

So it all depends on where you situate your intuition. Some respondents will infer the nature of the c rime from the nature of the agent, while other respondents will infer the nature of the agent from the nature of the crime.

From the standpoint of Reformed theology, it isn’t a historical accident that someone is born at a certain place and time. This represents the will of God. God put him there.

And this may also represent the judgment of God—of God’s summary judgment. Because the sinner already stands condemns in Adam, the fact that he’s born outside the pale of the gospel does not rise to the level of invincible ignorance. Social conditioning is not automatically exculpatory.

Conversely, a Christian can be saved even if some of his beliefs are without rational or moral warrant. You don’t have to be an infallible theologian in order to be saved. So social conditioning is not justificatory.

“Given then the extrinsic consideration that Christ had founded a church and had indeed authorised it to transmit His teachings in His earthly absence (an extrinsic consideration which Richard Swinburne contends is utterly uncontroversial); and given then the further fact that the church in question would have then had to be a visible entity in order for it to have been in a position to accomplish the purpose which Swinburne has ascribed to it; it would seem to follow therefore that such a visible church would be a prime candidate for being the source of true doctrines in the actual world, if such a church were still to be in existence.

From the perspective of the epistemic standpoint of my hypothetical subject, it would thus be easy to see that he would feel himself constrained to take seriously the claims that any presently existing instituional entity may make about whether or not it deserves to be identified with the aforesaid visible entity; and this especially because of what Swinburne has said are uncontroversially the intentions of Christ concerning the aforesaid visible entity (which are that it should continue to exist so as to transmit His teachings).

Now if this is granted then it will follow that a visible church established by Christ, can reasonably be expected to still be in existence today, and indeed to regard itself still ‘as authorised by Christ to transmit His teachings’; and thus plausibly to regard itself as a source of ‘true doctrines’.

Now of all the entities which are in existence today and which publicly claim for themselves the sort of commission that Swinburne ascribes to the Church founded by Christ, it would seem to me that it is only the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church which are able credibly to lay claim to any sort of historical link with the visible church that Swinburne has described.

I take my conclusion on this score as uncontroversial since other entities which may publicly claim a similar sort of commission lack the credibility of the aforementioned entities.”

Although these remarks were directed at Jason, I’ll jump in because they are equally pertinent to my own position.

The problem here is that Ben’s argument is predicated on a half-truth. Where it breaks down is in his appeal to a “historical link.”

From a Protestant perspective, you don’t need organic identity or continuity, for serial identity or continuity will do.

You don’t need to drive the same car from start to finish. You can change vehicles in the course of your journey, and still arrive at the desired destination.

Indeed, it may be necessary to change vehicles. Read Acts 7. Read Hebrews 11.

There is no nonstop flight to heaven. The church militant has to change planes, use shuttles, move from one gate, one concourse, one airport to another to get from earth to heaven.

Denominations come and go. They become corrupt. Lose their lamp-stand. Commit apostasy. A Christian is a nomad who keeps his bags packed and travels light.

For a Catholic, the Temple is the model of the church; but for a Protestant, the tabernacle is the model of the church.

The temple is a spatial paradigm: something fixed in space and time; the tabernacle is a temporal paradigm: something fluent in space and time.

We are campers. We break camp and move on when necessary. We live in tents.

Dropping the metaphor, when one denomination dies, we leave and form another. This is no doubt done more often than necessary, but that’s preferable to being chained to the decomposing corpse of a long-dead denomination.

“Can it credibly be supposed that that St Joseph would have ever approached Mary with a view to having carnal relations with her? How could he have dared to do this when he knew that his wife had conceived and brought to term God Incarnate? He was a holy man, as the scriptures tell us, and this sort of action (given his state of knowledge concerning the Christ) would seem to have been impossible to him. I don’t deny that he sinned in other ways but in this fundamental matter it is extremely difficult for me to imagine that St Joseph could have ever been in a state of mind, which would have made it congenial to him that he should attempt to have carnal knowledge of the mother of Christ. It seems to me that he would have sought to protect his wife’s chastity (and virginity) instead of seeking to undermine it, and that this was why God had appointed for him to serve as the spouse of Mary. Moreover, since Christ was present at the time it is doubtful whether (even if we may suppose him to have been inclined to form sinister intentions towards his wife) he would have dared to risk the anger of Christ by seeking actively to deprive Christ of one of the symbols of Christ’s Messianic glory.”

To this I’d say three things:

i) As a general matter, Catholicism falls into the same trap as certain legalistic sects in Evangelicalism: by forbidding so much, it ends up provoking license and thereby precipitating the very thing it fears, for people eventually chuck the whole bloody package when it becomes unnaturally restrictive.

If you forbid married clergy, and masturbation outside marriage, and oral sex within marriage, and (artificial) contraceptive sex within marriage, and divorce for infidelity or desertion, the end-result is not less sex, but more sex, because the individual finds the system to be so restrictive as to be unlivable, at which point he ditches the system entirely and simply follows the path of least resistance.

ii) The perpetual virginity of Mary is far more important to Catholic theology than it is to Protestant theology. For Evangelicals, this is a matter of indifference. We have no stake in the outcome. If Scripture taught her perpetual virginity, we could incorporate that fact into our theology without having to make any other adjustments.

By contrast, Catholicism has an enormous investment in this issue. It’s built a considerable edifice on this foundation.

Now, the evidence for or against the perpetual virginity of Mary is very sparse. But it’s my opinion that what evidence there is weighs mainly against her perpetual virginity.

Yet the answer is inconsequential to my theology. If I’m wrong, it changes nothing for me; but if you’re wrong, it changes a good deal for you.

iii) I think the fundamental problem here is that Ben is operating with the category of “sacred space” (popularized by Eliade).

We have this category in the OT ceremonial law, along with the complementary concept of sacred time (e.g. the Sabbath; the Passover).

(BTW, it’s striking that the Puritans accept sacred time [as Sabbatarians], while repudiating sacred space.)

This is the basis of ritual purity or impurity.

But this is nothing more than a symbolic convention. An emblem of holiness, but not the thing in itself. It’s a moral metaphor.

Now, Ben is treating the body of the Blessed Virgin as a localized enclosure of sacred space, like the inner sanctum of the Temple.

Her body, by having been in contact with the Christchild, becomes sacrosanct. For someone else to touch in the same place is sacrilege.

But there are two errors in this outlook:

a) It confuses real defilement with ritual defilement.

b) It assumes, for no good reason, the extension of ceremonial law to the person of the Virgin Mary.

Mary’s womb is not a sanctuary. It isn’t sanctified by contact with the Christchild.

You cannot contract holiness or pollution by touch. Not literally.

The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe

I just saw The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe on DVD. Many moviegoers, when they see this film, make a couple of invidious comparisons.

To begin with, they compare the book to the movie. Is it faithful to the book? Does the movie downplay the Christian motifs in the original? Does the movie drop some of their favorite lines?

The degree to which a cinematic adaptation should be faithful to its literary source is a complicated question.

In any event, it’s been years since I read the book, so I can’t indulge in any detailed comparisons, whether odious or meritorious. At this late date I can only judge the movie in its own right.

Of course, many of us bring a little something to the movie that we cannot get out of the movie itself.

Most of us know something about C. S. Lewis. His childhood. His atheism. His conversion. His apologetic writing. His marriage.

