CARM Recommends Church Repent Exhortations

Let me say this up front - CARM does a lot of good work and is a blessing for the most part to the people of God. And I come here to praise CARM even now!

On CARM's "Tracts" page, they suggest the following:

Tract to pass out at a church regarding women pastors - A free tract, double-sided, 8.5 x 11, to pass out in front of a church that would support and/or have women pastors.

Read that again - to pass out in front of a church. CARM's tract page is offering free resources for Christians to take it upon themselves to defeat misinformation and challenge unbiblical ideas "out in front of a church". There is no way to interpret this suggestion than that they have in mind that a Christian would take a stack of these materials to the sidewalk in front of a church building before, during, or after a "worship service" (most probably Sunday morning) so as to distribute them to the congregants either going in or coming out.

Which sounds suspiciously like exactly what abolitionists do when exhorting churches during so-called "Church Repent project" activities.

The page lists no caveats along the lines of checking with elders/pastors/overseers/bishops before taking such radical and visible action. The page does not suggest double-checking whether said church "preaches the Gospel" before taking to the sidewalks in front, dissenting literature in hand. It simply and commendably suggests you download, print, locate, and go. Sounds to me like an excellent idea. But see, plenty of other people (including people associated closely with CARM in many ways) have objected, sometimes vociferously, to abolitionists' exhortation of churches. They say it lies about the church to the world. They say it is divisive. They say it makes abolition into the Gospel. On and on, with objection after objection which we abolitionists have defeated and refuted countless times; it never matters to these people that they have lost the argument. It only matters that they be seen in public standing against such wicked people who want the church to be salt and light. We abolitionists must be stopped!

Which is why it's confusing to me that CARM recommends the same thing abolitionists do, but nobody is crawling all over the Interwebz to denounce CARM the same way they denounce abolitionists. One wonders why not.

One might object:
But a church with women pastors doesn't preach the Gospel!

Such a proposition overlooks five key items:
1) Many churches hold to mutually inconsistent doctrines, where one doctrine is biblically legitimate but another one, simultaneously adhered to, is unbiblical and also, taken to its logical conclusion, vitiates and denies the aforementioned biblical doctrine. One example - the biblical doctrine of the exhaustive knowledge of God of all things, past, present, and future, and the unbiblical doctrine of libertarian free will. A second example - the biblical doctrine of Sola Scriptura and the unbiblical doctrine of ongoing authoritative prophetic revelation. A third example - the biblical doctrine of Sola Scriptura and the unbiblical doctrine of refusing to countenance the possibility that your elders/pastors/overseers might be wrong about something significant. Many people hold to both. They don't even acknowledge or understand that they are at odds.
2) Many of the same objectors to the so-called Church Repent project contend that "preaching the Gospel" signifies that the church in question teaches sola fide and the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, while holding at least to some semblance of substitutionary atonement. Plenty of churches with women pastors teach such. Churches in the charismatic strains are examples of this.
3) One of the major biblical proofs against the idea of women pastors is that the so-called "lists of qualifications" for overseers in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 seem to assume that only men are in view, for it is, admittedly, difficult to imagine how a woman could be the husband of one wife.
Yet male-ness (or, if you will, husband-ness) is merely one of the qualifications in those passages. Many other churches have pastors that are not above reproach, not only-once-married, neither temperate, prudent, hospitable, nor temperate. Many are addicted to wine or pugnacious, many visibly love money, many do not keep their children under control, many are conceited, and many are lousy teachers. What makes female-ness the deal-breaker?
4) This literature is even for churches that "support" women pastors, not just churches that employ them, thus widening the scope even more of but-that-church-preaches-the-Gospel candidates for exhortation.
5) In the vast majority of churches, not a single person has ever preached one single time.

Now, perhaps nobody or virtually nobody has ever actually followed CARM's recommendations as given on this page, using this downloaded material. If they had done so in a halfway visible manner, especially if they were to leverage social media to publicise and expose their actions to the watching world, perhaps the same folks who gripe about abolitionists' Church Repent actions would use the same criticisms against CARM and those who followed CARM's advice.

Then again, maybe they would not. You see, this isn't about CARM at all. Again, CARM is giving good advice and providing useful material unto godly actions for Christians to do. As a matter of fact, I'd personally argue that following CARM's recommendations here would be a much better use of time than attending most Sunday morning "worship services". Of course, one could simply take one Sunday per month to spread this propaganda to churches with women pastors while attending Sunday services the other three or four Sundays per month.

This is about those who complain loudly, demanding to know how abolitionists dare exhort fellow professing Christians outside their church buildings on Sunday mornings to love and take action to protect their preborn neighbors who are being regularly destroyed, 3500 per day, in the United States. Abolitionists are smeared with labels such as "cultist", "apostate", "wicked", "divisive", "Pharisaical", etc for daring to do such a thing, for daring to attempt to disturb the complacent status quo. Yet when CARM suggests doing the same thing vis-a-vis women pastors, nobody says anything. Could this be because there exist double standards in the minds of most critics of the so-called Church Repent project? Because CARM gets some sort of pass in their minds for whatever reason?

To be consistent, James White, Jordan Hall, Jon Speed, Marcus Pittman, and the other critics of the CR project should call CARM a bunch of wicked divisive apostate cultists Pharisees. All the more because CARM recommends such drastic action as this in the face of what is, let's face it, a minor matter relative to the ongoing slaughter of innocent children in this nation. If it is evil to exhort "Gospel preaching churches" about their abortion apathy, it must be doubly evil to exhort them because their pastor is the wrong sex.

All this does make me wonder though - what does Jon Speed think of it? When it comes to speaking out against pastrices, I mean, where is the church?

What Abolitionists Do - Why Incrementalist Critics Can't Have It Both Ways

The Nomad

Follow me on the timing of this.

