32

Today I turn 32. Yes, my birthday is the day after Christmas. People have always asked me if I’ve felt “cheated.” Not really. Especially as you get older and you know very well that as the night of Christmas Day settles in, everyone else is focused on cleaning up, working off the big meal, and going back to work—big let-down. Not for me. The party’s just getting started. Today I get on the trail to hunt out my books with my gift cards and other assorted book monies.
Of course, not treating Christ's birth (which was almost certainly not on December 25th anyway) as a cash cow would be a good start to not feeling a "letdown," but I digress.

At any rate, here’s what I’ve got already:

Charles Spurgeon, Complete Sermons (Vol. I-X)
Charles Spurgeon, Complete The Treasury of David (Vol. I-III)
Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise on Grace
Jonathan Edwards, To the Rising Generation
Jeremiah Burroughs, Gospel Worship
Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment
Thomas Watson, The Lord’s Supper
John MacArthur, The Truth War
Jerry Bridges & Bob Bevington, The Great Exchange
Ed Stetzer, Planting Missional Churches
R. C. Sproul, Truths We Confess (Vol. II)

So I started reading The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment last night as soon as the kids were tranquilized. Reading more this morning. If anyone thinks that Piper invented Christian Hedonism, just check out what Burroughs says:

“A soul that is capable of God can be filled with nothing else but God; nothing but God can fill a soul that is capable of God…whatever God may give to a gracious heart, a heart that is godly, unless he gives himself it will not do…All outward peace is not enough; I must have the peace of God. But suppose you have the peace of God, Will that not quiet you? No, I must have the God of peace; as the peace of God so the God of peace” (pp. 43-44).

Anyway, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

This morning I gave poetry (or a potential song?) a try

O, Kiss the Son, the Fire of God!
Based on Psalm 2


To earthly powers, the strength of men,
To devils bound in chains;
This gift we bring, this newborn King,
This freedom from your reign!

The Son of David, Son of God,
His throne descends above;
Let all these rebels cut their cords,
The bonds He brings are love.


O kiss the Son, the fire of God,
Whose passion is His Name;
So all in Him delight and then,
Take refuge from the flame!


Now pay Him honor, Now bow or burn,
Show wisdom, pretend kings;
All idols smash, all feelings turn,
All else confess as wicked things!

O tell the whole story, O sing the right tune,
Yes, proclaim the Lord’s decree;
All hearts’ longings, and history,
Wrapped up—a gift—in His glory!

Late-night thoughts

Alright—late at night. Gotta watch the baby. Nothing else to do but blog. Yes, that is pretty much the only time I’m going to blog anymore since it’s apparent that no one besides you two (Aaron and Joel) will ever read it! But I’m not bitter. I saw all that Glenn Beck whining over Huckabee today. Wow, what does he want? Do Mormons actually need an Evangelical candidate to renounce their differences with Mormonism? Should Romney be asked to renounce all LDS differences with Evangelicals? Naturally, the flaming Commie media will never see the double standard.

I’ve been re-listening to the Missional stuff again. Both of Driscoll’s messages from Vancouver, and then three by Ed Marcelle. He was one of my four assessors and pastor of Terra Nova in Troy, NY. Good stuff. I can’t get away from the stuff. I spend months on end turned off from it because of some in the movement downplaying Reformed Theology, but then just the bare fact of the church “being on mission.” If we just put it that way, then it’s convicting and makes you want to start preaching the mission again.

I’m half-way through Piper’s book The Future of Justification. No real surprises. I just hope all the young pastors out there who think they can dig Piper and flirt with all of Wright’s neat little perspectives of the kingdom and so forth can be jolted back into the real world by a writing like this. I’m also trying to start reading another book that intrigued me enough to buy a month or two back (but which I haven’t cracked open yet)—The Jesus-Driven Ministry by Ajith Fernando. It’s endorsed by Piper and Ravi Zacharias so it’s gotta be good. I’ll blog a review when I get done with it.