So we’re not coming to this film as a blank slate.

In addition, many moviegoers compare the film to the Lord of the Rings. This comparison operates at two levels: comparing the books and comparing the movies.

It’s also been many years since I read Tolkien, so, once again, I can’t offer a detailed comparison even if I wanted to—not at the literary level.

On the other hand, the movies are fairly fresh in my mind.

I suppose the general critical verdict would be that Tolkien’s achievement is a greater artistic achievement because his literary vision enjoy as a degree of inner unity lacking in the Chronicles.

The Lord of the Rings was painstakingly furnished and plotted from start to finish. It depicts an intricately self-enclosed world.

By contrast, Lewis is very eclectic, and he relied on the inspiration of the moment, making things up as he went along.

But by the same token, there is more loss of fine-grained detail in adapting Tolkien to the big screen than there is with Lewis.

One can argue that Tolkien’s achievement ranks higher than Lewis’s.

At the same time, we can challenge that assessment.

Precisely because the Lord of the Rings was so long in the making, went through so many drafts, is so faithful to its narrative assumptions, that it’s somewhat labored and laborious, plodding and even dull, compared with the fluency of Lewis, who was writing on the fly.

Tolkien has a great visual imagination, but he’s not very imaginative in other respects. Lewis also has a great visual imagination, but he’s also a man of ideas.

Indeed, with Lewis, the danger is that his many ideas will outstrip the supporting material.

As to his eclecticism, several things need to be said. Ransacking mythology for narrative furniture is a distinguished literary precedent. Dante, Milton, and Spencer are outstanding examples.

So it’s not simply that Lewis was too lazy or impatient to lay a new foundation, building up the story from scratch, piece-by-piece, the way Tolkien did. Lewis is working within a venerable tradition.

In addition, the strength of a holistic vision is also a potential weakness. If you’re going to hammer out a self-consistent and richly detailed fantasy world, and confine yourself to the narrative parameters of that vision, then you better make sure that it’s pretty interesting, that the reader doesn’t get bored with the vision half way through the game. Does your original idea have the staying power to sustain interest from beginning to end?

Here’s a question for you: which world would you rather visit? Which world would be a better tourist destination for a great vacation: Middle Earth or Narnia?

Speaking for myself, I think Narnia is a lot more fun that Middle Earth.

Since Lewis doesn’t feel bound by any particular literary conventions, he gives freer rein to his imagination. He takes his story wherever he wants it to go—or wherever the story wants to take him—on the spur of the moment.

He doesn’t obey a set of rules. He isn’t adding patches of color to a literary outline. He’s doing this for fun, and he’s taking the reader along with him on his joyride.

Take the lamp-stand. A lamp-stand in Narnia is incongruous. Utterly out of place. Can you imagine a lamp-stand in Middle Earth?

But its very incongruity is part of the charm. No, it doesn’t belong there, and by putting it there, Lewis teases the reader’s curiosity.

In my opinion, Lewis is more enjoyable than Tolkien. More readable for being less effortful and dutiful.

Writing on the fly has its dangers, which is why some entries in the series are weaker than others. But when it works, when all the ingredients come together in a spontaneous combustion of creativity, it gives the story a natural bounce buoyancy lacking in a more studied set of literary effect. At his best, which is more often than not, Lewis has a spring in his step that stands in favorable contrast to Tolkien’s pedantry.

On the other hand, Lewis was writing to children, for children, and about children.

There is even a sense in which Lewis was, emotionally speaking, something of a child when he wrote the Chronicles. The fact that his mother died when he was young, along with the further fact that he was separated from his father when he was carted off to a boarding school, meant that, until he fell in love with Joy Davidman, Lewis never came of age.

By contrast, there are certain adult values in Tolkien that you’re not going to find in Lewis—not in the Chronicles, and not in the Space Trilogy.

If Narnia would be a better resort, Middle Earth would be a better place to settle down and raise a family.

Generally speaking, I regard the movie as a resounding success. The special effects are used, not ostentatiously, but just where they’re needed, to create a plausibly enchanted world.

For the most part, the actors are ideally cast for their parts. Moseley (Peter) is noble, conscientious, and idealistic. A natural leader of the reluctant hero variety.

By contrast, Keynes (Edmund) appears to be naturally vindictive, impish, and resentful.

Popplewell (Susan) has the sulky, self-conscious, petulant, and superior air of a debutante who’s dying to impress her peer group.

Most important is the casting of Lucy. Some liberal critics feign indignation at the patriarchal outlook of Lewis.

But Lucy is the heroine of the series. She stands in the tradition of the holy fool—of the saints whose outward powerlessness is the source of their inner strength. She embodies the theological virtue of faith, and the triumph of faith over the high and mighty and worldly-wise.

And in this movie she is cast to perfection by a very expressive young actress (Henley) who looks like a real girl instead of a junior fashion model.

The casting of the white witch is not quite as successful. Swinton is a fine actress, but not a conventional beauty, and when you play the part of a temptress, looks go a long way.

As for Aslan, he looks the part, but he doesn’t sound the part. So there’s a jarring mismatch between what we see and what we hear. The dubbing needs a James Earl Jones type of voice to do justice to a lion—especially this lion!

Unfortunately, the actor who does the voiceover has an elegant, aristocratic voice rather than a primal, kingly voice. This is a dumb mistake.

Thanks to the book, the action has an unforced suspense, momentum, and denouement. So many high-budget movies flounder for lack of a good storyline.

The movie has a great look, from the ice castle to the torch-lit Stonehenge, from the spring thaw to Cair Pravel.

The central event of Aslan’s immolation is done reverently and movingly.

Another great scene is where the petrified characters come back to life by the Pentecostal breath of Aslan.

The meeting between the timid Mr. Tumnus and innocent little Lucy, where the bashful faun is more afraid of a polite and petite English girl than she is of him, has a sweetness out of character with the usual TV and cinematic fare.

Having said all that, the film is not without some other weaknesses, a few more serious than others, and sometimes traceable to the book.

1.Although Aslan is a type of Christ, the director or screenwriter seems to be working with a rather Arian or Socinian Christology. Mighty, but not almighty; limited in time and space.

Wise, but not omniscient; Aslan is ignorant of certain things—and easily taken by surprise.

It’s been too long since I’ve read the book, but Lewis was an orthodox Christian.

2.The dialogue is a tad hackneyed at times. You can tell when a screenwriter substitutes modern dialogue for the original. Lewis had a knack for one-liners, for which trite substitutions are a sorry substitute.

3.The beavers get to be a bit cloying. The ah-shucks earnestness of the country folk is laid on pretty thick, with the romantic condescension of a devoted urbanite. I prefer a butter knife to a shovel.

4.There is a secularizing quality to the adaptation. Instead of letting Narnia function as a partial parable for certain theological themes, it verges on a parable of World War II. This transvaluation of the original vision is quite subversive.

5.In the movie, Queen Jadis is nothing more than your generic wicked witch or evil stepmother. This fails to explain why she should take such a personal interest in or exhibit such enmity towards the Pevensie kids.

In the original, Jadis is Lillith. In Hebrew legend and lore, Lillith is Adam’s other wife. This is why she feels so threatened by the legitimate line of Adam and Eve. They are the true heirs.

6.In the movie itself, there is also no dramatic necessity for having the Pevensies ride to the rescue. Aslan could defeat the forces of evil without their assistance. The griffins and centaurs are far more useful on the battlefield than Peter or Edmund.

