Archive for the 'Theology' Category

« Previous Entries

A Rally, a Religion, a Republic, a Revival

Monday, September 6th, 2010

It’s been a week since half a million of us gathered in Washington for the Restoring Honor Rally.  While I wasn’t surprised at the attempts of the secular statists to minimize the rally’s importance and to misrepresent its meaning, I was surprised by the friendly fire coming from conservative Christians.

There is no doubt that Mormonism is a Christian heresy.  In many matters of doctrine and worship and practice, it is a religious cult.  I could never accept the book of Mormon or baptism for the dead and I see no need to avoid caffeine drinks.  I would not enroll a Mormon family at The Paideia School.

Does that mean that no Mormon can ever be right about anything, in this world or the next?  Does that mean that God won’t use a Mormon to bring about some good in the social order?  Does that mean that I can never work together with a Mormon toward some political or economic goal which I would deem worthy if it were undertaken by a Lutheran or a Baptist or a Presbyterian?

Should I refuse to work with a Catholic on pro-life issues?  Should I refuse to vote for a capable, conservative, constitutionalist Jew who runs for dog catcher, etc.?  Martin Luther once said that he would rather be ruled by a competent Turk than an incompetent Christian.

Making common cause with others who share my culture but who do not share my faith does not mean that I endorse their faith, down to every last dogma.  We may have a mutual interest in making an ordered civil society here even if we don’t agree about the hereafter.  I hold the same positions on many social, economic, and political issues as Charles Krauthammer (atheism), Rick Santorum (Catholic), and Michael Medved and Mark Levin (Jewish).  Surely I don’t have to reject their good work on the right side of the culture war because they are on the wrong side of religion (as all-important as that is). 

God doesn’t need America to accomplish His purposes in the world, but for two centuries I believe we have been a city on a hill, and I continue to believe that the world today is a better place with a free, strong American republic in it.  Saving the republic will mean, I am convinced, the greater propagation of the gospel worldwide.

Politics alone won’t save the republic.  Only a spiritual revivial will do that.  I have been praying for years that God would grant us another Great Awakening, to bring large numbers of Americans back to Him.  I would be very, very surprised if He would use a guy like Glenn Beck to play a role in that – but I would also be very, very grateful.

Posted in Culture, Politics, Theology | Comments Off

Of mosques, churches, and synagogues…

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

With the current conflict surrounding the proposed Muslim mosque at Ground Zero in New York – supposedly to promote peace and reconciliation and healing – has anybody asked: “How many churches and synagogues have been built in Mecca and Medina lately?”

Posted in Culture, Theology | Comments Off

Book review: Atlas Shrugged

Thursday, August 27th, 2009
Atlas Shrugged is either destined to have a place in future sets of The Great Books of the Western World…or it is the most pretentious politico-economic-manifesto-thinly-disguised-as-a-novel ever written.  The best way I can think of to describe it is in a good news/bad news format.
 

The good news is that Ayn Rand passionately hated statism in all of its forms (socialism, communism, fascism), and just as passionately loved America’s political liberty and economic free-market capitalism.  The bad news is that she considered all religion to be mere irrational superstition, and worshipped at the twin altars of naturalism and human reason.
 

The good news is that some passages in the book set forth brilliant analyses of the futility of the pseudo-morality of “social justice” and “the public good” that nearly always produces injustice in the form of political tyranny and economic poverty.  The bad news is that many of these analyses are embedded on boorish speeches by the characters that are supposed to pass as dialogue (nobody in the real world speaks in such long-winded soliloquies, because everybody around them would fall asleep), and crop up as predictably and often as songs in a bad musical.  (Example: The renegade radio broadcast from John Galt to the American public is over 50 pages long, and is referred to later as having taken 3 hours to deliver.  I believe it!)
 

The good news is that the book crafts a compelling description of the nation’s descent into anarchy at the hands of slimy, self-absorbed bureaucrats who worship money and power, and hide behind the facade of concern for the common man and use his natural compassion and sense of responsibility to enslave him.  The bad news is that the novel is filled with dopey scenes of aggressive, greedy sexual immorality by the principal characters.  (I’m sure this was daring and avant garde and shocking in the 1950s when the novel was published.)
 