September 11, 2011, Tony Miano joins Faith Community Church.
(source) (screenshot)

~August 2012, Miano "began a process with my elders, the goal of which was to have my elders commission me, through the laying on of hands, to serve Faith Community Church as an evangelist, in keeping with the role of an evangelist as delineated in Ephesians 4:11-14".

~March 2013 - Jon Speed and the Babies Are Murdered Here / Gospel Spam / Street Preacher Guild group publicly dissociate from Abolish Human Abortion because of www.churchrepent.com.
Miano stands with them.

September 2, 2013 - Miano makes the following announcement on his Facebook page.














In other words, Tony Miano announces his intention to engage in a Church Repent activity toward Bethel Church in Redding, CA. Before his church elders have laid hands on and commissioned him to be an evangelist representing their church.
(source) (screenshot)


December 2013 - the elders of Faith Community Church "found aspects of my evangelistic gifting and ministry (namely, open-air preaching) philosophically incompatible with the evangelistic direction the elders have set forth for the Faith Community Church family. That being the case, the elders determined they could not lay hands on me and commission me to serve Faith Community Church as an evangelist."

In between December 2013 and February 2014 - Miano decides to leave that church because they won't officially commission him as an evangelist.


March 2, 2014 - Miano joins Grace Community Church because his other church wouldn't commission him an evangelist like I guess he wanted to be.

March 27, 2014 - Miano publishes his hatchet piece on abolition based partly on the fact that he thinks abolitionists lack local church elder authority to do what we do.
(His article) (Our refutation)

August 2016 - Miano leaves Grace Community Church (John MacArthur's church) to join up with some church in Iowa and "sit under the authority" of a pastor who has adultery and divorce in his past and yet who regularly "shepherds" women and girls one-on-one alone in private. And one of his closest allies, Chuck O'Neal, is sounding the alarm about Miano's discernment, which is either suffering from massive downgrade or has always been this bad. (I favor the latter hypothesis, personally.)
Sometimes... you just can't make this stuff up.



Now, if we were to ask whether Miano's elders at Faith CC thought it was permissible for him to engage in a Church Repent action toward Bethel Church, that would be less than helpful. One of the main thrusts of the criticism of Church Repent from the Babies Are Murdered Here / Gospel Spam / Street Preacher Guild group (of which Miano serves as one of the foremost luminaries and most listened-to voices) has always been that abolitionists have no authority to rebuke or exhort another local church, and that because our elders did not send us out for that specific purpose.


Leaving aside the fact that numerous abolitionists have been explicitly blessed in carrying out Church Repent by their elders, is it possible to escape the conclusion that Miano himself planned to rebuke a church without being sent out by his own elders?
And so he has decided to leave that church and forsake those elders because they wouldn't give him what he wanted - official commission as an evangelist. He could have stayed there and worked through the issues with those elders. He chose to leave and see if someone else would do so.

And what if we were to ask Phil Johnson at Grace Community Church of SoCal whether Miano was submitted to his pastoral/elder/overseer/bishop/episcopal authority when he decided to leave John MacArthur's church in favor of a guy who likes to take women into his confidence in the privacy of his office? It sounds like Miano is rootless and looking for anyone who will take him in and give him the affirmation he apparently desires from a father figure. 

What's the word for that? Ah, yes - nomadic.

In which I hasten to add

Frank Turk was (for the first time in a while) pretty close to 100% right in an article. Dr Michael Brown asks a question:

A question for all my cessationist friends: You constantly ask why I don't rebuke charismatic abuses (actually, I do), but I have not heard you rebuke the horrific writings of Martin Luther (against the Jews and others). Why not? What he wrote was far worse than a prosperity gospel.

First of all, "far worse" is a judgment call which I don't necessarily grant. Yes, it's horrible to say what Luther said when he was old and crotchety about the Jews. The Word of Faith heresy leads scads of people straight to Hell, more than there were Jews in the world at Luther's time.

Anyway, what is at issue for me is not so much that we don't hear very many denunciations coming from, say, the leadership of the Assemblies of God or Michael Brown's own organisation or Charisma Magazine of the many horrible things that Word of Faith-ers do and say. That's bad enough.

What concerns me most is that when they are directly asked about it, they still hem and haw. Look at the way Dr Brown acted a few days ago. Read my Twitter feed from recent days. I've asked probably a dozen charismatic Tweeters who were interacting on #strangefire feed to denounce Creflo Dollar and TD Jakes. Only one did so.


I'm happy to set myself apart from the actions of many, many charismatics in this arena.

Rhology, do you denounce the horrific writings of Martin Luther against the Jews and others?

Yes.

That was easy. Your turn.

CatholicNick hasn't learned much

...at least not on the issue of "church unity" and the 29,000 30,000 33,000 58 zillion denominations argument.

Here is the comment to which I reply.


 I don't see why infallibility is necessary to have formally-established dogma. If a group gets together and says "this is our formally-established dogma. Nobody is infallible of course but this is our formally-established dogma, b/c although nobody is infallible, this dogma is actually true", what's wrong with that? You need to give an argument that infallibility is a necessary precondition for formally-established dogma. A Prot church DOES have a single, unified hierarchy. I have told you this many times; it's disappointing to see you haven't learned anything in the years since I pointed it out to you.

Instead, every pastor is self-appointed and does their own thing. That depends entirely on the church/denomination.

What makes you think these overgeneralisations do anyone any good?


  The PCA has no authority over someone like James White

Duh, but PCA does have authority over someone like a PCA pastor.
Just like an EO priest doesn't have any authority over someone like CatholicNick


  You're stopping short of asking the full question: not "join A church" but WHICH?

Well, of course, but we each have to answer the same question. Which church? Which infallible interpreter? EOC? WatchTower? Salt Lake City? Seriously, these answers have been around for many years. Why haven't you advanced the argument any?


Surely Jesus wasn't saying "I don't care which denomination you attend, just as long as you attend one".

Please argue for this assertion.



