Common Sense and "the Culture of Persuasion"

While I don't agree with everything they say, Steven Wedgeworth and Peter Escalante have provided some of the clearest commentary in the last 24 hours:

http://calvinistinternational.com/2012/06/04/clericalism-or-concord/:

We must begin, as Old Princeton did, with the proper role of reason. Far from being a latent threat to vibrant faith, reason is the common light of all mankind, given to us in our creation as imago dei. Though not autonomous, reason is still authoritative, leading us away from confusion and incoherence. As such, it is itself a necessary precondition to all dialectic, even the logical and consistent reading of the Holy Scriptures. It is reason illumined by faith, ultimately, that convinces our consciences to accept a belief as certain. No external mechanism, no Pope, no presbytery, no liturgico-narrative faith community prancing in chasubles, can ever take its God-ordained place. Abandoning one’s personal reason in a move to allow someone else’s reason to work vicariously on your behalf is a moral failure and a grave sin. The answer to such a vice is the virtue of courage. Evangelical reason only speaks to brave men.

While reason is the necessary tool for reading the Holy Scriptures, it is still, nevertheless, the Scriptures which are the only infallible spiritual authority. This is true because of their nature: they are breathed out by God. And as God’s Word, there can be no standard above them to which they must answer. Rather, our job is to listen to the Word. As such, the human element is wholly responsive, seeking to clearly identify the content of that Word and then accurately apply it where appropriate. This is why the historico-grammatical method of hermeneutics must remain as the pillar of our exegesis. Only it can reasonably demonstrate the intended meaning of the Scriptures, and it can do so objectively and perspicuously. It may take varying amounts of work, even technical training in places, but it does not demand that any violence to be done to the human will, nor does it require that nature be supplanted by purportedly supernatural and thus unfalsifiable ecclesio-political apparatuses.

The evangelical doctrine of the universal priesthood has become merely nominal in many Reformed churches, which is why a number of Reformed people are predisposed to admiration of Rome. We need to reaffirm this fundamental doctrine, and its corollary of the representative character of the ministry. We must become more truly Calvinian on this score, by becoming more “Lutheran” and less clericalist. We should reject false definitions of the unity of the church, and recognize its actual unity on the ground, which underlies all the legitimate congregational forms and their modes of denominational association. We must also recognize the liberty of the Christian people to freely gather around the Word as center, without artificial ecclesial borders being enforced and policed by a clergy claiming a divine right authority. If the Smith family has good reason to be at St. Adiaphoron Lutheran Church, and their neighbors the Jones family has good reason to be at Putting Green Presbyterian across the street from it, so far from being a scandal, this is actually a fine thing.

Where all of this practically takes us is what many political scientists and historians have described as the culture of persuasion. We do not look to a political institution or other coercive power to artificially provide unity and certainty. There is no magic “key” to unity in external diversity. Rather, we respect the rights of conscience and seek to persuade others through the right use of reason and Biblical exegesis, confident that freedom and charity lead to the only unity worth having.

Who’s got the gateway drug?

http://www.leithart.com/2012/06/04/whos-got-the-gateway-drug/print/

2K or Not 2K? That is the Question

http://www.ligonier.org/blog/2k-or-not-2k-question-review-david-vandrunens-living-gods-two-kingdoms/

Running the race

6 For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. 7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 8 Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day —and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing (2 Tim 4:6-8).

Jason Stellman’s public repudiation of sola Scriptura and sola fide is getting some buzz. Some people find these defections unsettling or dispiriting. I don’t.

This is one way God purifies his church. Not everyone who begins the race finishes the race. Some drop out.

That’s sad and bad for them, but that’s not a reason for the rest of us to become discouraged. Rather, that’s a reason to thank God for keeping his church reasonable pure by sloughing off runners who don’t share a common vision of the route or the destination. Sorry, but we don’t want runners who give other runners wrong directions.

I don’t say this in a triumphalist spirit. I haven’t arrived. I haven’t crossed the finish line. Only God’s sustaining grace keeps us in the race from start to finish.

Finally, we need to guard against rubbernecking at the accident scene to the point where we take our eyes off the race track and fall into the ditch. Keep moving. Keep looking ahead. 

Inerrancy and Worldview

Vern Poythress's latest book Inerrancy and Worldview: Answering Modern Challenges to the Bible is freely available (PDF).

Americans have no idea how few gay people there are

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/301681/unbearable-straightness-being-mark-steyn

Thanks for the ammo

Thoughts about “A Statement of the Traditional Southern Baptist Understanding of God’s Plan of Salvation.”