Boise Calvinist Acts29 Church Boise, or, Shameless Search Engine Try

OK, let's see how this search engine thing works.....Ever hear of Piper? Sproul? Mahaney? Like them? Live in Boise? Enough said: http://www.thewellboise.com/ Is church a hobby? A country-club with a cross on top? A suburbafied self-help seminar? Maybe a bit effeminate? You know you can do something about that, right? It's not too late. Yes, you! Be a man already. Grace and peace to the saints in Laodicea.

On Evidences for Conversion - I

What does it look like when someone is born again? It does look like something, you know. And conversely it does not look like other things. My first pastor had a phrase he used all the time—radically saved! But I think what he was really trying to convey is the reality of the truly saved: a picture of those who are genuine believers in Jesus, as opposed to those whose faith is merely a profession of superficial words and perhaps a few begrudging duties. Someone as brilliant and godly as Jonathan Edwards even wrote a whole book about it. He was concerned about some of the criticisms leveled against the Great Awakening going on in New England and wondered if some of its more emotional excesses were not phony isolated spiritual “highs,” as the critics supposed. As a pastor, he wanted to discern whether or not his ministry was truly bearing the eternal fruit that these radical changes would hopefully suggest. And so the Religious Affections (1746) was an investigation into the nature of true evidences of supernatural conversion.
That is probably the best place to start with—conversion, or being “born again,” is a supernatural event. It cannot be reduced to our formulas of marketing, psychology, or do-it-yourself methods. It is the creation of a new man or woman, one whose whole sense of being is driven by a love for Jesus Christ and toward a reckless abandon for the inheritance in Him. This is first and foremost a love, a love that we did not have before, a love that we could not and would not generate on our own. Paul closes his first letter to the Corinthians by warning: “If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed” [16:22]. Yes, God commands of the creature what we, in Adam, are unable to perform. Our souls, our bodies, our time, our property, our decisions, were all ordained so that the glory of God would be reflected in these things to all else in creation, so that all would be happy. However, being the offspring of the first sinner, we are by nature irrational in our conviction of what will satisfy and what life is really all about. The old man has no love for the Lord, and he is accursed.
My own interest in this subject is in one sense the opposite of Edwards. He was brought to the need to study this from an excess in vital signs. We in suburban America need to examine signs of conversion precisely because there are not many. Even the natural life is sufficient to explain the passion with which we see virtually everyone else engaged. The cultist, the statist, the artist, and the garden variety hedonist—they all move toward a definite end and are filled with a sense of purpose. The only person it seems that does not move with this force is the one person that ought to. Not all of the reasons for this are a matter of materialistic idolatry. Perhaps the only reason that everyone else moves so freely within their irrational universes is because their target is so very low to the ground and manageable. The chasm between God and man is infinite; and we are moving in the opposite direction like falling rocks. What to do?
The answer is what God said He would do way back in the Old Testament prophets: “And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God” [Ez. 11:19-20, cf. 36:26]. This is exactly what Jesus was referring to when he said to Nicodemus: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” [Jn. 3:3]. So, what to do? Only something that you cannot do, something that only God can do for you. And it is only in despair over this moral inability that we begin to take the supernatural nature of the Christian faith seriously.
And so when we talk about conversion, we are talking about an actual new life: “If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation” [2 Cor. 5:17]. This is not metaphor. It is not an empty rah-rah speech. The Bible means what it seems to be saying here. When someone becomes a real believer in Jesus, the person becomes something totally different than what he or she was before. No doubt the believer also retains things from what they were; and not all of this is bad. The unique way in which God has made each of us is now brought to spiritual life and set in a Godward motion. Conversion does not stomp out our psyches—it purifies and amplifies them.
I have never been very good at telling stories or even applying truth. However, from time to time, a useful analogy will come to mind that helps others come to grips with some deeper truths. Here I will be using the analogy of a particular living thing—a flower. I am not much of a botanist and so my analogy will break down in both natural and unnatural ways. In this analogy, the whole of the flower symbolizes the whole of the new person in Christ. The root of the flower will refer to the objective work of Christ on behalf of the believer; the sunlight and rain will mean the ongoing work of the Word[1] and the Spirit in transforming our souls into the new person; the soil will stand for the believing community (called “the church) in which faith is cultivated; the stem represents the three faculties of the person’s being—mind, heart, and will—through which conversion occurs and is perfected; and only then do we turn to the petals that stand for the fruit of the Spirit by which we see true conversion made manifest. According to Paul in Galatians 5, there are nine such “petals,” and so we will restrict ourselves to those in order to be as biblical as possible.