Suppose Jason (Stellman) wants to dump the PCA and go solo, so now he's attending his own start-up church. Is that just as good?

If he did so b/c he doubted paedobaptism and embraced credobaptism, that would be a good thing*. If PCA went apostate like Rome has, it could be a good thing. If he did it to reach previously unreached ppl, sure, why not? For reasons of swapping out doctrine, no, it wouldn't be good, b/c PCA's doctrine is very, very good. But all churches are "start-up" churches, so I don't really understand what you're saying. RCC does not extend back from Jesus and the apostles; neither does EOC or any other church.



This only begs the question as to what is "Major" and what isn't. 

Of course it does, but the NT tells us. And I already reminded you of it. A shame you once again refused to advance the argument.


It further raises the question why join a Church that is wrong on "smaller things" rather than seek out or form one that is right on both Major and Minor?

I did, and I found one that is about the closest to right on things major and minor that's in my area. I'm blessed; there are several like that and I am a member of one of them.


Once you start making a list of "Majors" then you'll see things begin to break down.

That's false; I've done that before and it worked out fine. There are also these things called confessions that have stood for hundreds of years. Those also work quite well.


 The difference between Jason and others is that Jason was willing to attempt to derive such a list.

No, the difference between him and others is that he had already given up on Sola Scriptura.


You don't realize that you're essentially acting as Pope when you go around saying "smaller issues like pædobaptism or church polity".

You need to argue for this. I don't think I'm infallible; I merely recognise that I have responsibility to do what Jesus told me to do. And I've already pointed out where the NT teaches the major/minor distinction.


Who says those are "smaller issues" when HISTORICALLY those and similar issues have bitterly divided Protestantism.

The fact that they don't corrupt the Gospel or necessary doctrine fundamentally "says" those are smaller issues. As for whether they have bitterly divided ppl, why should it bother me that men before me have been sinners and let conflicts go farther than they should have? And why doesn't it bother YOU that the same is true of RCC and RC history? One of us can deal with his own history.



Luther and Calvin hated and damned the anabaptists, and the more traditional Confessionally Reformed and Baptists would still find each other objectionable and closed communion.

So? RC and EO bishops/popes/patriarchs have hated and damned each other, and they would still find each other objectionable and closed communion.


  it's absurd to suggest a hierarchic, democratic, and individualist polity are equally acceptable.

I didn't suggest that. I"m afraid you may be having difficulty with the idea that people can recognise that a given idea is a minor matter and also that someone else is wrong on that minor matter and also that, since it's minor, it does not merit wholehearted anathemas. Since Jesus and the apostles did that, who am I to demur?


If you are in a debate about some major point of doctrine or morality with a good friend who's of a different denomination, which "church" do you approach for correction as per Christ's instructions in Matthew 18 to "tell it to the church"?

At the risk of stating the obvious, no church. How am I supposed to address "the church" when we're not part of the same church? How would you deal with an EO friend about his disaffirmation of the filioque?



*It should go without saying that I am a Baptist. I'm speaking as a Baptist here, since Nick asked me the question. 




(Please leave any comments at the Beggars All post.)

Catholics for Excommunication

Seen in the right-side advertisement column on my Facebook page today (which, if you think about it, is ironic and sort of funny):

Links to here.


Is not the Roman Catholic Church's teaching on contraception crystal-clear? Perpiscuous Perspicuous?

Or, let us ask it another way:
What might we label a so-called Roman Catholic who advocates ignoring what the Magisterium teaches and instead agreeing with a group of laymen over against what the Magisterium has clearly taught?

Well, what might we label a so-called member of a PCA church who advocates ignoring what the Westminster Confession of Faith teaches and instead agreeing with a group of laymen over against what the WCF has clearly taught?
What might we label a so-called member of a Reformed Baptist church who advocates ignoring what the London Baptist Confession of Faith teaches and instead agreeing with a group of laymen over against what the LBCF has clearly taught? 

In the latter two cases, would not many of our Roman Catholic friends point excitedly to the fact as evidence of the 29 30 33-thousand denominations myth? And/or of disunity among Protestants and chaos? A blueprint for anarchy?

Shall we expect "Catholics for Choice" to face church discipline pretty soon?

(Please leave any comments at Beggars All.)

Imagine How Stupid You Are Going To Look In 40 Years

(Please leave any comments at Triablogue.)

Anti-anti-discrimination

David said:
there is a need for legislation to protect gays from discrimination

I'm doubtful of this; that's the thing.
To be clear, if I meet a gay person dressed -ahem- flamboyantly, I have every desire to treat them with the love of Christ. Violence is not an option, and it's not attractive to me either.
That said, if a person were to come to an interview for a serious job dressed flamboyantly, I'd treat that the same way as I'd treat someone who came in with a T-shirt and sandals - this person isn't treating the interview or opportunity seriously. S/he better be WAY more qualified than any other applicant if s/he wants to be considered for the hire.

That's why I've been asking "How would the interviewer know to ask?" about the interviewEE's preferred manner of sex? Was it b/c the homosexual person dressed in such a way as to warrant the asking? I've been in many job interviews and not once has any question ever approached a question about sexual preference. Don't know if I've even been asked if I'm married.

As for the legislation you claim is necessary, it seems to me the inverse is also necessary but I don't see anyone clamoring for it. It's far more politically correct to be loud-and-proud homosexual than to be loud-and-proud hetero. When's the last Hetero Pride March you heard of? When's the last time anyone suggested proclaiming "Heterosexual History Month"?  If we are to celebrate historical achievements by remarkable people, why bring up their sexual orientation at all?  What difference does one's sexual orientation make in a great invention or discovery?  Who among us speaks in the following way: "Albert Einstein, a great mind and influential scientist, who was also heterosexual, is the originator of the theory of relativity"?