June 4, 2012 By rogereolson Leave a Comment

Recently a group of non-Calvinist Southern Baptists wrote and signed “A Statement of the Traditional Southern Baptist Understanding of God’s Plan of Salvation.” 

The problem with this Southern Baptist statement is its neglect of emphasis on the necessity of the prevenience of supernatural grace for the exercise of a good will toward God (including acceptance of the gospel by faith). If the authors believe in that cardinal biblical truth, they need to spell it out more clearly. And they need to delete the sentence that denies the incapacitation of free will due to Adam’s sin.

Leaving the statement as it stands, without a clear affirmation of the bondage of the will to sin apart from supernatural grace, inevitably hands the Calvinists ammunition to use against non-Calvinist Baptists.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2012/06/thoughts-about-“a-statement-of-the-traditional-southern-baptist-understanding-of-gods-plan-of-salvation-”/

Gender Stereotypes

http://www.dougwils.com/Sex-and-Culture/michael-horton-gender-stereotypes-and-me.html

Lectures on the Canon

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2012/06/01/lectures-on-the-canon/

The world is passing away

15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. 16 For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. 17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever (1 Jn 2:15-17).

Unbelievers think passages like this reflect a false expectation regarding the imminent end of the world. But I think it’s the unbelieving interpretation that’s shortsighted, not John’s.

1 John is generally dated to the 90s. By that time, John was a very old man. His aunts and uncles were long gone. His parents and grandparents were long gone. Jesus had ascended 60 years earlier. One-by-one, his fellow disciples died. He likely outlived most-all of his cousins. And boyhood friends. Assuming he married, he may well have been a widower by this time.

So the world he knew as a boy was already a long lost world. Irretrievably past and gone. His world was rapidly passing away.

On the one hand the world has a perennial aspect, but in another respect, the world is perennially passing away.

This is a common refrain in Scripture:

15 As for man, his days are like grass;

    he flourishes like a flower of the field;

16 for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,

    and its place knows it no more.

17 But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him,

    and his righteousness to children's children,

18 to those who keep his covenant

    and remember to do his commandments.

(Ps 103:15-18)

Lord, you have been our dwelling place

    in all generations.

2  Before the mountains were brought forth,

    or ever you had formed the earth and the world,

     from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

3 You return man to dust

    and say, “Return, O children of man!”

4 For a thousand years in your sight

    are but as yesterday when it is past,

    or as a watch in the night.

5 You sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream,

    like grass that is renewed in the morning:

6 in the morning it flourishes and is renewed;

    in the evening it fades and withers.

(Ps 90:1-6)

6 All flesh is grass,

    and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.

7 The grass withers, the flower fades

    when the breath of the Lord blows on it;

    surely the people are grass.

8  The grass withers, the flower fades,

    but the word of our God will stand forever.

(Isa 40:6b-8)

4 Generations come and generations go,

    but the earth remains forever.

11 No one remembers the former generations,

    and even those yet to come

will not be remembered

    by those who follow them.

(Eccl 1:4,11)

This is less about eschatology than the cemetery. For every generation, the world is passing away. Some of us live in times of rapid change, where the pace of change is accelerated. Urbanization. Dislocation. War. But every generation dies, and takes the world it knew to the grave. The shredded tapestry of shared experience and recollection. Lives intertwined. Boys and girls coming of age at the same time and place. Moving through the lifecycle in tandem. Birth, maturation, marriage, sickness, senescence, and death.

If we are rooted in this fleeting, fallen world, then we pass away as our world passes away. The better off we are in this life, the more we have to lose. We, and the world we knew, come and go as one living, aging, and dying organism. Branches on a common tree, shedding leaves as autumn overtakes the summer months. Only those rooted in heaven will survive to see another spring.

Viewing the river from the bridge

For whatever reason, it’s natural for men to imagine the past as something behind us. That’s a powerful metaphor, which shapes our outlook on life. the past lies over our shoulder. The longer we live, our earlier years recede ever further into the distance. We look back, but move forward into the future.

This implicit metaphor is often made more explicit by depicting the passage of time as a river. However, that depends on how we fill out the imagery. What is stationary and what is fluid? Where do we position ourselves?

From one possible perspective, we’re like rafters or boaters carried downstream by the current. From that perspective, the past is behind us. The past is the land on either side of the river. Trees and meadows we sweep by as we continue downstream. The past is upstream while the future is downstream. We are heading into the future.

But it’s possible to turn this around. To reverse the viewpoint. If you’re in the river, on a raft, then you’re in motion while the scenery is stationary.

But if you’re sitting on the riverbank, or standing on a bridge, then you are stationary. From that perspective, the past is washing downstream. The future is upstream while the past is downstream, as you watch the water flow downstream.