Lest this review emulate the the marathon-like nature of the novel itself, I’ll give a brief summary of the story line.  The quizzical question, “Who is John Galt?”, is found on the lips of many characters as an expression of the meaninglessness and mystery of life (cf. “under the sun” in Ecclesiastes).  It turns out that John Galt is not just a mythical character.  He actually exists, and he has been recruiting the world’s movers and shakers - industrialists, bankers, scientists, etc. – to disappear without explanation in order to let the world devolve into chaos and squalor without their leadership.  This is because the world failed to appreciate them, disrespected them, and even punished their “greed” with confiscatory taxes and stifling regulation.  Galt called it “mind on strike,” and it was intended to “stop the motor of the world.”  (This is reminiscent of the thrice-repeated phrase in Romans 1 in describing God’s wrath on the Greco-Roman empire: “He gave them over…”)  Galt realized that the only way to defeat the parasitical “looters” (the statists, the collectivists, the progressives who don’t produce wealth, but just redistribute it) is to “answer the fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes” (Prov. 26:5).  Galt conducts a planetary reductio ad absurdum: he lets the looters run the world in their own way, until they run it down completely.  This alone will give the lie to all of their beautiful but empty promises of “justice” and “compassion.”  This alone will break their spell over the common man and pave the way for the re-emergence of society’s true leaders.  Atlas doesn’t drop the world, but he does shrug…
 

Dagny Taggart, a railroad heiress and a brilliant and tenacious businesswoman, is targeted for recuitment, but she refuses to go on strike and tries to the very end of her strength to save the world by trying to outwit and outlast the bureaucrats.  However, in the end, she, too, takes Galt’s pledge, which summarizes Ayn Rand’s philosophy of life: “I swear – by my life and my love of it – that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”  The heroes of the novel are Nietzsche’s “supermen,” who are larger than life, beyond good and evil, above the “morality of the herd” (which is what Nietzsche called Christianity), and who live for themselves.  In her thinking, this enlightened self-interest has a trickle-down effect, blessing others in the updraft of freedom and wealth that they create.  Objectivism is libertarianism on steroids.
 