In the larger arc of the Chronicles, the reason that human beings play a role in the redemption of Narnia is because they also played a role in the fall of Narnia.

It was a son of Adam who interjected Queen Jadis into the pristine world of the newly formed Narnia.

But that dramatic symmetry is lacking in the film.

7.Things happen rather too fast. Peter becomes a master swordsman overnight. The Narnian nationalists instantly embrace him as their warrior king. Peter, Susan, and Lucy instantly bond with Aslan. They instantly identify with the insurgency.

But the groundwork hasn’t been laid for these alliances. There’s no time to get propery acquainted, much less befriend one another. Who is Aslan? The exposition is lacking.

If you, the moviegoer, already know that Aslan is a type of Christ, then it all falls into place.

But within the narrative parameters of the movie itself, the immediacy with which these strangers take sides and take the lead seems to be driven, not by any dramatic logicality, but a running time of 140 minutes.

8.The climactic battle scene, while well enough executed, suffers from a fatigue factor. We’ve seen this all before in Lord of the Rings, where every battle was bigger and better than the last battle. We’ve seen the beasties before. We’ve see the baddies before. The good guys eye-to-eye with the bad guys.

No doubt it isn’t fair to judge one movie by another, but the formulaic quality gets to be tedious. We already know how it’s going to end before it ever begins. A routine is just that—routine.

9.Another, more vexing difficulty with the battle scene is the spectacle of fresh-faced boys in hand-to-hand combat.

This reminds you that the books were written for kids. What we have here is every boy’s fantasy writ large. A kid dressing up as Richard the Lion-hearted and going toe-to-toe with dragons and giants and minotaurs.

That works well enough on the printed page.

But when you take away the plastic sword, put a real sword into the hands of 6th or 7th grader, and when you put that up on the big screen, the essentially silliness of this boyish fantasy becomes a little too apparent, because it is made apparent.

Left to the imagination, it works. But film is about the illusion of realty. The effect is unwittingly ridiculous.

10.The same could be said of their coronation. Yet another childhood fantasy. Something we readily accept on the printed page, or within the confines of our juvenile imagination, but when you turn a daydream into cinematic reality, it’s pretty absurd.

Having said all that, the Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe is a wonderful movie as long as you don’t ask too many questions. The NeverEnding story with a dose of dogma.

The Alleged Apathy Of Christianity's Early Enemies

One of the problems for skeptics of Christianity, when they address the resurrection and when they address other issues, is that the early enemies of the faith were ineffective in answering it. It's not that they didn't attempt to refute Christianity or didn't have the means of refuting it if a refutation was possible. They made attempts, and they had the means. From the arguments the New Testament authors respond to and from what we read in Josephus, Justin Martyr's Dialogue With Trypho, Origen's Against Celsus, the Talmud, etc., we have a lot of information about how the earliest enemies of Christianity responded to the religion. Their arguments were bad, and they weren't bad merely because of apathy or distance. The early opponents of Christianity weren't apathetic, and some of them were close enough to Christianity's origins (geographically, chronologically, and in other ways) to have made a better case against it if a better case could have been made.

Much of what's disputed by modern skeptics wasn't disputed by the earliest opponents of Christianity. While some modern skeptics will deny the existence of Jesus, the early enemies of Christianity assume His existence. While many modern critics will deny that something like half or more of the New Testament was written by the purported authors, such a large degree of skepticism about the New Testament's origins seems to have been unknown in the earliest centuries.

Other examples could be cited, but the point is that the modern skeptic not only has to propose widespread memory losses, hallucinations, etc. among the early Christians, but also has to propose widespread apathy, carelessness, or other forms of incompetence among the earliest enemies of Christianity. Typical are the following comments I was recently directed to in a skeptical forum:

"After their leader was crucified, they could have simply spread the word that he had arisen on the third day. Mighty Jesus had arisen, and they were his special disciples! Being an inconsequential group, nobody would have bothered to investigate them."

Notice the reference to Jesus' crucifixion, followed two sentences later by a reference to how the early opponents of Christianity might have been apathetic. Does crucifying a man suggest that you're apathetic about him and his followers? Would anybody reading the writings of Paul, including Paul's testimony about how he had persecuted Christians, come away with the conclusion that "nobody bothered to investigate" and that early Christianity was considered "inconsequential"?

The author goes on to comment:

"Later, as the cult gained in size and became 'respectable,' any serious investigation was out of the question."

We have reports of people who met Jesus living into the early second century (see, for example, Eusebius, Church History, 4:3:1-2). And people who knew the apostles lived as late as the second half of the second century (Polycarp). Multiple sources refer to written records kept by non-Christian sources, records relevant to the life of Jesus, into the late first century and beyond. We know, from sources like Justin Martyr and Origen, that the early opponents of Christianity had developed large numbers of responses to the religion on a wide variety of issues. Just as Christians had memories and the ability to pass on information from generation to generation, so did the early opponents of Christianity. The problem for the modern skeptic is that the early opponents of Christianity didn't have a good case. Thus, the modern skeptic finds himself not only trying to dismiss the early Christians as unusually undiscerning, but also trying to dismiss the early enemies of Christianity as unusually incompetent.

The author of the piece quoted above goes on to compare early Christianity to "cult groups" and Heaven's Gate in particular. So, the early enemies of the religion were apathetic about the followers of the man they had crucified, and the early Christians were similar to members of Heaven's Gate. He tells us that he has "plausible scenarios" like these that "easily" avoid the Christian view of early church history.

His reasoning is easy to accept, if you don't think about it much. When you read his article, you see a pattern emerge. Over and over again, he proposes theories that might sound plausible to people who are highly ignorant of the historical context of early Christianity, but fall apart on closer examination. It's the sort of reasoning that's appealing to people who are looking for reasons to dismiss Christianity without doing much to examine the evidence. There are too many errors in his article to address all of them here, but for those interested in more about the alleged apathy of Christianity's early enemies, see this article I wrote on the subject last year.

Combating the Calvinist Virus

From http://natenotes.blogspot.com/2006/02/combating-calvinist-virus.html

Oh why, oh why didn't anybody tell me about this sooner? We need something to lighten the mood from time to time.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

My fellow Arminians:

It is with a deep and abiding sense of responsibility that I offer this public statement. As you may know, the esteemed Dr. Ergun Caner recently alerted us to a virulent strand of theological plague that threatens all our churches. The technical name of this virus is Voluntatem Dei, more popularly known as Calvinism. Common symptoms include, but are not limited to:

*narrower parameters of baptism

*elevated levels of expository preaching

*shallow interest in the latest Christian fads

*accumulation of old theological texts

*heightened indignation at popular worship

*obsession with tulips

Early detection is key to fighting Calvinism. Presymptomatic signs include increased interest in Romans 9 and Ephesians 1. If you suspect a preliminary infection of Calvinism in your church, follow these steps immediately:

1. Quarantine the affected Christians from other church members. Unfortunately, you can't kick them out of the church right away, but you can tell them to shut up or face church discipline. Don't let their weak excuses about "Bible study" and "the truth" shake your resolve. Logic and reason are one of Calvinism's most insidious routes into the church, and you must limit exposure to the best of your ability.