It’s also possible to combine these two perspectives. If the river washes the past downstream, and you take a boat down the river, then you will catch up with your past. The past empties into the lake, or pond, or harbor, or ocean. The past gathers or regathers at the mouth of the stream or river.

The headwaters are the beginning of time while the mouth of the river is the end of time. Yet it comes full circle.

On this counterintuitive view, the past lies ahead of you, not in back of you. That’s a radically different perspective on life.

And there’s a qualified sense in which that’s the Biblical view of history. For in Scripture, we have a new Eden, new Jerusalem motif.

Thankfully, history doesn’t exactly repeat itself. Rather, the river of time filters out the pollutants. The world to come is, to some degree, the past purified. As if there were fine-mesh nets stretching across the riverbanks, to screen the water. Capture contaminants. Snag debris.

We can also consider this from the vantage-point of circular motion. When a loved one dies, with the passing weeks, months, and years, there’s a sense in which your loved one is further away. Further behind. With each passing day, the sense of distance increases. The absence elongates.

It’s like moving in a circle, where-for the first half of the journey–you’re moving away. But there comes a day, at the midpoint of the circular journey, when you begin swing around. The return-trip.

Suppose you have a beloved Christian friend or relative who died. Suppose you die ten years later. As time goes on, you had to wait that much longer for the reunion, but by the same token, you have less time to wait than when they died. It feels longer, but the time is shorter. You may feel as if they are falling ever further behind, but you are drawing ever nearer. The gap is closing rather than lengthening.  

Zombie awareness week

This week has seen a spate of real-life zombie attacks:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/301635/all-you-can-eat-news-buffet-mark-steyn

Needless to say, this is what happens when vegans develop a midnight craving for red meat. They can only get by on tofu for so long before their instinctive appetite for real food becomes overpowering. Instead of dialing Dominos for a midnight snack, they prowl the neighborhood for fresh meat.

It’s therefore incumbent on state and local officials to take precautionary measures.

1. All vegans should register with local authorities. That way we can map their whereabouts and track their movements.

2. Outwardly, vegans appear to be almost normal, although they tend to be young, pale, and undernourished. Vegans may even be philosophy majors at ASU.

3. Bumper stickers like Meat is murder, Give Peas a chance, Eat beans not beings, are a dead giveaway.

4. Cable operators should report subscribers who view Whale Wars to local authorities. Netflix fans of Shawn Roberts flicks are also suspect.

5. When neighborhood dogs and cats go missing, that’s a telltale sign of a ravenous vegan near you. This usually escalates to missing joggers.

6. Local authorities must develop a zombie evacuation plan to coordinate escape routes, including alternate routes, in the event that vegans go zombie en masse.

7. Keep a zombie emergency kit in the backseat of your car. It should include beef jerky to toss out the window when your car is pursued by lumbering hoards of man-eating vegans. That should buy you a little extra time.

8. Maintain a well-stocked bunker in the forest while authorities quarantine marauding vegans and transport them to the zoo.

9. Never let your daughter date a vegan. It’s like dropping a mouse into a fish tank with a boa constrictor.

A Grim Jobs Report for America

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/301599/grim-jobs-report-america-larry-kudlow

Ascribed status

I’m going to evaluate this comment:

http://thedebateinitiative.com/2012/05/25/three-big-problems-with-the-atonement/#comment-3468

bassamzawadi

May 31, 2012 at 5:31 pm

Excellent… we are making progress. We are reaching the stage where one side (clearly not mine) is beginning to really sound desperate.

It’s desperate when Zawadi can’t defend his key assumption.

As I explained already, I didn’t appeal to Romans 2:14-15 as my key argument. It’s already a given and assumed that most people (unlike Steve as I have just come to know) recognize that there are universal moral principles. Many Christians talk about such universal notions.

 

I didn’t appeal to Romans 2:14-15 as proof that the Christian must accept this notion (since most people do already), rather I only cited it and the Qur’anic passage in order to show that Islam and Christianity have something in common in this regard.

This reflects Zawadi’s simplistic grasp of the issues. There are several basic distinctions he fails to draw:

i) Are there universal moral norms?

ii) Are universal moral norms intuitively accessible to everyone?

iii) Does Rom 2:14-15 attest (i)?

iv) Does Rom 2:14-15 attest (ii)?

v) Is the alleged injustice of penal substitution a universal moral norm?

vi) Is the alleged injustice of penal substitution intuitively accessible and universal?

For instance, (i) is an ontological or metaphysical claim. A claim regarding the existence of universal moral norms.