· THE PERSON & WORK OF CHRIST (The Roots of this Life)
· THE SPIRIT & THE WORD (The Sunlight & Rain of this Life)
· LIFE TOGETHER IN THE CHURCH (The Soil of this Life)
· THREE PARTS OF THE BELIEVER (The Stem of this Life)
· PETAL 1 – LOVE
· PETAL 2 – JOY
· PETAL 3 – PEACE
· PETAL 4 – PATIENCE
· PETAL 5 – KINDNESS
· PETAL 6 – GOODNESS
· PETAL 7 – FAITHFULNESS
· PETAL 8 – GENTLENESS
· PETAL 9 – SELF-CONTROL

[1] The word of God is also pictured as the seed in several places in Scripture [cf. Mat. 13:24-33, 1 Pet. 1:23]; however, it seems to be restricted in those analogies to a singular seed that might focus us on the initial gospel message that comes to us, rather than the continual sanctifying, persevering word that the believer requires throughout the course of one’s life. Thus, I have preferred to see the word as rain instead of seed to prevent this confusion. We might picture the seed as the evangelistic word produced by each of these flowers.

What on Earth Are We Here For?

That question is not so unfamiliar. If I remember correctly, Rick Warren even opened off his commercially successful book with that very good question. Is there a Christian in this suburban wasteland called American Evangelicalism who has actually followed through on the real answer? Of course there are. They are the missionaries who have gone, and a few others who have ignored the critics and have followed their calling. As for the rest of us—I suppose I could do the Victorian thing…but No, not this time—As for the rest of us, we are the Hollow Men in T. S. Eliot’s poem, the stuffed men:

Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

So why do we not say out loud what we know to be true in secret? Why do we continue this charade of religious motion? Are we afraid of failure? I am. Are we reading the tea leaves and sticking our finger in the wind to see who will be left standing with us if we really come out and say it? What is life worth if we do not? What is this nonsense that we do together Sunday after Sunday? Is it not the whistling in the dark of a child who no longer believes that the monster is there? Well done, Livingstone! Bravo, Luther—You psychopath! Let’s call them what we think of them! Let’s say to the saints of history what we would say to them if they inflicted their passions on our shallow comforts here and now. Do not canonize with your lips what you shrivel at in your hearts!

Shape without form, shade without colour,

Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

We know that part of the trouble is a lack of vision. Some of us have seen the fruit of someone else’s, and so we paint feverishly on a shrinking canvas, trying to reproduce, before the clock runs out on our second-hand colors. Do not say “It is not about outward expression; the Lord knows my heart.” You know very well what He sees in a heart that does not flow forth to seize all for His kingdom! He sees hypocrisy! He sees jealously guarded bones! He sees nothing left but the moths and rust that must always overtake our real treasure. There is no pulse because there is no life. I no longer care for the idea that we “get” this or that truth, but that it has not “translated” yet. Lie! If I woke you up at 3:00 in the morning, shook you by the neck, and said, “The house is on fire!” you would not demand the practical application “Therefore, Get up and get out of here!” You would know by instinct to run for your life. And you would do so because you know very well what it means for your house to be on fire. No, these are not the kind of truths that don’t translate. The truth is that the truth is not yet grasped.

The eyes are not here

There are no eyes here

In this valley of dying stars

In this hollow valley

This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places

We grope together

And avoid speech

Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

But it is hard! Yes it is—So is hell; hot too. Does this create despair? Does it tingle? That means it’s working. But it is hard, and it is hard for all of us. The real thing is hard. Very well, then go to Wal-Mart and grab 50 cents out of your pocket for a notebook! My kingdom for two quarters! Hard and easy. It all depends what you value. How do you get through college? How do you get through work? You know very well that you have spent your life taking in concepts and pouring over terminology much more complex than all of the Systematic Theologies ever written. But that is because there was a paycheck at the end of it. And the wages of sin is still death. What do you value? Where your treasure is, there will your whole being be also—mind, emotions, will, body. The truth is that deep down inside you not only know what it is for your physical house to be on fire, but by analogy, you also know what these words mean—“For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” [2 Cor. 5:1].