A Christian critique of Rand’s worldview (which she and her devotees developed into a philosophical system called “objectivism”) would include, among others, the following points:
  • Her epistemology – her hyper-rationalism, the self-sufficiency and infallibility of man’s reason – is unsupportable, philosophically.  If, as her atheism requires, reality is just molecules in motion, then so is man’s mind (brain, really), so how can one trust it to perceive reality and explain it correctly?  In her worldview, my brain is made up of the same stuff as a raven, a river, or a rock – so why do I think I’m so smart?  Rand can’t explain that, and she doesn’t.  She just assumes it.
  • Her morality – which actually boils down to social Darwinism – also lacks a solid foundation.  Based in her atheism (see above), she has no justification for choosing John Galt’s honesty over the deceit of the bureaucrats, or even the violence of the looters.  There is no real reason to choose life over suicide.  Yet she does, thus sneaking Christian values into her system without giving religion any credit.  She sits in God’s lap to slap Him in the face.
  • Her politics and economics (federalism and free-market capitalism) – with which I happen to agree, largely, as the most workable applications of Christian doctrines to society in a fallen world – are unsupportable for the same reason.  In these cases, she actually makes the right choices, but for the wrong reasons.
I’ll finish with a very few quotes that give the flavor of the book.  (When I say “few,” keep in mind that this is a 1,000+ page book!)
  • “Yet no penny of his wealth had been obtained by force or fraud; he was guilty of nothing, except that he earned his own fortune and never forgot that it was his.”
  • “We haven’t any spiritual goals or qualities.  All we’re after is material things.  That’s all we care for.”
  • “So I want to be prepared to claim the greatest virtue of all – that I was a man who made money.”
  • “Dagny, there’s nothing of any importance in life – except how well you do your work.  Nothing.  Only that.  …It’s the only measure of human value.”
  • “He had the vitality of a healthy human being, a thing so rare that no one could identify it.  He had the power of certainty.”
  • “It is against the sin of forgiveness that I wanted to warn you.”
  • “By the essence and nature of existence, contradictions cannot exist.  …Check your premises.  You will find that one of them is wrong.”
  • “Run along, punk.  Go and try to pour a ton of steel without rigid principles, on the expediency of the moment.”
  • “Governmental scientific inquiry is a contradiction in terms.”
  • “So you think that money is the root of all evil?  …Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force.  Money is made possible only by the men who produce.  Is this what you consider evil?”
  • “Wealth is the produce of man’s capacity to think.  …To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will.”
  • “Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil.  That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.”
  • “Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue.”
  • “I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement.”
  • “There are no evil thoughts…except one: the refusal to think.”
  • “The worst guilt is to accept an undeserved guilt.”
  • [From the bad guys]: “Freedom has been given a chance and has failed.  Therefore, more stringent controls are necessary.”
  • [From the bad guys]: “Man’s mind is the root of all evil.  This is the day of the heart.  …There once was an Age of Reason, but…this is the Age of Love.”
  • “It is this foulest of creatures – the double-parasite who lives on the sores of the poor and the blood of the rich – whom men have come to regard as a moral ideal.”
  • “Gold is the objective value.”
  • “The college had taught him that the purpose of ideas is to fool those who are stupid enough to think.”
  • “There had been a time when he had been expected to think.  Now, they did not want him to think, only to obey.”
  • “This would always remain to her – the immovable conviction that evil was unnatural and temporary.”
  • “To work – with no chance for an extra ration, till the Cambodians have been fed and the Patagonians have been sent through college.  To work – on a blank check held by every creature born, by men you’ll never see, whose needs you’ll never know, whose ability or laziness or sloppiness or fraud you have no way to learn and no right to question – just to work and work and work…  And this is the moral law to accept?  This – a moral ideal?”
  • “She turned to Galt.  ‘You were first.  What made you come to it?’  He chuckled.  ‘My refusal to be born with original sin.’”
  • “I had felt that I would kill the man who’d claim that I exist for the sake of his need – and I had known this was the highest moral feeling.”
  • “I saw that the harder I worked, the more I tightened the noose around my throat, I saw that my energy was being poured down a sewer…that the whole industrial establishment of the world, with all of its magnificent machinery, its thousand-ton furnaces, its transatlantic cables, its mahogany offices, its stock exchanges, its blazing electric signs, its power, its wealth – all of it was run, not by bankers and boards of directors, but by any unshaved humanitarian in any basement beer joint, by any face pudgy with malice, who preached that virtue must be penalized for being virtue, that the purpose of ability is to serve incompetence…”
  • “If any part of your uncertainty is a conflict between your heart and your mind – follow your mind.”
  • [From a bad guy]: “My misery is the measure of your sin.  My contentment is the measure of your virtue.  …You have the privilege of strength, but I – I have the right of weakness!  That’s a moral absolute!”
  • [From a bad guy]: “What’s logic when people are suffering?”
  • [From a bad guy]: “It’s pity that we need, pity, not logic!”
  • “The desire [to kill] was…directed at the soft, safe assassins of college classrooms who, incompetent to answer the queries of a quest for reason, took pleasure in crippling the young minds entrusted to their care.”
  • “There is a morality of reason, a morality proper to man, and Man’s Life is its standard of value.  All that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; all that which destroys it is the evil.”
  • “By the grace of reality and the nature of life, man – every man – is an end in himself, he exists for his own sake, and the achievement of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose.  …The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.”
  • “Truth is the recognition of reality; reason, man’s only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth.”
  • “A rational process is a moral process.  …There is no greater, nobler, more heroic act of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility for thinking.  …Thinking is man’s only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed.  …This, in every hour and every issue, is your basic moral choice: thinking or non-thinking, existence or non-existence, A or non-A, entity or zero.”
  • “Faith is only a short-circuit destroying the mind.”
  • “Virtue is not an end in itself.  …Life is the reward of virtue, and happiness is the goal and the reward of life.”
  • “Happiness is possible only to a rational man.”
  • “Be it a highwayman who confronts a traveler with the ultimatum: ‘Your money or your life,’ or a politician who confronts a country with the ultimatum: ‘Your children’s education or your life,’ the meaning of that ultimatum is: ‘Your mind or your life’ – and neither is possible to man without the other.”
  • “The name of this monstrous absurdity is Original Sin.  A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality.”
  • “Do not remind me that it pertains only to this life on earth.  I am concerned with no other.  Neither are you.”
  • “The creed of sacrifice is a morality for the immoral.”
  • “When need is the standard, every man is both victim and parasite.”
  • “Destruction is the only end that the mystics’ creed has ever achieved.”
  • “I am, therefore I’ll think.”
  • “Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality.”
  • “Your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness – not pain or mindless self-indulgence – is the proof of your moral integrity.”
  • “The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence.  A proper government is only a policeman…  The only functions of a government are…the police…the army…the courts.”
Ayn Rand…so near, yet so far…