2. Isolate the affected Christians from Puritan books. John Owen, Jonathan Edwards, and Charles Spurgeon are particularly crucial to deny your church members.

Popular contemporary authors in the Puritan tradition are R.C. Sproul, John Piper, and John MacArthur. Other contemporary writers include C.J. Mahaney, Steve Lawson, Ligon Duncan, and Sinclair Ferguson. Other authors should be avoided just as strenuously; this list is not exhaustive.

3. Inoculate the affected Christians with hyper-Calvinists. Tell them of hyper-Calvinists you know who won't share the gospel with anyone while destroying every church they infest. If you don't know any hyper-Calvinists, make one up. As part of the isolation process, don't let them know about churches pastored by any of the authors listed above. It won't do to let them know of loving, growing, evangelistic Calvinist churches.

4. Inject heavy dosages of anthropocentric theology. Begin by hinging God's actions on man's choice. Tell your patient it would be immoral for God to let anyone go to Hell without a completely libertarian choice. Then tell them God doesn't want to love robots, and that a totally libertarian will was God's greatest gift to man. Make God's salvation completely contingent on man's response. Again, isolate your patient from Calvinist mutterings about God's free choice, His self-defined righteousness, or His use of means in the accomplishment of His will.

5. Feed the affected Christians a steady dose of Evangelism. Make altar calls, decision cards, revival week, aisle-walking, and hand-raising equivalent to apostolic evangelism in the minds of your patients. Then hammer away at Calvinists who don't do these things for lacking evangelistic zeal. Again, isolate your patient from examples of Calvinists who call for repentance in ways you don't approve.

6. Bring down the affected Christian's expectations. If they want to talk about Greek, call them elitists. If they bring up church history, make up your own. And if they mention exegeting John 6, divert them with an alternate interpretation of a completely unrelated verse in an entirely unrelated context. Gradually ease your patients away from the biblical text, and remind them that knowledge puffs up, but Evangelistic love edifies.

In the end, no measure of success is guaranteed. Despite your best efforts, you might lose some of your church members to Calvinism. If that happens, the best thing you can do is cut them loose. If you don't actually throw them out of your church, create such an atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia that they leave of their own accord. Let them join a Calvinist church if they wish. Leper colonies have their place.Finally, be aware that the greatest threat comes not from your own church members studying their Bibles and reading Puritan-style writers. If you're leading your church responsibly, you have them so busy with the latest program and so involved with the latest Evangelistic crusade that they don't have time for indepth study and meditation. No, the greatest threat comes from other Calvinists infiltrating your ranks and releasing their deadly toxin among your church members.This is biological terrorism. Treat it as such, and show no mercy to Calvinists who would threaten your church with an outbreak of 'Tulip's Disease.'

To aid churches in guarding against theological terrorism, I'm proud to institute the Department of Arminian Insecurity (DAI). The following chart represents the current Calvinist threat level nationwide; you should refer to it frequently as the threat level will fluctuate radically around the Founder's Conference and near the end of October:





Since he is the man most responsible for the creation of this department, I'm proud to introduce Ergun Caner as the first Secretary of the Department of Arminian Insecurity. Rest assured that the next secretary will be someone who equals or excells Secretary Caner in bombast, rhetoric, and cheap shots. Calvinist terrorism can't be treated with kid gloves. All further questions will be answered by my press secretary, Dave Hunt. Although I believe he's already fully answered any question you might have, and further questioning would be a waste of time. Good day.

P.S. The DAI is a little cash-strapped, being a new department and all. If there are any patriotic Arminians out there who want to design a more graphically pleasing Calvinist Advisory System, the DAI is certainly interested in hosting said graphic.

A Biblical Response To the Free Grace Movement, Part 3

This part 3 of a series. This article is copyrighted to Phillip L. Simpson.

Parts 1 and 2 are here:

Part One

Part Two

The Interpretation of John’s First Epistle

The meaning of the John's first epistle has been fairly uniformly understood throughout the centuries. However, this epistle presents a problem for the "free grace" theologian. The problem is this: John appears to be stating plainly throughout the book that there are tests which reveal whether one is a child of God or not. Some of these tests include: whether we love the brothers (2:10, 3:10, 3:14, 4:7), walk in the light (1:7), keep His commandments (2:3-4), walk in the same way in which he walked (2:6), continue on in fellowship with other believers (2:19), confess the Son (2:23), practice righteousness (2:29; 3:10), confess that Jesus has come in the flesh (4:2), listen to the apostolic teaching (4:6), receive the Spirit (4:13), confess that Jesus is the Son of God (4:15), believe that Jesus is the Christ (5:1), and overcome the world (5:4). Notice how some of these tests are doctrinal, and others are behavioral.

These terms pose two problems for "free grace" teachers. First is the problem of John’s behavioral tests to provide one with assurance of salvation. One of the "free grace" tenets is that it is always wrong to point a believer to behavioral tests to determine if they are really believers (whereas 1 John is full of such behavioral tests, as has been pointed out above). In fact, according to these teachers, one may truly believe and be a child of God, yet never pass any of these tests.

The second problem these teachers have to deal with in 1 John pertains to perseverance. 1 John often refers, not just to the behavior, but the ongoing, habitual practice of it ("practicing righteousness"--a translation based on the Greek verb tense indicating ongoing action; this concept is also presented by the term "abide"). Therefore, if someone accepts Christ, shows initial fruit, but falls away, and never shows any further interest in the things of God, never shows the fruit of the Spirit, and never desires to fellowship with God's people, he is still considered to be saved by these teachers, because of a decision made in one point in time. Therefore, the behavioral tests in 1 John pose these teachers with an interpretive dilemma.

So how do "free grace" teachers solve these problems? Essentially, they state that the purpose of 1 John is not "tests of eternal life", but "tests of fellowship with God" (or whether one is in good standing with the Father as a child, or if the relationship is out of sync due to sin). Though being in or out of fellowship with God describes a Biblical concept (such as David's obvious rift in his relationship with God after sinning with Bathsheba), the question is: is this what John really means to present in his first epistle?

"Free grace" theologians refer to 1:3 ("that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ" and 1:6 ("If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth") as John's purpose statement. In other words, John explains why he wrote his epistle at the beginning of the letter.

However, John's "purpose statement" actually appears at the end of his epistle (in 5:13, stating "I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life"). In fact, it is significant to note that the purpose statement is put by John at the end of his first epistle, just as he put the purpose statement of his gospel at the end of that book as well (John 20:31--"but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name"). In fact, the two purpose statements closely parallel one another, giving us further reason to believe that 1 John 5:13 is his purpose statement. Note the similarities in structure:

John 20:31

but these are written
so that you may believe
that Jesus is the Christ
the Son of God,
and that by believeing you may have life in His name.

1 John 5:13

I write these things to you who
believe in the name
of the Son of God
that you may know
that you have eternal life.

Clearly, John’s purpose for writing this epistle, then, is so that the readers may be assured of their eternal salvation, not their fellowship status with God.

Remember that the tests given by John are both behavioral and doctrinal. While "free grace" teachers insist the behavioral tests are indicators of our fellowship status with God (rather than tests of possession of eternal life), what about the doctrinal tests? Does John give these to determine our fellowship status? Is believing that Jesus has come in the flesh (1 John 4:2) only a sign of a mature Christian who is in fellowship with God? Can a believer deny this truth and still be a believer--albeit "out of fellowship"? No; rather, John was refuting Gnostic heresy in 1 John; therefore, a doctrinal affirmation was critical if his readers were to know if they believed in Christ savingly or not.