We don't need anti-discrimination legislation to protect gay people. We need regular laws to protect them from unprovoked violence just like everyone else is protected from unprovoked violence. If gays are targeted by people for violence, from where I stand there's at least a solid argument to be made that some of that is due to homosexuals' demanding super rights and that they not only be tolerated but fully accepted for whatever perverse things they want to do in public, such as parade down a street naked and wave sex toys around.
Where is the "Missionary Position Pride Parade" where people who prefer missionary position sex march around proclaiming their preferred manner of sexual expression? It's not there. So many of the most visible homosexuals are most visible b/c they insist on flaunting their sexual preferences in public, and not everyone is OK with that. Not everyone prefers to peacefully share the Good News of Jesus with homosexuals like I do. Some prefer violence against the Other. In that case, the answer for the Other is to prioritise carefully. For what reason is s/he spending all this time and energy flaunting his/her sexual preference all over the place?


Do you have any problem with protecting against discrimination after the hiring?

Is open discussion of whether employees prefer to watch porn during sex or prefer sex doggie-style acceptable within the workplace?
How precisely would it become known that the hypothetical homosexual person is in fact homosexual? Are you asking what if s/he flaunts it? Should we also introduce anti-discrimination legislation that guarantees that anyone can talk about anything at any time in any workplace without any adverse consequences?


If he can do the job, then hire him. This seems like a trivial reason to deny employment.

Precisely my point. His preferred manner of sexual expression shouldn't enter into the question at all, and that includes both sides of the equation. Why would the prospective employer ask? Why would the prospective employee tell?

Romish apologetics at its best

Starting here:

Adomnan said...
Adomnan: I read the Scriptures, too; and the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit tell me that that the Catholic faith is the true faith.

Fortunately, I'm not alone.
----------
Rhology said...

"The Holy Spirit tells me..."

1) That's no different from the Mormon "burning in the bosom".
2) RCs like to rip Protestants for "me and my Bible under a tree", but you've here expressed the same concept.

I just think it's funny how you guys change position when the situation calls for it.

-----------

Adomnan said...

Rhology: 1) That's no different from the Mormon "burning in the bosom".

Adomnan: The Holy Spirit supports the Magisterium. If I got a burning in the bosom, I'd take a Tums.

On the other hand, Calvin, like the Mormons, let his gut tell him what books constituted Scripture. He certainly paid no heed to the Magisterium.

Rhology: 2) RCs like to rip Protestants for "me and my Bible under a tree", but you've here expressed the same concept.

Adomnan: No, I haven't.

Rhology: I just think it's funny how you guys change position when the situation calls for it.

Adomnan: Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. 

Actually, though, I'm being consistent in this instance. It's not inconsistent to expect the Holy Spirit to endorse what the Magisterium teaches.

The Holy Spirit doesn't "speak" to me by inspiring an emotion, but through illumination of the mind. That's my experience at least.

Rhology: The astute reader will note that the reason I argued that way is b/c Paul Hoffer forced me to. Read the first few lines.

Adomnan: The astute reader might not get beyond the first few lines.

So Paul forced you to make a bad argument and repeat it a dozen times? Or was it Bush's fault?
-----------


Rhology said...

The Holy Spirit supports the Magisterium.

You're right it does.
Wait, no it doesn't. You know what? It's both. Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.



On the other hand, Calvin, like the Mormons, let his gut tell him what books constituted Scripture.

Prove it.
Calvin WAS a Mormon. So was Jesus. Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.



It's not inconsistent to expect the Holy Spirit to endorse what the Magisterium teaches.

Actually, it's both consistent and inconsistent at the same time, in the same way.


The astute reader might not get beyond the first few lines.

Lemme guess. Astuteness is another hobgoblin of small minds.

-----------

Adomnan said...

Rhology, I see the hobgoblin has captured your small mind.

Ever hear of Emerson, ignoramus?

I didn't think so.

-----------

Rhology said...

I've both heard of and not heard of Emerson. My mind is simultaneously small and equal to God's.

Progressing? Regressing? Dunno!

Dr Eric Reitan has graced us with another post in his series: Authority Without Inerrancy?

Oy, where to begin?
Here is the comment I left:

Hello Dr Reitan,

-Rather than viewing the Bible as the very Word of God, the progressive Christian views the Bible as a seminal human testament to divine revelation.-

One hopes he'll deal, then, with the fact that Jesus thought very differently.


-in profound mystical encounters-

Which are anything but objective.


-in providential events-

Which don't communicate much of anything specific, w/o a framework already in place thru which to interpret said event.


-through our relationships with one another-

Which are sometimes good and reflect holiness and are very often evil, disgusting, harmful, and sinful. "Progressives" live in happy-happy-land.


-In many of these cases, the actual writers were probably not striving to express their own experience of divine revelation so much as striving to faithfully put to writing stories that expressed the religious experiences of earlier generations.-

Even when they specifically state that they're writing the very revelation of God? All those "thus saith the Lord"s are "their own experiences" and "stories"?


-this means that approached on a verse-by-verse basis, one cannot confidently say, simply because the passage appears in the Bible, that it truly expresses the will of God or offers us an accurate understanding God’s nature.-

Leaving the "progressive" completely and utterly in the lurch. If God has not spoken clearly, we have nothing, no objective way to tell right from wrong, holiness from sin, Heaven-bound-ness from Hell-bound-ness. In short, it sucks to "progress".


-Witnesses-

This really seems just to beg the question. Numerous fallible witnesses lead sometimes to what we think are correct verdicts and sometimes lead to the OJ Simpson trial. What about INFALLIBLE witnesses, inspired specifically by the final, infallible God?


-The revised belief system, while still imperfect-

You mean "while still imperfect, ***I THINK (without any standard outside of myself to distinguish whether I'm right)***".


-But the process is ongoing and, in philosophical terms, "dialectical." -

So we could still be in our sins, and we'd have no idea. Heaven could be a fantasy.
Progressing towards...whatever...is purpose-less and w/o a goal or destination. You're bowing before the mirror.