Posted in Book Reviews, Culture, Politics, Psychology, Theology | Comments Off

A Golfer’s Theology

Saturday, August 8th, 2009

When a golfer hits a tee shot into the water, he’s a Calvinist: it is God’s will, and who can resist it?

When he makes a hole-in-one, he’s an Arminian: he takes credit for his consummate skill.

BTW, one advantage of bowling over golf: one seldom loses a bowling ball.

Posted in Sports, Theology | Comments Off

The voice of the martyrs

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

When I hear that…

…in Colombia, Pastor Manuel and his wife were held at gunpoint by a drug cartel for six hours, then beaten and robbed and warned to leave their church…

…in Pakistan, Qabil Matar was hung upside down for two hours down inside the hole of a squat toilet by Taliban members…

…in China, Zhang Jian, whose father is a house church leader, sustained a sight-ending eye injury from a beating at the hands of the police…

…I feel sad…then angry…then weak…then selfish…then ashamed…then humble…then grateful…then blessed that I live in a land in which the Gospel has held sway for so long.

“When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God, and the testimony they had maintained.  They called out in a loud voice, ‘How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?’  Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and brothers who were to be killed as they had been was completed.”  (Revelation 6:9-11)

…in Nigeria, Christianah Oluwasesin was clubbed to death by a mob of Muslims for touching a backpack which a student claimed contained a Quran…