By contrast, (ii) is epistemic claim. Assuming universal norms exist, how do we know what they are? Is this intuitive? Is there universal knowledge of universal norms?

Likewise, the appeal to Rom 2:14-15 is an exegetical claim. In principle, you could affirm the existence and/or intuitive accessibility of universal moral norms while denying that Rom 2:14-15 bears witness to their existence and/or intuitive accessibility.

Or you could affirm the existence of universal moral norms, but deny that these are intuitively accessible.

Furthermore, Zawadi has yet to actually show that penal substitution is intuitively wrong. All we get from him is a repetitive, question-begging assertion to that effect.

For instance, even if we grant the existence of universal moral norms, and even if we grant the intuitive accessibility of universal moral norms, this doesn’t imply the further claim that penal substitution violates a universal moral norm. Zawadi’s contention is a non sequitur.

Zawadi needs to sort out what, exactly, his claim amounts to, then furnish supporting arguments. Thus far he’s failed on all counts.

Word of advice to Steve….. when you have “belatedly discovered” that you have misunderstood the intent of my statement, either admit it or just drop your argument.

I understand that Zawadi is flailing about for a face-saving exit from the corner he initially painted himself into.

Mooslim miracles

I recently became a Muslim. Or perhaps I should say, a Mooslim. I was convinced by witnessing an irrefutable miracle for Islam:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abY6i3W_Keg

10 Misconceptions about the NT Canon: #5

http://michaeljkruger.com/10-misconceptions-about-the-nt-canon-5-early-christians-disagreed-widely-over-the-books-which-made-it-into-the-canon/

Do Atheists Concede the Ground of Death Too Easily?

Blue Devil Knight said...

It depends which religion, of course, but this seems a quixotic argument to take up.

But wrt Christianity it would be hard to argue that atheists have a leg up in the whole "comforting" category if the afterlife exists and is even 1/1000 as good as they think it will be.

And things atheists can do, like make the world a better place for future generations, the Christians can also do. So there is a real asymmetry here.

This seems like an argument we are doomed to lose. You could cut hairs and say "Well it depends what your preferences are". But that would just come off as disingenuous or blind. Sure, some people would rather be extinguished than eternally at peace and love. But that would just suggest they are deviant. 

This is not an argument we are going to win with the Christians, and for good reason. 

I also can speak from personal experience, when loved-ones die it is much easier to handle it psychologically thinking they are at eternal peace and able to see that I love them, versus the fact that are simply gone, period, and any issues we had unresolved are going to remain unresolved forever. The grief is much, much worse. I don't know how you can get around that (sure, you can talk about them, make scholarships in their name, etc, but the Christians can do that too).

We should accept that Christians have the upper hand when it comes to tales of the afterlife. The main problem with their view is that it is false.

http://secularoutpost.infidels.org/2012/05/do-atheists-concede-ground-of-death-too.html?showComment=1338556154022#c8371239871683979175

Caning babies

This case is getting some buzz:

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/11574-wisc-pastor-gets-two-year-sentence-for-preaching-spanking

We need to be careful not to jump the gun. The case is morally ambiguous. There seems to be blame to go around.

On the one hand, the judge appears to be making law from the bench. She personally disapproves of corporal punishment. But she’s not entitled to make social policy.

In addition, the pastor was convicted for what he said, not what he did. I think that’s legally dubious. So this looks like another rogue judge. 

That said, we shouldn’t use corporal punishment on a 2-month-old baby. If that’s what Pastor Caminiti really believes, then the guy is a dufus.  

This represents knucklehead prooftexting that quotes chapter and verse without bothering to ask basic hermeneutical questions.

The book of Proverbs is not about raising babies. Rather, it’s about raising adolescent boys. Now, we can certainly age some of that down a bit. But it’s assuredly not commanding parents to cane babies.

All told, this seems to be a case of judicial and pastoral misconduct alike. 

Assassin-in-chief

Commentators on both sides of the ideological spectrum have charged Obama with inconsistency in his targeted killings. However, while his policy is undoubtedly incoherent in many respects, there is an underlying consistency. Obama is a social engineer. A radical technocrat.

This means he loves controlling other people. And imagine the adrenal rush it gives him to wield the power of life and death over lesser mortals. To hold somebody’s fate in his hands. To decide who lives and who dies.

No wonder he takes such a personal interest in the kill list. It’s the ultimate power-trip. The next-best thing to godhood. 

American Evangelicals Do Not, in Fact, Behave as Badly as Everyone Else

http://stackblog.wordpress.com/2012/05/27/its-just-not-true-american-evangelicals-do-not-in-fact-behave-as-badly-as-everyone-else/