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

What will become of us hollow men and women? It can be very liberating to work from worse case scenarios. If one has Christ, he has all things. Thus, if all else fails, it turns out that such a person can then act as if there is nothing left to lose. We simply speak the truth and shake the dust off our feet when the bones and stuffing do not spring to life. Only the Spirit knows which way He will blow in this valley of dry bones. Judgment begins in the house of God—this house, my house. Something more than a whimper is required from me if I am to shepherd the bones off of the desert ground. What did people like Bounds or Ravenhill or Tozer say about the role of prayer and the Spirit in all this? I have heard their writings dismissed as simplistic, repetitive, and doctrinally amiss. I understand the point; but every time I heard them, my stuffing caught fire. I miss that.

http://www.thewellboise.com/

Morbidly Introspective Disclaimer?

To whom it may concern,

The ideas, opinions, musings, full truths, partial truths, errors, complaints, and other assorted esoteric ramblings expressed on this blog do not necessarily represent the frequency that such ideas appear in their author’s brain. The produce of this blog is the result of a convergence of the stuff that’s up there with my proximity to a computer, in the relative absence of my three small childrens’ (imagine a jail break at a mental ward for midgets) proximity to their night time cells, in relation to I’m trying to plant a church, in unison with I notice there’s a lot of people everywhere that don’t give a rip about truth—and these are the people that our beloved seminaries demand and supply, combined with…Well, you get the idea. I write about whatever’s leaking from the noggin at the time that I have time to spare to type. Same applies to our web site. We’re building a core group first—pulling off a public launch second. Irgo, there’s a lot of overly-wordy nauseating master’s degree papers of mine on there, because a) I don’t have time to write anything new and simple, and b) we’re gathering people who will get in the boat and grab an oar (so they have to know what an “oar” is). All complaints regarding the blog’s wordy or allegedly “high-fallutin” nature without the express written consent of the anti-intellectual brand of Christianity to which the critic subscribes are similarly prohibited.

Two Epistemological Pieces to the Emergent Puzzle

On the one hand, the Emergent conception of Modernism is hopelessly simplistic in its ascribing both Foundationalism and a kind of isolationist Stoicism to the Cartesian revolution in Modern Philosophy. Now I have no problem with laying these as faulty consequences of Descartes’ rationalism. What I do mind is when we equate the sum total of confessional, Reformed Christianity to these tendencies, and call it part of the “Modern Church.” Much could be said about the sociological reasons that the Emergent crowd over-generalizes in this way. But here I will deal only with the philosophical problems. On the other hand, there are some careful distinctions that have to be made here. In reading the fourth chapter of D. A. Carson’s book Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church, it became clear to me that we need to treat this in two parts if we are to be fair—first, the historical over-generalization to which I just referred; secondly, the legitimate differences one may detect between a pre-modern epistemology and a modern epistemology. For there we would find at least one significant difference. The trouble comes when the post-modernist acts as if things such as objectivity, propositions, systems, and the like did not “suffocate” the church until Protestant Scholasticism started to follow the lead of Descartes.

According to Carson, the legitimate difference between the two paradigms may be summarized thus: In the pre-modern (i.e. classical Christian) view, there is a metaphysical statement about knowledge and an epistemological statement about how such knowledge is attained. As to the metaphysical, “all human knowing is necessarily an infinitesimally small subset of God’s knowledge.” As to the epistemological consequence of this, “our knowledge depends on revelation—i.e., on God disclosing some part of what he knows, however that revelation is accomplished” [p. 88]. On this, both the classicalist and the presuppositionalist would find agreement, though they will still disagree on our starting point (but that is subject for another writing). Carson further distinguishes between an earlier pre-modernism and a late brand as the difference between an “open” universe (i.e. open to supernatural invasion, as well as to pagan or magic superstition) and a “controlled” universe (i.e. rational and regular, but still vulnerable to supernature). Within this latter push, the thinking Christian chose between Deism and something like British Natural Theology—evidential, but unnecessarily dismissive of the reality of evil. But certainly absolutism, as such, can never be seen as the thing that separates pre-modern Christianity from its modern successor. Of course, how we conceive of the sources or avenues or subject-matter of certainty will go a long way to discerning what is really at stake here. The modern view is made up of six elements, according to Carson: 1) cogito ergo sum—the “I” as the starting point; 2) foundationalism—the project of founding all of human knowledge (or at least some academic discipline) on a clear and distinct axiom; 3) methodological rigor; 4) certainty was possible and to be desired; 5) truth is objective; 6) increasingly naturalistic [pp. 93-95].