-If every claim about God is taken to be a perfectly accurate description of the divine, then the reader will suppose there is no trajectory of development to look for.-

And how do you know that "development" is a good thing? This is apparently your fundamental presupp, and I can't question this more strenuously.


-Instead of seeing earlier biblical images of God as stages in a process of fuller and truer understandings of the divine-

Well, it depends on what you mean. We inerrantists recognise the reality of progressive revelation. But it's up to YOU to point out precisely how our understanding is a mishmash and doesn't work. And we all know how much progressives love actual substantive debate! (Not very much.)


-the process of refining our understanding of God probably didn't end in biblical times. -

We agree there, but you're not just talking about refining our understanding. You're functionally downgrading our primary source of info about God to the same level as the clueless pundits of today. It's foolish.


-in an evolving tradition through which God is still revealing Himself. -

I'd love to see a theory of what it means that God reveal Himself, on your view. It is apparently alot like ME revealing MYSELF. What's special or authoritative about that?


-A source can be authoritative without being inerrant--as is the case with our senses, a point I made in the first post in this series.-

And I invite anyone to see how we interacted in that combox and at my blog on that topic.
This supports my contention that God revealing Himself = me revealing myself. And what special insight do I have on the ultimate nature of reality, about sin, about good and theodicy, about eternity?



-in a way, the progressive Christian's willingness to question the perfect accuracy of the biblical account of Jesus' story reflects the seriousness with which they take the resurrection story.-

That's so rich. We think it's full of holes, and that just means we RESPECT it that much more!
This is exactly like the wife-beater who cooes to his bleeding, semi-conscious wife: "I hit you like that b/c I love you so much!"


-Jesus is someone with whom we can have an experiential relationship now, today. -

And maybe that contention is supported from the errant part of the text. You have proposed no objective way to know that. It would appear you'd say that we can have a relationship with Jesus if we THINK we can. Happy-happy-land, like I said. Wishful thinking, pixie dust, "Think of a wonderful thought, any happy little thought" and you can fly, first star on the right, straight on till morning. How this kind of thinking appeals to anyone who is seriously considering the truth (or not) of whether God has anything to say to us and anything to do with us is completely beyond me.
Give me Romans 8 any day, not this happy-pill crap.

Peace,
Rhology

Yet another liberal professor

One Dr Eric Reitan has chimed in here and here at Dr McGrath's blog.
He is apparently nothing more than another dime-a-dozen liberal religion professor type who likes to talk like an Emergent. Probably b/c "Emergent" usually just means "old-tyme liberalism wearing a soul patch and thick black-frame glasses, a progressive and awesome hairstyle, and typing his blog on a Mac".
But it really is remarkable how he has eviscerated any thought of a meaningful religion given to humanity from God. Rather, he apparently thinks the "man trying to reach God by means that man chooses" is the way to go. Yeah, good luck with that.

Dr Reitan said:
The gist of it is this: a God whose essence is love would not choose, as His primary vehicle of revelation, a static text.

Right off the bat, you are setting yourself up as an authority over the Bible, just like Dr McGrath.
Which means you don't accept the Bible as God's primary means of self-revelation. What will you put in its place? From reading the rest of your comment, you will put "people" in its place. Nice theory, but it only works when people are sorta like you, nice people who don't want to kill you and your kids for fun, who don't want to steal your car and use it for drug and drive-by shooting raids, who don't want to foist all sorts of legalistic requirements for salvation on others, who would never give up their Macs for Lenovos, who would never dream of attempting to subjugate the entire human race under one racist régime.
I don't know if you're a part of the Emergent Church, Dr Reitan, but what you have said here falls directly in line with their worst elements, and that's an awful shame. One of their fundamental problems is their backhanded ethnocentrism. You will no doubt swear up and down that it's actually those awful fundies who are racist, but wait a second. Our message, from the Bible, remains consistent. We call ALL people to repent and believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ, b/c ALL people are equally filthy and equally dead in their sins. You want this squishy "community" wherein people are able to "express themselves", but you only want some of that. You won't include the conservative Reformed person like me. You won't include the unrepentant jihadist or the Hindu church bomber, or the loner, or the repentant homosexual who is now happily married to a woman and has 4 kids and wants to help others to leave the homosexual lifestyle, or the sociopath, or the wife-beater. And you know what? There are an awful lot of people like that out there. They are sinners. We are sinners. We need a Savior. Our problem is not that we need community. Our problem is that we are sinful.

One of the points of that is that humans are wildly inconsistent and don't agree on much of anythg, but you naively make humans your yardstick. This boils down to nothing more than happy-happy subjective relativism, and it will fail you in the hard (or even moderately difficult) cases. Ground your morality in humans? What do you tell the guy who wants to murder you? You can't say it's morally wrong to do so! You might tell him it's wrong FOR YOU, but maybe it's perfectly right for him!

OK, back to a point by point refutation of your foolish premise.
a God whose essence is love would not choose, as His primary vehicle of revelation, a static text.

How do you know anything about God apart from His self-revelation in the Bible?
Also, you never interacted (much like your colleague Dr McGrath) with my questions. I invite you with all possible urgency to do so.


We learn most about love through loving and being loved.

Apart from God's revelation of the nature of love in the Bible, how do you know:
1) what love is, and
2) what loving looks like?
See how you've set yourself up over God, set yourself on the throne?


Christianity affirms this when it maintains that God's most fundamental revelation in history was in the PERSON of Jesus.

And if the biblical text is errant, you have a strong defeater for ANY proposition you might make about Him.
"He told us to love our neighbor." No, the text was errant at that point.
"He told us to turn the other cheek." No, the text was errant at that point.
You've cut yourself off from the source and you're left floundering. This is the fruit of liberalism.


He made disciples--PERSONS--whom He sent out into the world.