.
Notice also that the term "born of God" is used to describe both those who pass the doctrinal test ("Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ"--1 John 5:1) as well as those who pass the behavioral test ("whoever loves"--1 John 4:7). Clearly, John is describing the same person; and since all believers must pass the doctrinal test of 5:1, he must have all believers in view in 4:7 as well. Being "born of God" is another term for being a believer.

Another problem with the "free grace" interpretation of 1 John is the absoluteness of the statements made by John. One critic of the "free grace" movement (found on the website www.bcbsr.com ) has raised the following argument:

If (1 John is) about a relative experience of fellowship amongthose born of
God or between God and his children, then why does it use absolute either/or
contrasts rather than using relative terms? It’s about light versus darkness and
not about shades of gray. There are tons of examples throughout 1 John. In fact
seldom does he ever speak in relative terms. (1John 1:6,7; 2:19,23,29;
3:7-10,14,15; 4:6-8; 5:4,10,12,18).

In other words, there are varying degrees of sanctification and fellowship with God, but whether one is a Christian or not is an absolute; there are no "half-saved" people. Therefore, John’s choice of terminology seems to lend itself more to a description of how one knows whether he is saved, rather than whether he is in fellowship with God.

Another key to understanding John’s epistle is to define these contrasting terms he uses. John lays out many contrasting terms in his epistle; he compares a negative state with a positive one. Listed below are some of these contrasting terms. Everyone agrees that the first column is good, and the second one bad. The question is this: to whom do the terms in the second column apply? Do they describe Christians out of fellowship with God, or do they describe non-Christians?

Positive Terms:

Walk in the light (1:7)
We know that we have come to know Him (2:3)
We are in Him (2:5)
Abides in the light (2:10)
has been born of Him (2:29)
born of God (3:9)
God's seed abides in him (3:9)
the children of God (3:10)
have passed out of death into life (3:14)
of the truth (3:19)
from God...knows God (4:6)
born of God and knows God (4:7)
abides in God, and God abides in Him (4:16)
born of God (5:1, 4, 18)
from God (5:19)
in Him who is true (5:20)

Negative Terms

walk in darkness (1:6)
a liar, and the truth is not in him (2:4)
in darkness (2:9, 11)
walks in the darkness (2:11)
the love of the Father is not in him (2:15)
of the devil (3:8)
children of the devil; not of God (3:10)
abides in death (3:14)
Murderer; (does not have) eternal life abiding in him (3:15)
Not from God (4:6)
does not know God (4:8)

It should seem obvious that such terms as "the truth is not in him", being "in darkness", "of the devil", "children of the devil", "not of God", not having "eternal life abiding in him", "not from God", and "does not know God" all refer to the state of unbelievers. Think how confusing it would have been for John’s original readers--would they automatically have known John is referring to carnal, non-inheriting believers when he used such terms? Further, consider and compare how John used some of these same terms in his gospel to refer to unbelievers:

The Gospel of John

You do not have the love of God in you (5:42)
You are of your father the devil (8:44)
You know neither me nor my Father (8:19)

I John
the love of the Father is not in him (2:15)
of the devil (3:8)
does not know God, (4:8)
does not know God (4:8)

A problem passage for "free grace" scholars is 1 John 3:14 ("We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers."). It is a basic hermeneutical principle that, when defining New Testament terms, one may see how an author uses the same term in his other writings to gain the clearest definition. This passage shows just how far "free grace" teachers are willing to look past such rules to preserve their position. This phrase, "have passed out of death into life", may be compared with John 5:24, where it refers to passing out of spiritual death into eternal life: "Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life." In the Greek, the passages compare this way (notice the similarities between the boldened portions):

John 5:24

αμην αμην λεγω υμιν οτι ο τον λογον μου ακουων και πιστευων τω πεμψαντι με εχει ζωην αιωνιον και ει? κρισιν ουκ ερχεται αλλα μεταβεβηκεν εκ του θανατου ει? την ζωην

1 John 3:14

ημει? οιδαμεν οτι μεταβεβηκαμεν εκ του θανατου ει? την ζωην οτι αγαπωμεν του? αδελφου? ο μη αγαπων τον αδελφον μενει εν τω θανατω

So how can "free grace" teachers get around the clear meaning of this passage (namely, that there are behavioral tests which can confirm our status as saved individuals)? By stating that the context determines the meaning. The context, of course, for the "free grace" teacher, is fellowship with God, not assurance of salvation. So, though we have a clearly understandable phrase such as "passing from death to life" , and though the same phrase is used by the same author elsewhere to clearly refer to the salvation experience, yet we are told "it can’t mean that" because of the context (the context being supplied by the "free grace" teachers!). Bob Wilken, in an article for the "Grace in Focus" newsletter (http://www.faithalone.org/news/y1994/94nov2.html) makes that very argument. To resolve the dilemma as to what this passage actually teaches, he has to radically rephrase it as follows: "We know that we have moved in our experience from the realm of death to the realm of life". But John does not speak of moving in our experience from the realm of death to the realm of life, but of actually passing from death to life!

In summary, John’s first epistle is best interpreted by holding to the historic understanding of it: It is a book largely given to help the readers gain assurance of their salvation. This is why John states he wrote the book, and it is the way the book plainly reads.

The Carnal Christian

Some say there are two categories of Christians, carnal and spiritual (see 1Corinthians 3:1-4); however, it was not Paul’s intention to categorize believers this way; he was merely saying to the Corinthians that, when they were behaving enviously and divisively, they were behaving in a carnal manner (i.e., like "mere men"). Besides, the ones he accused of behaving carnally did evidence some spiritual fruit--they were meeting regularly (1 Corinthians 11 and 14), and were using their spiritual gifts (though there were abuses of this present). They were not those who made a decision for Christ, and then never continued on with Christ or in fellowship with His people:

1 Cor 1:4-7--"I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given to you by Christ Jesus, 5that you were enriched in everything by Him in all utterance and all knowledge, 6even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you, 7so that you come short in no gift, eagerly waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ"

1 Cor 3:1-4--"And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. 2I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able; 3for you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men? 4For when one says, "I am of Paul," and another, "I am of Apollos," are you not carnal?(Notice the absence of a third category for Christians who walk according to the flesh {"carnal Christians"}in Romans 8:4-9; only "those who live according to the flesh" and "those who live according to the Spirit"--and therefore belong to Him, v. 9).

Romans 8:4-9--in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.

Perseverance of the Saints

All believers will continue in the faith. This does not mean they will not sin, or even end their lives in sin (see Acts 5). It does mean they will not utterly reject the faith. It does mean that God preserves the work He began in them. If they do not continue in the faith, it is evidence that they were never Christians to begin with (1 John 2:19; Col 1:21-23). It is God’s Power which keeps a man in faith, and it is His ability that keeps us from falling (1 Peter 1:5; Jude 24).

Jeremiah 32:40--‘And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from doing them good; but I will put My fear in their hearts so that they will not depart from Me."

Matthew 10:22--"And you will be hated by all for My name’s sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved."

1 Corinthians 1:7-8--so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 8 who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Corinthians 15:1,2--"Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, 2by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain."