As to the postmodern textual criticism known as the hermeneutical spiral, we may well ask whether or not all of reality—including the realm in which such overarching methodological principles exist—are not “texts” in which we bring our same selves into the mix that we brought into our Pauline studies. If so, then the principle is self-refuting. Carson questions the “spiral” by asking, “is it fair to give the impression that in our hermeneutical circle we always remain at the same distance from the text? Does the hermeneutical circle always have the same radius? Would it not be truer to our experience to say that the radius of the circle gets a little shorter with time—i.e., that we start to spiral into the text?” [p. 119]. The one committed to an objective Word need not question the reality of such a “circle,” but he must point out that the spiral must be overcome. If it were not, then no rationality would be possible—in or out of Scripture. I venture into the subject of textual ambiguity to show what the battle over certainty is really about.

Now I want to put both pieces of the epistemological puzzle together and say that it is much ado about nothing. Because the differences between pre-modern Christianity and modern Christianity (as the Emergents conceive) is not finally over the objectivity and systematic nature of truth, we can begin to see that the difference is likened unto the difference between infancy and adolescence. It is the same genetic structure, but with a combination of some positive gains in knowledge and negative accrual of error. Please do not read that to say that a more Cartesian way of expanding on the medieval project was an “improvement” or “the right direction.” Rather, I want to suggest that improvements and right directions should be taken, and that if and when this is ever done, it will involve a mind driven by objectivity and system. In short, what is called “pre-modern epistemology” (particularly the Christian kind) is really just the first tracings of the perfect circle; but both they and today’s classicalists are persuaded that the circle is indeed perfect. The flashes of certainty that are graciously deposited into our minds are meant to convict [Rom. 1:20] to awe [Ps. 19:1] and to evangelize [Acts 17:23]. The classical apologist, for example, is committed to the same species of ideas as Descartes, and he can do so by viewing a portion of epistemology as a psychological history—we just do begin with ourselves experientially—as in fact part of epistemology is committed to studying. He can do this without committing to the metaphysical proposition that knowledge as an objective entity or state of affairs begins in us and not in God. This, it seems, was not Descartes’ point. Nor does it matter, since it is not as if the classicalist is doting over The Discourse on Method. This, incidentally, is where Presuppositionalist errs—that and in wrongly attributing to Aquinas and subsequent classicalists a view of Romans 1:19-20 that has natural theology burning on its own fuel apart from grace.

Haggai - Zeal for His House

I am about the begin an expositional series in the little book of Haggai; and I have a pretty good idea of the breakdown of the messages, as well as their titles. The first two especially provide the critique-oriented framework for the book. This is appropriate in much of the prophets since the "forth-telling" part of their mission convicts Israel in ways that can always be brought into the present setting. The title of the first two (part 1 and 2) is The Suburban Captivity of the Church. No sooner had the exiles returned from Persia than they began to be enveloped in the secular wasteland of irreligious affections.
The name Haggai means “feast” or “festal.” He is the first of the last three of Israel’s Old Testament prophets. He comes on to the scene in 520 BC, an exile from Persia, who was called to rouse the people to finish the work they had started sixteen years before. What happened? The people met opposition, and then they got comfortable becoming “merely the secular occupants of an impoverished land.”[1] They fell into lethargic religion and excuse making—Sound familiar? It helps to know that Haggai's prophecy is contemporary to the projects of Ezra and Nehemiah as well as the prophetic ministry of Zechariah.