And you know nothing about them either apart from the Bible.
Will you appeal to church tradition? It looks nothing like what you're proposing here, sorry to say. In fact, it doesn't look like much of anythg - it's a mishmash of elements we'd today identify as Romanism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Protestantism, with all sorts of other elements thrown in the mix. One thing is for sure, it doesn't look like what you're expressing here. So I guess that appeal is right out for you, and we're right back to what is, in effect, "But I'm Eric Reitan, yo. Trust ME."


But it will cease to be valuable if we come to pay more attention to this text than we do to our neighbors.

This has ceased being an argument for an alternative foundation for epistemology and morality and is evolving into a complaint that modern conservative Christians can be meanies. And who denies that? We're sinners.
If the text is errant, I'd like to know why I *SHOULD* pay attention to my neighbor. Can you tell me?


the place where Christ is present, embodied, on Earth today. Not in a book. In persons.

Persons who have no knowledge of the historical Christ outside of that book.
It's not like I'm denying the importance of people or the church, but the church is cut off from her moorings without God's guidance.


When the biblical witness is treated as the proxy voice of persons who lived long ago,

Oh, like a history book is a "proxy" of dead guys who fought wars, drew borders, made peace, etc?


the biblical witness becomes an invaluable partner in our efforts to understand what God is saying to us

Even though Jesus Christ Himself taught us to test all things by the standard of His Word? Mark 7:1-13.


it trumps the voice of the neighbor and is used as a conversation-ender.

Precisely. Let all human voices cease before the voice of God. Let Him, in His infinite love and wisdom, define the universe for us and let us bow before our Sovereign Creator.
HE defines sin. HE defines righteousness. HE provides for our salvation. HE commands. HE is the final authority. This is Christianity. I wish you were part of it.


It becomes an excuse not to listen to the lived experience of the neighbor.

Oh, I'll be happy to listen all day long if necessary. But for actual finding the answer to tough questions, God has defined them, and our puny human efforts fail miserably. I'd be willing to bet you only think that "human experience" is important when most things are going right for you in the world. What happens when you're faced with a church split? A divorce? The murder (God forbid) of a family member? Temptation to do something and you can't decide which way to go? Death? What does "human experience" have to say about the question of life after death?


And since compassionate listening is one of the most essential acts of neighbor love

Which you have no way of knowing outside of an objective revelation from God.
In closing on this, you have no case. Your mouth is closed before the Lord. Submit yourself to God.


But why pay attention to fallible people when you think you've got an infallible book?

Maybe b/c I love those fallible people? And b/c the infallible book told me to?
What am I listening to them FOR? You'd say I should go to them for EVERYthing. The Bible tells me to give TO them from the truth that God has already given. See how God would have us be generous, and on your view more selfish?


The tendency is to silence them by quoting chapter and verse: "It's (sic) says so here. It's never wrong. So you must be wrong. Now shut up."

Depends on what we're talking about. If this person wants to know the truth and the Scripture speaks to that issue, yes, God is right and you're wrong. You are obligated to agree, and furthermore, agreeing with God is right in and of itself. That doesn't mean I say "shut up" to people. I only say that to false teachers (much like Dr McGrath) and other destructive influences in the church who are willfully distorting the truth. Not to people who just have questions. And not on every question, either. The Bible allows for diversity of belief on many, many issues. Dr Reitan would lump all questions in under the same category, and he should know better.


the anguished cries of gays and lesbians who are excluded from full participation in the life of the community are ignored in favor of Romans 1:26-27.

And what of when the anguished cries of thieves and child molesters who are excluded from full participation in the life of the community are ignored in favor of Revelation 22:15? You would judge them?!?!?!?!
The church of Jesus Christ is for REPENTANT SINNERS, not unrepentant sinners who want to turn a nation to greater perversity and acceptance of sin. But see again how Dr Reitan is focusing on the loud, gay-agenda, "We're here, we're queer, get used to it" type crowd and ignoring the many homosexuals and former homosexuals in the world and in the US who neither want "civil rights" nor support the gay rights political agenda, nor want to destroy the institution of marriage for everyone else, nor even want to keep being homosexual. Doesn't mean they'll all be able to overcome their same-sex attraction, but it does mean they have actually repented of their sin.
Wow, imagine that - people who honestly and authentically realise they are sinful and bow the knee before a perfect Savior and His revelation.

Dr Reitan will never see that as long as he continues in his stubbornly unChristian views.

I'm a big meanie, or Priorities, people!

Well, the Internet hate for me is approaching white-hot levels since I dared tangle with the sacred cow of the large-university liberal religion professor (or is that professor of liberal religion?) a few days ago.
Credit where credit is due, first of all. McGrath declined to identify me by name (or handle) in his post on this incident. That's being a stand-up guy. I, also being a stand-up guy, have identified myself as the tattle tale, and this has led to a few humorous comments about my identity.
My favorite comes from the very rude blog of Dr Jim West, who first said this in the post:

I have no time for the coward, hiding, as he does, behind anonymity. I’ll not engage the person since it would be an utter waste of time.

Then, in the combox:
ashrebg Says:
Why is this guy a coward and NT Wrong a hero?

Jim West Says:
gee i dont recall ever saying wrong was a ‘hero’. as ive said now countless times, i know wrong. hence, he isnt anonymous.

NT Wrong is apparently a frequent commenter on West's blog. This is hypocrisy in action, absent a retraction from West. Dr McGrath knows my name, where I'm from, and other details such as the name of my church, and has had the decency not to broadcast such, just as I haven't broadcasted the name of his church or of his pastor. So he "knows" me. West castigates me for being anonymous (which I'm not, really), but gives a pass to his buddy NT Wrong b/c he knows him. I'm a coward; NT Wrong is alright.