Philippians 1:6--"being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ"

Colossians 1:21-23--"And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled 22 in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight— 23 if indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel"

Hebrews 3:6--"but Christ as a Son over His own house, whose house we are if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm to the end."Hebrews 3:14--"For we share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end."

Hebrews 10:36-39--For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise:"For yet a little while,And He who is coming will come and will not tarry.Now the just shall live by faith;But if anyone draws back,My soul has no pleasure in him."But we are not of those who draw back to perdition, but of those who believe to the saving of the soul.

1 Peter 1:3-5--"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time."

1 John 2:19--"They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us."

2 John 9--Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.Jude 24--"Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy"

___________________________________________________________

In part four, we will pick up with Assurance.

To be honest, I haven't read comments this week, as I've been inordinately busy, and this is copyrighted material, so you need to address your comments to Phillip L. Simpson.

Phil Simpson is a lay teacher, and is currently attending Grace Fellowship Church near Huntington, WV.
Your comments about this article are appreciated. Please address correspondence to:

psimpson40@verizon.net

He is also aware I am posting this material here, though I don't know if he's coming by to observe. If you have left him a comment to which you would like him to reply, please feel free to email him, as he invites his readers to do that.

Sicilian sign-language

I noticed a few days ago that Jim Lippard did a post on Antonin Scalia’s chin-flicking gesture.

According to Lippard, this is an obscene gesture.

Since I’m not conversant with all the nuances of Sicilian sign-language, I can’t say one way or the other.

But one wonders what the point of his post was. Does Lippard, an atheist, regard obscenity as immoral?

Or is he insinuating that Scalia is a hypocrite?

In Catholic moral theology, obscenity is not a sin. Profanity is a sin, but not obscenity. That’s why Dante feels free to use obscenity in the Inferno.

I’m also reminded, in this general connection, of how liberals accused Bill Bennett of hypocrisy because he likes to gamble.

But, once again, gambling is not a sin in Catholic moral theology.

I’m no friend of Catholicism.

But liberals are just as ignorant of Catholic theology as they are of “fundamentalism.”

Why illegals should be illegal

Those opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants often say that we should not reward lawbreakers by making them citizens.

This, however, is a poorly-reasoned argument. After all, those who support amnesty or an open border policy want to change the law. To appeal to the law when the law is the very point in contention begs the question.

The issue is whether there’s a good reason to have strict border control. What’s the problem with illegal immigration?

Off the top of my head, here are some of the problems:

1.Illegals don’t pay income tax, whether state or federal. Yet they suction off social services. We subsidize their public education. We subsidize their visits to the ER and the maternity ward.

And the “we” who are footing the bill are middle-class wage earners. The poor don’t pay income tax, and the rich evade income tax through tax shelters.

Middle-class wage earners cannot afford to support their own families when they are supporting illegals and other freeloaders.

2.The porous Southern border funnels violent street gangs into our municipalities.

3.The porous Southern border funnels the narco trade.

4.Illegals murder Americans with impunity, knowing that if they cross back into Mexico, the Mexican gov’t won’t extradite the suspect of a capital offense.

5.There’s a disproportionately high criminal element among illegal immigrants.

6.Illegals are a major source of voter fraud.

7.Illegals rob native-born Americans of blue-collar jobs. Not every American has a college degree. And there’s nothing wrong with manual labor.

8.If those who lobby for amnesty were really so concerned about the plight of the illegals, why aren’t they doing anything to reform the Mexican economy?

A corrupt banana

Perry Robinson continues to make heavy weather over Evan’s use of the word “nature.” As I said before, this is a linguistic convention, nothing more.

For example, the Westminster Confession speaks of a “corrupted nature” which is conveyed to all of Adam’s posterity. “This corruption of nature,” it goes on to say, “doth remain in those that are regenerated.”

What it means by this is that the unregenerate are “defiled” in all “faculties” of the “soul,” rendering the agent “utterly indisposed” to all good.

If, however, Perry is of the opinion that “nature” carries too much ontological freight, then we are happy to substitute a more neutral-gray term. Suppose we revise the Confession as follows:

“They being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed, and the same dead in sin, and corrupted banana, conveyed to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation.”

“This corruption of banana, during this life, doth remain in those that are regenerated.”

Who Is Free?

DagoodS, a member of the ever-increasing, self-debunking team of apostates, critiques for us the “Free Will Defense” that some Christians use. Of course, since I deny Libertarian free will, I do not utilize this defense. In that sense, I can stand behind DagoodS in his philosophical objections to the defense. However, I’d also like to answer his statements from a Reformed perspective:

Born Free:

The concept of Free Will is used in defending Gods lack of intervention in many human events. That God esteems Free Will, elevating it to a position in which it must be preserved at all costs. But can Christianity stay consistent in defending Free Will, both practically and pragmatically?

First and foremost, the question for Christians should be “can free will be defended Biblically?” If the answer to that question is “no,” then obviously there is a problem. Its practical or pragmatic problems are only the icing on the cake.

Why would God have put that horrendous tree in the Garden of Eden in the first place?

This question is rooted in a mistaken assumption. The tree was not “horrendous.” The tree, like of all of God’s pre-fall creation, was “good” (Gen 1:31). That which made Adam and Eve’s act sinful was not based in the tree, but in their disobedience to God’s command. So the question should not be “Why did God put that tree in the garden?” but “Why did God give a command that he required man to obey?” The answer is because he is God. He has the freedom to control his creation and impose his laws upon it. Free Willism portrays a concept of God where he can be only nervous inside when he reveals his commands; “Oh no! This is just one more law for them to break with their free will!” But such is not the case of the God of the Bible. God reveals his law rightly and freely. He has a purpose in it. He even has a purpose for those who break it. Adam and Eve had no idea about the glorious story of redemption that they had begun with their sin. The fall was only the beginning; it was God’s means of initiating the Gospel. The Gospel starts with bad news first, then gives the gloriously good news of the work of Christ.

If but a small act would unleash death, sin, and destruction upon the world to such an extent that God Himself would have to die, and even then only abate a portion of the effects, it was self-defeating to allow this travesty to occur.

Once again, DagoodS wrongly views the tree as the problem rather than man’s sin in disobeying God’s command as the problem. The problem wasn’t that God put some “horrendous tree” in the garden; the problem was that man chose to disobey God’s command. At the real heart of this is DagoodS’ uninformed mentality that God is not free to impose laws upon his creation. But such a concept negates the very definition of God. God, if he is God, possesses the rights of a God.

Furthermore, the cross was no “travesty.” The cross was victory! The cross was the climax of redemptive history; coupled with the Resurrection, Jesus’ work on the cross is the centerpiece for God’s declaration of victory. Good defeats evil; a pleasing sacrifice overcomes sin. This initiates joy, not despair.

The most common response is “free will.” However one chooses to philosophically debate and define it, there is some broad concept out there under this cloak—free will—by which God determined it was necessary to provide humans with a choice between morality and immorality. Reflect on what an awesome usurpation of reality this free will is.