Posted in Theology | Comments Off

Humble apologetics

Saturday, July 11th, 2009
On my vacation this summer, I took some books along to read.  (I always do that.)  This time, I’ve actually read some of them.  (I seldom do that.)
I read two little books on apologetics by James Sire, formerly editorial director at InterVarsity Press: A Little Primer on Humble Apologetics and Why Good Arguments Often Fail.  I’ll review them together since they’re both by the same author, both on the same topic, and have no little overlap in subject matter. 
The common themes of both books are that, to be more effective, Christian apologists – and that’s all of us, to some degree – must:
  1. Balance our affinity for the intellectual, the logical, and the theoretical with the personal, the emotional, and the practical concerns of life.  We’re trying to win people, not arguments, after all.
  2. Remember that we are not the Holy Spirit.  He alone convicts of sin, righteousness, and judgment.  He alone regenerates the dead human soul.  He may choose to use us to live before others and speak to them when the time is right, but unless He energizes both speakers and hearers, what we think are the most logically airtight and rhetorically eloquent presentations of the Gospel are just noise.
  3. Understand that we are not in control of how people respond to our witness.  They often reject the Gospel for reasons that we – and even they – do not comprehend.
These themes will help us to be more humble about our own abilities, more patient with unbelievers when they “just don’t get it,” and more adoring of God’s mercy and grace and wisdom and sovereignty. 
On to a few key points from each book…
A Little Primer on Humble Apologetics
The first chapter, “What is Apologetics?”, surveys a few key passages in the New Testament to define the nature and scope of Christian apologetics.  One of them, from the day of Pentecost (Acts 2), is: “apologetics as explanation and proclamation.”  Peter and the apostles had to “explain” the phenomenon of tongues.  I wondered in the margin what kind of phenomena require “explanation” by Christian apologists today: in religion, the rise of militant Islam, the surge of muscular atheism?  Now I’m thinking that we shouldn’t let other worldviews define the terms of the debate and put us on defense – but what about the Church today really needs “explanation” to the watching world today?  Anything?  Anyone?  Bueller?
The second chapter, “The Value of Apologetics,” lists three: establishment of the faith for believers, defense of the faith to skeptics and seekers, and a heightened understanding of our culture.  It seems to me that we often forget the first one – apologetics giving believers, for whom the initial exhilaration of salvation may have worn off, a more confident, mature faith.  This would seem to be a major value of Christian education, don’t you think?
The third chapter, “The Limits of Apologetics,” discusses themes #2 and #3 above.  He states: “The practical success of any given apologetic argument lies solely with the audience” and “…an apologist who has the joy of seeing a skeptic make the step to faith…must not attribute the cause to the aptness of his or her apologetic.  Rejoicing with the angels is quite enough.”
The last three chapters of the book are pretty standard stuff, so on to…
Why Good Arguments Often Fail
This book has 12 chapters in three major movements.  Chapters 1-4 identify common logical fallacies that are used by skeptics to attack Christians and blunt our witness.  We should know what the world is going to use against us.  Ask any of my Logic students why people commit logical fallacies, and they’ll tell you: “Because they work!”  Once we identify them, they don’t work on us so well any more.  It’s worthwhile reading, as per theme #1 above – so that we may possess more confident, vibrant, and attractive Christian faith, life, and witness.  Chapters 5-9 describe good arguments that often fail – and more importantly, why they fail.  There is a recognition here that people accept and reject the gospel for all kinds of reasons – some clearly straight-line rational, but many more hidden and circuitiously non-rational.  This, too, is quite worth reading.  Chapters 10-12 offer good arguments that work.  This section would be better titled “good arguments that at least have a chance of deflecting the usual attacks and bypassing the usual defenses and at least getting a hearing in our pluralistic, postmodern world.”  There are no guaranteed methods or strategies when it comes to apologetics, as Sire has taken great pains to explain throughout both of these books.
The first part of the book is the most helpful to the average Christian, in my opinion.  If you have ever been stumped by any of the following smokescreens, you might want to read this section, just for help in knowing what to say next time:
  • “There are so many hypocrites in the church.”
  • “What about all those pedophile priests?”
  • “The Crusades prove that Christianity is not a religion of peace.”
  • “You’re just a Christian because you were raised that way.”
  • “If Jesus works for you, that’s fine.  I have my own spirituality.”
  • “There are many roads to God.  Who’s to say yours is the only one?”
  • “How could a loving God allow suffering…send people to hell?”
  • “I tried going to church, and it just didn’t help.”
  • “The Bible has so many contradictions/mistakes.”
The second part of the book is perhaps more helpful for professional apologists, pastors, and college professors and students, who engage in more formal intellectual swordplay on a more regular basis than most of us.  A couple of positions Sire takes in this section are debatable, and would lower the worth of the book in some people’s minds:
  • In formal public settings with skeptics (whether on the platform or in the audience), Sire recommends “going for a draw” rather than trying to win: dialogue rather than debate.  He feels that the Christian apologist has done his job if “the gospel has been heard…and no one has been offended.”  I wonder what Jesus, or Paul, or Peter would say about that?
  • Sire devotes an entire chapter to the topic of evolution, and he does not take a young-earth, Creation Science view of Genesis 1-2.  This alone will cause some folks to question his credibility (though it shouldn’t).  He quips: “Naturalism, not evolution, is the enemy.  …We should want people to believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior far more than we want them to doubt Darwinian evolution.”  He considers the whole subject to be so volatile and such a non-starter apologetically that Christians should avoid the topic of evolution if possible, and address it “only if they cannot avoid doing so.”  The problem I have with this is: I don’t think it’s possible to avoid this topic in a culture so steeped in science-worship.
He does give some good advice in dealing with postmodernism: translate its basic ideas into very plain language (not easy to do!), because “…once postmodernism is translated into street talk, anyone can see how silly it is.”
Both books present five basic reasons – “or families of reasons” – why anyone should believe that Christianity is true:
  1. The character of Jesus as presented in the gospels
  2. The historical reliability of the gospels
  3. The coherence, consistency, and attractiveness of Christianity as a worldview
  4. The testimony of changed lives of Christians
  5. The witness of the church down through the ages
Why Good Arguments Often Fail offers other books to read in each of the five areas.  This is a very helpful feature of this book for someone who really wants to deepen his understanding and ability in apologetics.
So, it is up to each one of us to acknowledge what it would take for us to be obedient to the Scriptural injunction: “But sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.  Always be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks you the reason for the hope that you have.  But do this with gentleness and respect…” (I Peter 3:15).  Sire’s books might be part of that for most of us.