Moving on, yesterday I had pressed a commenter hebrewandgreekreader to substantiate his accusations that I've been "unloving". He responded.
Before I take it point by point, let me register my vexation and naïve (by now) surprise at the screwed-up priorities exhibited by this commenter and by most others who have reacted to my actions toward Dr McGrath. Here we have a patent, obvious heretic and denier of the most central of definitive essentials of Christianity - the bodily resurrection of Christ - sitting in a position of authority and teaching in an ostensibly evangelical church. Apparently the widespread idea is that a Baptist Sunday School is better meant to be a weekly interfaith dialogue, the crunchy, flaky exterior of Baptist with a gooey, chewy Unitarian Universalist middle. So...one would certainly expect them to be open to Wiccan, Muslim, Hindu, Branch Davidian, Satanist, atheist, Moonie, and Mormon teachers too, right? Anything except a conservative Reformed teacher, no doubt.
The New Testament (and Old, now that I think about it) condemns such welcoming of wolves into the sheep pen in the strongest possible terms, and this blind, biblically illiterate church is letting it happen.
Finally on this point, Dr McGrath is bound for eternal condemnation as it stands now. Unless he repents of his sin and bows the knee to the biblical Jesus, "you will die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins" (John 8:24). And hebrewandgreekreader and the rest of these libs are concerned that I'm not being nice? Priorities, people!

On to his points:

"Turns out he is a typical liberal, substituting hand-waving and politically-correct bloviating for actual arguments." - If you've never met him, this is unfounded and rude.

I've met him...on his blog. Is the man not responsible for what appears on his blog, from his own keyboard? If you don't think I've fairly characterised his comments, can you explain his neglect of my actual questions?

"...requesting that he recognise that McGrath is a heretic who doesn't belong as a member of any church that claims to hold to the Bible as its final authority, let alone as a Sunday School teacher." - Again you've never met him and never sat in one of those classes.

I give Dr McGrath the benefit of the doubt, that he teaches and believes what he says on his blog. If the two are inconsistent, there's something perhaps even more problematic going on. I'm doing McGrath less a disservice than you are - I give him credit for meaning what he says, whereas I'm not at all sure you do.

"Boo-hoo; no doubt he wants us all to bear with him as he works them out, to come to an "honest" and "authentic" (to use the liberal buzzwords) faith." - This dismisses the liberal Christian view. It does not critically engage it. And again, just sounds rude.

It stands dismissed w/o substantive answers to the numerous questions I've been raising and which Dr McGrath did not interact, b/c liberalism is just plain silly and a clear ad hoc syncretism between Christianity and modern naturalism, and b/c it's indeed a different religion altogether, dishonestly attempting to veil itself in the veneer of Christianity, much like the Watchtower and the LDS Church. I certainly invite anyone to interact with them.
Did you know that Jesus was frequently rude to false teachers who kept up the veneer of true religion while denying its foundations? Let me commend Matthew 24 and John 5 to you, not to mention John 6.

"Sadly, he is most dangerous to the lemmings who should be sheep under a kindly and godly shepherd but whose ears are being tickled by this false teacher." - Not only have you once again said something rude about your brother (which 1 John doesn't like), but also his students, who are not lemmings. You should apologize to this class of people you've never met.

Dr McGrath is no brother in Christ. I've already asked this commenter at least once for an argument that McGrath is a Christian; I am still waiting.
His students are clearly lemmings, as they have not recognised the biblical teaching regarding their responsibilities towards false teachers and towards the church as a whole. The pastor stands chiefly condemned, sadly.

I'm glad your post ends with your wanting the best for them all, but following remarks like the ones I've noted, its hard to believe.

Perhaps b/c our priorities are different. I'm concerned with the state of their eternal souls, even it means I have to be a little harsh and blunt in the short-term. You're apparently more concerned that everyone play nice, even if it is with poison. You're a tool of political correctness in the church, ironically, I say, b/c you are probably also a proponent of church-state separation (I presume, perhaps wrongly).

It seems your greater problem is not with James, but the pastor who has him teach and those who sit in his class.

Absolutely right. The pastor stands condemned for his failure to lead his flock in truth and to exercise the church discipline he is clearly called to do on Dr McGrath and anyone else who stubbornly holds to heresy in the midst of his church. The case of the pastor is indeed the saddest of all.

Tattle-tale

I recently found myself on the blog of one Dr. James McGrath and found a topic worth discussing - whether the Bible is worth even paying any attention to if it is errant.
We had a discussion of decent length here, but he dropped out of it prematurely for whatever reason, without answering most of my questions, which is a shame.
Said questions included:
(link) How do we judge which parts are right and which are wrong?
(link) You seem to offer "wrestl(ing) with what is right and wrong" and "love for others and the Golden Rule" as the standard of comparison for knowing good and evil. But perhaps "love one another" is part of the UNinspired, errant text of the Bible? How would you know? How does "wrestle with it" give any guidance? I'm asking whether I'm right to do this or that - I'm looking for something external to myself. Does God speak with authority on right and wrong, or not?

(link)So, it looks like your answer to the question "How do I know which parts are good and which are bad?" is "wrestle with it, go with what is loving", more or less? How does this escape my charge of the elevation of yourself as authority over the Bible that I expressed in my previous comment?

(link) if I pick and choose what to believe and follow, I am de facto a higher authority than the Bible. Why even bother reading it?

(link) Again I ask what moral standard we should use to judge what God has said. Please supply it.

(link) The Bible says do this or that, you say no. It's as simple as that. I'm just wondering why you bother listening to the rest of it, or better yet, why you would cite it for any moral authority for some other question. Why not just cite yourself, since you know better?
Why follow Luke 14:33, and why cite it? Are you saying I *should* follow it? Why?