Uninformed questions can only reap uninformed answers. The problem isn’t so much that Free Willists have concocted an unbiblical answer to an honest objection. The problem is that atheists have made uninformed objections based upon faulty assumptions and have somehow accomplished forcing some Christians to abandon Biblical reality in order to come up with a defense. But Reformed Christians do not answer an uninformed question; they rebuke the uninformed question. You see, when atheists ask the question, “Why isn’t God involved in the world? Why is he just standing by watching all this evil?”, libertarians adopt the unbiblical assumptions that permeate this question and attempt an answer: “Well, God can’t be involved because he wants to give us free will.” But not only is this answer Biblically insufficient, it fails to correct the basic uninformed assumptions upon which the very question is based: “No, God is involved in the world. He isn’t just standing by and watching evil do its own thing.” While Libertarians are certainly personally responsible for believing what they believe, it isn’t exactly fair for atheists to force Libertarians into answering a question that is based upon atheistic, or deistic, assumptions and then to criticize Libertarians for giving to them the very answer they wanted. I mean, doesn’t a naturalistic viewpoint desire a God that imparts autonomy? Isn’t that the fundamental principle of naturalism: “God doesn’t exist, but if he does, I want to be free to act as if he doesn’t”?

We see pictures of the genocides of the past century, and what humans can do to do to other humans, and are physically repulsed by these events. Yet somehow God determined that free will makes such atrocities necessary.

…The exercise of Free will is of greater import than horrendous pain inflicted upon humans.

DagoodS rightly notes that there is no difference in culpability between permissibility and determinism. For God to permit an act is no better than for him to decree an act. Either way, he wills it to happen. But in the case of the decree, at least God has a purpose behind the act. You see, if God is merely permitting the world to run wild in sin, then he is willing it do so; but because it is undetermined, he has no purpose behind it. Yet, if God has decreed evil and is actively sovereign over it, then even though he has willed it, he has chosen to work it for his better purpose and the revealing of his glory. Free Will offers the permission of God but not the purpose of God. Biblical theology offers the decree of God and the good purpose of God.

Over and over we see this idea thrown back as a defense to the reality provided by the Christian God.

Why let the snake and Tree in the Garden? Free Will.
Why eternal punishment? Free Will.
Why the Problem of Evil? Free Will
Why can’t God show Himself? It would impair Free Will.
Why allow sin in the first place? Free Will.

Of course, as DagoodS notes, none of these questions are answered by the free will defense. Couldn’t Adam have enjoyed his free will in the garden without the temptation to sin? I mean, free will might mean that Adam’s own will must be authoritative in his choice between good and evil, but does it necessitate that the temptation to do evil be present? I don’t think so. So “free will” is here an insufficient answer. Some of these questions are based upon false assumptions anyway. Why let the snake and Tree in the Garden? Because God had a purpose for the fall of man. Why eternal punishment? It is a wonder how free will is supposed to answer this question. Rather, God’s free will might be a sufficient answer. Why has God chosen to punish sin by means of an eternal hell? Because God, being God, is free to do so. God is the one who truly has free will. Now, we might also give some other answer concerning the holiness of God and his posture towards sin, but ultimately, it would be sufficient to state that the Sovereign God is free to do as he pleases. Why the Problem of Evil? Rather than give a faulty answer to this faulty question, we rebuke the answer: “There is no problem of evil. God has a purpose in evil and will one day destroy all evil.” Why can’t God show Himself? This is another question based upon unbiblical assumptions. Who says that God can’t show himself? Why allow sin in the first place? Because God has a purpose in sin, mainly, to reveal himself in both the condemnation of the reprobate and the redeeming of the elect through the gospel of grace by the means of the cross of Christ.

DagoodS continues by showing that the Bible does not teach free will. He then states:

God imposed Himself on Free Will all the time. With little hesitation. There is no reason He could not have equally imposed in the Garden of Eden. “Free Will” is a handy defense, brought out to convince other Christians there must be some reason why God allows travesty, and then quickly discarded when faced with life’s troubles personally.

He’s exactly right. Now, again, I should note that it is DagoodS’ own fault that he is presented a “handy defense.” A question based upon uninformed assumptions will only receive an answer that is based upon uninformed assumptions.

Evan May.

Is regeneration prior to faith?

Does regeneration necessarily precede conversion?


By Tom Schreiner


The answer to the question is “yes,” but before explaining why this is so, the terms “regeneration” and “conversion” should be explained briefly.

Regeneration means that one has been born again or born from above (John 3:3, 5, 7, 8). The new birth is the work of God, so that all those who are born again are “born of the Spirit” (John 3:8 ESV here and henceforth). Or, as 1 Pet 1:3 says, it is God who “caused us to be born again to a living hope” (1 Pet 1:3). The means God uses to grant such new life is the gospel, for believers “have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God” (1 Pet 1:23; cf. Jas 1:18). Regeneration or being born again is a supernatural birth. Just as we cannot do anything to be born physically—it just happens to us!—so too we cannot do anything to cause our spiritual rebirth.

Conversion occurs when sinners turn to God in repentance and faith for salvation. Paul describes the conversion of the Thessalonians in 1 Thess 1:9, “For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God.” Sinners are converted when they repent of their sins and turn in faith to Jesus Christ, trusting in him for the forgiveness of their sins on the Day of Judgment.

Paul argues that unbelievers “are dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph 2:1; cf. 2:5). They are under the dominion of the world, the flesh, and the devil (Eph 2:2-3). Every one is born into the world as a son or daughter of Adam (Rom 5:12-19). Therefore, all people enter into this world as slaves of sin (Rom 6:6, 17, 20). Their wills are in bondage to evil, and hence they have no inclination or desire to do what is right or to turn to Jesus Christ. God, however, because of his amazing grace has “made us alive together with Christ” (Eph 2:5). This is Paul’s way of saying that God has regenerated his people (cf. Tit 3:5). He has breathed life into us where there was none previously, and the result of this new life is faith, for faith too is “the gift of God” (Eph 2:8).

Several texts from 1 John demonstrate that regeneration precedes faith. The texts are as follows: “If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him” (1 John 2:29). “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God” (1 John 3:9). “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God” (1 John 4:7). “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whomever has been born of him” (1 John 5:1).

We can make two observations from these texts. First, in every instance the verb “born” (gennaô) is in the perfect tense, denoting an action that precedes the human actions of practicing righteousness, avoiding sin, loving, or believing.

Second, no evangelical would say that before we are born again we must practice righteousness, for such a view would teach works-righteousness. Nor would we say that first we avoid sinning, and then are born of God, for such a view would suggest that human works cause us to be born of God. Nor would we say that first we show great love for God, and then he causes us to be born again. No, it is clear that practicing righteousness, avoiding sin, and loving are all the consequences or results of the new birth. But if this is the case, then we must interpret 1 John 5:1 in the same way, for the structure of the verse is the same as we find in the texts about practicing righteousness (1 John 2:29), avoiding sin (1 John 3:9), and loving God (1 John 4:7). It follows, then, that 1 John 5:1 teaches that first God grants us new life and then we believe Jesus is the Christ.

We see the same truth in Acts 16:14. First God opens Lydia’s heart and the consequence is that she pays heed to and believes in the message proclaimed by Paul. Similarly, no one can come to Jesus in faith unless God has worked in his heart to draw him to faith in Christ (John 6:44). But all those whom the Father has drawn or given to the Son will most certainly put their faith in Jesus (John 6:37).

God regenerates us and then we believe, and hence regeneration precedes our conversion. Therefore, we give all the glory to God for our conversion, for our turning to him is entirely a work of his grace.