Posted in Book Reviews, Theology | Comments Off

2,000 Years of Charismatic Christianity

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009
This is an interesting little book that traces the practice of spiritual gifts (primarily the sign-gifts: tongues, healings, etc.) through various groups in various times and places.  The author, Eddie Hyatt, is himself a charismatic.  He is not hyper-pentecostal, questioning the salvation of non-tongue-speakers.  His main point doesn’t even seem to be that the 20th-century pentecostal/charismatic movements are the main current of Christendom, but that the practice of the sign gifts has been present in every age of the church.  Organization and charisma seem to be inversely proportional, in Hyatt’s opinion: when the church becomes more highly organized (insitutionalized), the practice of spiritual gifts ebbs away.
He does provide many interesting accounts – many of them direct quotes of eyewitnesses – about signs and wonders in the ministry of the church, including Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen; Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine; Bernard of Clairvaux and Francis of Assisi; Martin Luther, Menno Simons, and John Wesley; Jonathan Edwards, Charles Finney, and Dwight Moody.  However, some of the accounts and testimonies are mere general summaries; others are not direct statements and require the reader to draw inferences; and some of them seem to be a bit of a stretch.  Hyatt even admits that many testimonies do not particularly mention speaking in tongues (which is obviously of special interest to him).
The author’s accounts of 20th century pentecostal/charismatic movements – Bethel Bible College, the Asuza Street Revival, the Zion City Revival, the Latter Rain Covenant, the Healing Revival (including Oral Roberts), the Charismatic Movement (1960s), the Toronto Blessing, the Pensacola Revival, and even the 1993 “holy laughter” revival in Lakeland, Florida.
Hyatt clearly tries to be fair and balanced, and mostly he succeeds.  In fact, many of the accounts he cites of speaking in tongues are actually speaking in known foreign languages for purposes of witnessing to the gospel – which is the only use of tongues I find in the Bible.
My only criticisms would be as follows.
  1. As stated above, some of the testimonies are so general as to be vague and open to different interpretations.  Hyatt’s interpretation is always the same: charismatic gifts.
  2. Hyatt doesn’t seem to doubt the veracity of any historical statements and descriptions regarding signs and wonders.  He could use a little more healthy skepticism.  (It is possible that he did so, and did not include accounts that were more doubtful, but he doesn’t say this in the book.)
  3. As one might expect, Hyatt assumes the presence of the main sign-gift – tongues – even when they are not mentioned.  (He admits this.)  Even the lists of spiritual gifts in the Bible relegate the sign-gifts to the bottoms of their lists as the least important gifts (I Cor. 13-14; Eph. 4; I Pet. 4).  Romans 12 even lists non-miraculous gifts, like mercy, giving, administration, service, and encouragement.  Why, just because an historical account mentions the power and glory of the Lord, must we assume that people spoke in tongues?  Why would we not think first of greater mercy, giving, and encouragement?
I do not practice the sign-gifts, speak in tongues, etc.  Neither am I what theologians call a “cessationist” – that is, that all miraculous spiritual gifts “ceased” at the end of the apostolic age, because the entire New Testament canon had been written to guide the church, thus rendering moot the need for charismatic leadership.  I believe that God can and does still give these gifts as He chooses, primarily in evangelistic circumstances, as described in the last verse of the long ending of the gospel of Mark: “Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word by the signs that accompanied it.”  The entire book of Acts tells this story, and remember, even all of the references to miraculous gifts in the epistles all took place still in a highly evangelistic time of history.
My greatest criticism of Hyatt’s thesis is that all of the examples (mentioned above) of miraculous workings of the Holy Spirit – even if they are all true and accurate - if spread out over all 2,000 years of church history, would comprise only 200-300 years total.  They do not prove a continuous, unbroken stream of charismatic presence in the church.  They would prove, at best, that God pours out the Holy Spirit’s power for signs and wonders when it is needed at critical times and places and circumstances.
All of this said, I don’t want to be guilty of praying for Holy Spirit power, but calling for the water hoses when the tongues of fire appear.  I believe the church needs the Holy Spirit’s primal power now more than ever, and I pray for revival every day.  If that means signs and wonders, hallelujah!  If it means service, mercy, and encouragement, hallelujah!  Even so, come to us, O Spirit of Christ!