You get the idea. I invite anyone to read just how well Dr. McGrath interacted with these questions. Turns out he is a typical liberal, substituting hand-waving and politically-correct bloviating for actual arguments. Not that I expected anything different.
Anyway, I was dismayed to learn from his blog that he is a Sunday School teacher, and a friend pointed out to me which church he attends, a Baptist church whose statement of faith was quite short but also orthodox. In my experience, a short statement of faith is not ideal, but I was willing to give the benefit of the doubt.
Bottom line - Dr. McGrath denies the authority of Scripture, as should be clear from the above-cited thread. He denies the penal substitutionary atonement of Christ, for poorly thought-out reasons. Worst of all, he denies the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
I shouldn't have to point out 1 Corinthians 15:14-19, but I will:

...if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. ¹⁵Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. ¹⁶For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; ¹⁷and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. ¹⁸Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. ¹⁹If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.

There is no code here, no obscurity. Why would Dr. McGrath continue to hold to the label "Christian" AND deny the resurrection, given what Paul says here? It's because he is committed to the authority of himself to pick and choose as he likes. He has no great need to be consistent with himself, and that's why he wouldn't answer my questions.

I emailed some of my concerns to the pastor of the church Dr. McGrath attends, requesting that he recognise that McGrath is a heretic who doesn't belong as a member of any church that claims to hold to the Bible as its final authority, let alone as a Sunday School teacher. I was and remain concerned for the class he teaches and the church as a whole. One day later, the pastor emailed me a courteous and pitiful reply, informing me that he was taking all this under "serious consideration" and he was "sure that you understand the strength of the Baptist faith in its diversity of beliefs and practices" and promising to discuss this with Dr. McGrath. Sigh. Of course, glaringly absent was any "Oh my gosh! We'll DEFINITELY be asking him to repent, for his own good, removing him from his post immediately for his own good and the good of the class, and we'll be exercising church discipline on him in the hopes that he will repent of his sin and unbelief."

Yesterday Dr. McGrath posted a complaint about my actions. A brief look at one quote from the post:

Such concerns often lead doubts to be denied publicly, perhaps even denied to ourselves. In such circumstances, being a Christian often becomes a matter of appearance, of pretending to be more certain than one really is, or simply refusing to ask certain kinds of questions.

We're talking about a guy with a Ph.D in religion-related fields who is teaching Sunday School to a group of people in an allegedly-evangelical church. And he has "doubts". Boo-hoo; no doubt he wants us all to bear with him as he works them out, to come to an "honest" and "authentic" (to use the liberal buzzwords) faith. But he wants to be a teacher to others while he does so.
A few passages come to mind:
Romans 2: ¹⁷But if you bear the name "Jew" (or "professor of religion and Sunday School teacher in a Baptist church) and rely upon the Law and boast in God, ¹⁸and know His will and approve the things that are essential, being instructed out of the Law, ¹⁹and are confident that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, ²⁰a corrector of the foolish, a teacher of the immature, having in the Law the embodiment of knowledge and of the truth, ²¹you, therefore, who teach another, do you not teach yourself? You who preach that one shall not steal, do you steal? ²²You who say that one should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? ²³You who boast in the Law, through your breaking the Law, do you dishonor God? ²⁴For "THE NAME OF GOD IS BLASPHEMED AMONG THE GENTILES BECAUSE OF YOU," just as it is written.

Matthew 15: ¹³He replied, "Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. ¹⁴Leave them; they are blind guides. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit."

Maybe in HIS church, they don't ask questions. Maybe he could do that as a guest, not a member, and for sure not a teacher. In my church, we ask all kinds of questions, and answer all kinds as well. We host atheist organisations for atheist-theist debates, we bring in ID-evolution debates, we go out on campus for anti-baby-murder educational exhibits. Perhaps McGrath would like us better if we just asked his kinds of questions, and answered them only the way he would like us to. Yeah, that's my guess too.

Also from him:

A conservative blog recently described me as "dangerous"

Just for the record, I can't take credit for that, but I certainly agree. Sadly, he is most dangerous to the lemmings who should be sheep under a kindly and godly shepherd but whose ears are being tickled by this false teacher.

Moving on, what cracks me up the most is the other blogposts tracking back to that post, like #1, #2, and #3.
I love it - I'm some nobody blogger from flyover country, and I'm the "Thought Police"!
Let's take a look at this frothing from the mouth of #2.
-I'm a "cowardly offender who believes himself to be the thought police, and justified in reporting McGrath’s wicked views to his poor unsuspecting Parson."
I am a concerned observer, concerned for the pastor's church. The ideal situation is for the pastor to realise what's going on and discipline McGrath, and that McGrath would repent and be saved. I want the best for them all.

- "Shut up."
Mmm, nah.

-"it’s none of your business what McGrath blogs. Ever heard of freedom of speech? Or (as James pointed out) has it ever occurred to you that his Pastor already reads James’s blog?"
Of course it's my business - it's a public blog. And do you see me asking Blogger to shut his blog down? Or siccing the ACLU on him? Of course not. Rather, I'm concerned that the name of Christ and His church may be pure and unequivocally defined. I want this church to be holier than it is, the same as I want for my own church. And I couldn't believe that his pastor reads his blog, but maybe he just skimmed it sometimes, maybe he needed a wake-up call, maybe he didn't read it recently. I didn't know. Why would Dr. McGrath object (for the record, he never did so) to my contacting his pastor? All his thoughts are out there for the world to see.

-"to ‘report’ him to his Pastor is just the most droll sort of childishness I’ve ever heard of... what did you hope to accomplish?"
See above.

-"Shame on this transgressor. He or she should consider him or herself anathematized."
So now I'm a transgressor. Looks like I'm too intolerant for this author, but it's OK to be intolerant of me. McGrath denies the resurrection of Christ, I tattled on him to the pastor, and I'm the one guilty of an excommunicable offense. Not only did this lib forget his own talking points when convenient, he needs a little priority adjustment.

Finally, #1 accuses me of wrongfully sending an anonymous hit-piece. Not so, I post under the same handle as is my email address. There could be no doubt who I was. What would have been cowardly would be to create a false email address - ilikejesus452w9380438590845@hotmail.com or something - and send the message that way.

Liberal tolerance at its finest.