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:KZF4tIwqGS4J:www.9marks.org/CC/article/0,,PTID314526%257CCHID598016%257CCIID1731702,00.html

"Insufficiently good"

Robinson (along with “Photios Jones”) continues to weigh in over at Evan’s blog.

“All I pointed out is that at a point in time Jesus willed contrary to the Father. Do you deny this or no?”

I, for one deny this on a couple of grounds: (i) it fails to distinguish between desire and will, and (ii) it fails to take into consideration the conditionality of the desire. Elementary qualifications are disregarded.

“As for being “enslaved” by our wills this is a category mistake. The relation between us and our will is natural (even pre-fall natural) and hence slavery simply doesn’t apply. The will is a faculty of nature used by the person.”

This is true, but beside the point. Evan is simply using standard theological nomenclature. It doesn’t mean he isolates the will from the agent.

Because libertarians talk about the freedom of the will, Calvinists talk about the bondage of the will. This doesn’t mean that either side regards the will as some inner homunculus, operating apart from the person or agent.

“Moreover, the “strongest desire” line is wrong for the simple reason that akratics (addicts for example) sometimes win out against their strongest desire.”

How do addicts sometimes win out against their strongest will? They may swear off their addiction. They may make a resolution never to drink or gamble or do drugs again. They mean it at the time they say it. But then the same overpowering desire returns.

Those addicts who do conquer their compulsive behavior do so because an alternative desire trumps the addictive desire.

“Furthermore, since the will is a faculty of nature, it is the person using the will that “wins” not a faculty. This is why sin is personal and not natural. To think otherwise is to confuse the categories of person and nature. Nature doesn’t determine the acts of a person.”

This is true, but beside the point for the same reason. Once again, Evan is simply using standard nomenclature. Evan didn’t invent dogmatic terminology.

Other terms might well be more exacting, but there’s nothing wrong with using conventional jargon. This doesn’t mean that Evan is opposing “nature” to “person.”

“Did Jesus desire contrary to the Father? You have simply moved the question rather than answered it. And if Jesus has such a desire contrary to the Father, which nature is this contrary desire residing in?”

Once again, this disregards the conditionality of the desire. Perry can only make his point by being simplistic.

“Since you think that one desire/will trumps another, does this mean that there is only one operative will in Christ by your account?”

Perry is trying to maneuver Evan into a trap by accusing him of monothelitism.

This is what Perry does. Instead of sticking to the issues, he attempts to redirect the discussion so that he can win the debate (without winning the argument) by screaming “heresy!” and pounding the gavel.

“Jesus did otherwise and it wasn’t evil, or at least I don’t think so, but perhaps you do.”

No, Jesus never “did” otherwise. He never acted contrary to the Father’s will. Rather, he did the Father’s will.

The only point of tension was a conditional desire to do otherwise, all other things being equal. Since all other things were unequal, his desire to do his Father’s will took precedence. And Jesus willed accordingly. And Jesus acted accordingly.

“Anthropology is subsumed under Christ and not the other way around.”

According to Greek Orthodox anthropology.

“More specifically, the relation to anthropology is that persons subsist in a nature which is good, but insufficiently good such that it can will the good, but not in a way that pleases God.”

“Insufficiently good.”

Isn’t that a lovely phrase? Perry should be a defense attorney for the Old Serpent. When, on the Day of Judgment, the Devil faces the tribunal of God, Perry will cope the following plea on behalf of his client:

“My client pleads innocent to the charge of evil. My client pleads no contest to the charge of being insufficiently good.”

“This is why it is fundamentally wrong to start with the Fall rather than the Divine Logos.”

There is no one place to start in systematic theology, but the most logical place to start is with passages of Scripture most directly germane to the subject matter. So, in dealing with sin, we start with passages discussing sin, rather than passages discussing the person of Christ.

“The problem here is that you have an interposition of a divine “attribute” (predestination) between the Father and Christ, and thus make Christ fall under the “divine decree” This is nothing short of Arianism, and the reason for it is because it puts the order of doing theology on its head which is common to Western theology: essence, attributes, and persons. Instead of first starting with Persons and then consider the activities of the Persons. Hence, the Father’s decree that the Son go to the Cross takes into account the Son’s decision since the elective act falls UNDER the Persons and not interposed between.”

i)“Arianism.” Photios resorts to the same smear tactics as Perry. Ignore the issue at hand and reach for a heretical adjective to tar your theological opponent.

ii) Calvinism doesn’t deny, but rather affirms, that the decree takes the Son’s decision into account. Photios needs to bone up on the covenant of redemption.

“First, the text doesn’t say Jesus had a ‘desire.’ The text says he wills otherwise.”

This assumes the Greek text is using ordinary words as if they were technical terms to draw fine psychological distinctions.

The explanation turns, not on overloading an isolated word, but on the conceptual context in which it is being used.

“In any case, do you affirm that Jesus willed contrary to the Father at one point in time or no?”

Not will, but desire.

“Since you agree that Jesus desired contrary to the Father, is that desire sinful or not?”

A conditional desire.

“Monenergism is first and foremost a Christological problem. Solve the problem there–as Maximos did–and you solve it everywhere, or you at least unlock the key to solving it in anthropology. Start with a theology “from above” rather than a theology “from below.” Christ is the key. Scrap Augustine on predestination. The *logic* of his view (rather than his *spirit*) led to Spanish adoptionism: as Christ is the perfect example of predestination (as said in Rebuke and Grace). Think it through in this order:

Persons–Answering the Question–Who are they doing the act?
Energies–Answering the Question–What operations are they doing?
Essence–Answering the Question–What are they that allow them to do these kinds of acts?

You’ll see John 6:37-44 open up a different light.”

i)Yes, there’s no doubt that we will see Jn 6:37-44 in a very different light if we disregard the text and context, the flow of argument, Johannine theology, or the historical occasion, as well as the immediate audience (whom Jesus is addressing), and instead filter the passage through an extrinsic hermeutical lens.

ii)And Photios also bandies another heretical label (“adoptionism”) to insinuate guilt-by-association.

Perry is the Roy Cohn of polemical theology, and like a dutiful apprentice, Photios has learned the fine art of innuendo from his mentor.

“Start with the passage Christologically rather than from the stand-point of a divine attribute (Persons come first!)”

The Reformed exegete isn’t beginning with a divine attribute. He is simply taking the text as it stands before him, and following the train of thought whenever this leads him.

But Photios is correct in observing that theological method is a primary dividing line between the Orthodox and the Reformed.

This was well illustrated in Perry’s previous discussion.

a) Perry begins with the denial that God is the “author” of sin.

Now, there’s no compelling reason why this particular metaphor should control our analysis. Does the Bible frame the issue of God’s relation to sin in terms of this picturesque metaphor? No.

b) Perry then stipulates what he takes to be the intuitive conditions which would absolve God of complicity in sin.

c) Perry then constructs a libertarian theology around this postulate.

Just one more example of his monadic theological method. Don’t consult revelation. Just do it all in your head, like mental arithmetic.

“As a former Calvinist, I am familiar with the doctrine of common grace. Are acts done under common grace, sinful or good?”

Another simple-minded question. They can be objectively good, but they are subjectively the issue of mixed motives.

“The reason why you think that without common grace there could be no goods in the civitas or the polis is because your anthropology is Manichean, contrary to Augustine.”

Yes, “Manichean.” Using an adjective to do the work of an argument. The same moth-eaten bag of tricks.