Posted in Book Reviews, Theology | Comments Off

If past is prologue…

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

Amid the catalogue of Israel’s sins that brought down their final judgment as a  nation was this: “They sacrificed their sons and daughters in the fire” (II Kings 17:17).

As unimaginably abhorrent and disgusting as this practice was, there was at least a certain perverse nobility about it: (a) they did this as a practice of religious devotion, because their gods required it; (b) this represented a genuine sacrifice for them, because extended families were their main protection against poverty in old age.

Nevertheless, despite their sadly misguided religious zeal, “…the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them from his presence” (v. 18).

Fast forward to 21st century America.  Since 1973, we have aborted over 40 million of our sons and daughters – and not for religious reasons, but purely for the sake of personal peace and affluence.

Child sacrifice is probably a sign of a society that is sick unto death, is a cancer within the human race, and needs to be removed before it metastasizes.

If past is prologue…then America, like Israel, has made the Lord very angry, and we will be removed from His presence.

Posted in Bioethics, Culture, Theology, Uncategorized | Comments Off

Christ is risen!

Sunday, April 12th, 2009

He is risen, indeed!

Posted in Theology | Comments Off

A strange and dangerous game

Thursday, March 26th, 2009

The Lord had already pronounced this judgment on the house of King Jeroboam: “I raised you up from among the people and made you a leader over my people Israel.  …You have done more evil than all who lived before you.  …Because of this, I am going to bring disaster on the house of Jeroboam.  I will cut off from Jeroboam every last male in Israel – slave or free.  I will burn up the house of Jeroboam as one burns dung, until it is all gone.  Dogs will eat those belonging to Jeroboam who die in the city, and the birds of the air will feed on those who die in the country.  The Lord has spoken!”  (I Kings 14:7-11)

It might have been reasonable for Baasha to assume that he was God’s agent in fulfilling this prophecy when he came to power: “As soon as he began to reign, he killed Jeroboam’s whole family.  He did not leave Jeroboam anyone that breathed, but destroyed them all, according to the word of the Lord…”  (I Kings 15:29)

Oddly, though, the Lord pronounced this familiar judgment against the house of Baasha: “I lifted you up from the dust and made you leader of my people Israel, but you walked in the ways of Jeroboam and caused my people Israel to sin and to provoke me to anger by their sins.  So I am about to consume Baasha and his house, and I will make your house like that of Jeroboam son of Nebat.  Dogs will eat those belonging to Baasha who die in the city, and the birds of the air will feed on those who die in the country.”  (I Kings 16:2-4)

Then there is this strange, inspired commentary: “Moreover, the word of the Lord came through the prophet Jehu son of Hanani to Baasha and his house, because of all the evil he had done in the eyes of the Lord…becoming like the house of Jeroboam – and also because he destroyed it.”  (I Kings 16:7) 

It is understandable that Baasha would come under God’s judgment for doing something that God had forbidden: following the infamous example of Jeroboam’s national idolatry.  What is surprising is that he also came under God’s judgment for doing something that God had decreed: purging the land of Jeroboam’s descendants.

Apparently the Lord wants to accomplish His own will in His own way, and for us to presume that we can appoint ourselves to be the agents of His wrath is to play a strange and dangerous game.

“If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.  Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord.  On the contrary, ‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.  In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.’  Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”  (Romans 12:17-21)

Posted in Theology | Comments Off

« Previous Entries