The whole of the series--titles and all--is as follows:
1) The Suburban Captivity of the Church: Part I 1:1-6
2) The Suburban Capivity of the Church: Part II 1:7-11
3) Shaken & Stirred--God-Fearing Obedience 1:12-14
4) A Tale of Two Glories 2:1-9
5) The Center Cannot Hold 2:10-19
6) The Servant & the Seal of the House 2:20-23

If there was a subtitle to the series, I think I would call it: "Zeal for His House". The series will begin on Sunday, September 23rd at our new location at the Biblical Studies Center off of Broadway, at our new 3:00 PM time. May God grant us the zeal of Christ in all of our building efforts, and a reliance on His Spirit to carry it out!

[1] James M. Boice, The Minor Prophets (Baker Books, Grand Rapids, MI 1986); p. 464

Grudem's Shift on Admitting Paedo-Baptists

If what was not clear to Grudem in 1994 were the compelling reasons why a Baptist fellowship might restrict the practice, then all that has really happened is that Grudem has begun to think more like a Southern Baptist—whose sanctification by electro-shock therapy approach leaves much to be desired. The passage he cited from Galatians 3:27, while compelling to the conscience of a believing parent, must be tempered by the sum total of all scriptures on the matter, just like any other issue. The question is not: Is there a compelling reason for credo-baptists to restrict the other practice? We have already established why both sides do what they do in their respective churches, and that they have a number of real Bible verses on which to stand. The question is: Do these passages and the inferences from them stand equal to or stand over the teaching of Romans 14 on debatable matters? If this truly is a secondary issue, then I would ask whether Paul makes the removal of these stumbling blocks a superior ecclesiological principle than the freedom (equally purchased by Christ, I admit) to practice only one. That is to treat the matter more biblically (and systematically). I believe that once we look at the extended passage in Romans 14, we find that Christ values the cultivating of an atmosphere where secondaries are truly secondary and where we teach charity in all things over and above our ability to soak or sprinkle people into the kingdom.
After reading Piper's response, it is clear that the issue goes further than attempting to be fair to both positions and acknowledge the validity of such a baptism, down into whether or not one can even be admitted as a member (and presumably be permitted to take communion)! This is a startling direction for Grudem to move toward; though, as Piper suggested, it may be a mere "slippery" couple of sentences. The original post on this by Justin Taylor may be viewed at http://theologica.blogspot.com/

A doctrine is of secondary importance if its acceptance does not compromise the core meaning of the Christian faith—God, Christ, Scripture, and Salvation. Neither of these two practices seem to (while the baptismal regeneration practices of Catholic, Restorationist, and High Liturgical Protestant groups do), and that is why the acceptance, or at least “tolerance,” of both of the two orthodox forms is not only exegetically preferable, but good for the church. It creates health (particularly as we consider the church in a post-Christian era, which is not even a blip on Grudem’s screen) by raising up Christians whose minds are built to tear down the real enemy and to be comfortable in their own skin. Discomfort (not merely fighting, but any itching of the intellect) over secondary matters cultivates an inferior thought world and an uncharitable spirit, and creates exactly what we witnessed in twentieth century Fundamentalism—a church that cannot compete in the real world, and sends the message to our children in a thousand unforeseen ways that we cannot and ought not compete “out there.” If we follow this “change of mind,” then we take a step back toward the dark, stale night of Fundamentalism. Let’s also remember that Grudem’s change of mind on this issue came during a period of migration from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School to Phoenix Seminary in which he started hanging out with all those usually warm-hearted Reformed Baptists. If he could not find common ground with them over the continuation of the gifts, then perhaps he could find agreement with them on something. Having said that, I still say his Systematic Theology is the best contemporary one around.

http://www.thewellboise.com/

Hyper-Inductivism: The Heresy-Hugging Hermeneutic

PART TWO

Hyper-Inductivism in the Home
Many people are unaware of the fact that the verse numbers contained in modern translations of the Bible were added during the Middle Ages and were not part of the inspired text in the autographa. Don't get me wrong. I'm glad they are in there. They make Scripture location and memorization much more efficient. But coupled with the decline in systematic thinking in the West, the elevation of the ideals of political liberalism to the status of theological virtue, and the invention of the printing press (again, happy), the versification of Scripture became pandemic. Have you been to a small group Bible study anywhere in America lately? Personally, I would rather just call it a day and watch Oprah. At least then I would be exposed to people who know that they're coming from a New Age perspective. We sit around and talk about what this verse "means to me...or you!" Sorry--got a little too fascist on you there. A garden variety example should help illustrate:

The most recent example of this I have heard regards 1 Thessalonians 4:17, which of course is the famous rapture passage. Full Preterism (the position that all of the prophetic events including the second coming of Christ, judgment of the earth, and resurrection all occured in the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD) teaches that this text is a first-and-only-resurrection passage, and that the resurrection of the righteous is purely spiritual, including the "spiritual body" refered to in 1 Corinthians 15. The way they explain our meeting the Lord "in the air" is that the Greek word for "air" is aer, which often has the connotation of spiritual presence as opposed to spatial. Of course the bare fact that words such as aeroplane and aerodynamic comes from this word need not concern us, much less that the English word "air" is simply a modification of the Greek. Moreover, no other context is allowed to speak on the matter, unless of course we begin with the assumption that everything had to have happened prior to 70 AD, including the writing of the book of Revelation (which, while possible, also does not settle the matter). The point is not that the hyper-inductivist is not allowed to have his assumptions. We all have ours. But because he sees his exegesis as pure induction, he is blissfully unaware of his storehouse of presuppositions. He is all the more suspect to impose them than the one who is working with a systematic-exegetical peripheral vision.


Hyper-Inductivism at the Seminary
Two more elaborate positions have emerged in recent generations and are guilty of this same sort of folly. Open Theism and The New Perspectives on Paul both utilize a more snobbish sort of hair-splitting at the leaf level, and ommit all more systematic-deductive checking as the imposition of dogma onto the text. But the important thing to see is that both of these systems of exegesis are systems! They both assume things about the whole of the textual material that inform their handling of this or that piece.

The fundamental assumption of the Open Theist's system is that narrative and prophetic portions of Scripture about the activity of God must be held as normative as any didactic proposition concerning one or many of the divine attributes. They must assume this, or else, they would not use the texts that they do to demonstrate that God's knowledge of the future is shaped by the action of free moral agents. When the more classical theist points out that these texts are instances of anthropomorphisms (divine activity communicated by analogy to man--anthropos--thus making it easier for the reader to grasp), the classical theist is accused of being arbitrary or dismissive for the sake of his system. The Open Theist should not be suspected of the same. He is merely dealing with the text. And after all, there are passages in the Bible which have "the Lord God walking in the garden" [Gen. 3:8], or that He "came down to see the city and the tower" [Gen. 11:5], or saying to Abraham: "now I know that you fear God" [Gen. 22:12], or dealing prophetically with Israel, the Lord says: "If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it" [Jer. 18:7-8]. Now passages like this do seem to suggest that God either relates to the creature in such a way that His perspective is shaped by them, or, at least that the future events that these particular creatures cause are not things that are known by God.

But three obvious (hopefully) things must be said in reply--1. Didactic propositions in Scripture do hold sway over narrative or prophetic portions because the didactic genre, in any form of literature, is meant to convey straightforward information about the essence of a thing, while historical narrative is concerned with phenomenological record and the prophetic genre is shoruded in highly poetic and symbolic import. This does not make these two genres less literal; much less does it make them less real or determinative on our doctrine. It simply means that they will be determinative in a less immediate way; 2. The didactic teachings in Scripture--both in completely didactic genres (i.e. the epistles) and in collected propositions in the other genres (It must be understood that narrative, prophecy, and poetry can all contain strict propositions)--do in fact teach that God knows all things [Jn. 21:17, Job 36:4, 37:16, Ps. 139:16-18, Heb. 4:13, 1 Jn. 3:10] and ordains all minute details from beginning to end [Mat. 10:29-30, Eph. 1:11, Col. 1:16-20], and that this is indistinguishable from the meaning of His divine identity [Is. 46:9-10]; and 3. If the handful of isolated, supposedly ignorance-teaching, texts really do communicate what the Open Theist thinks, then either these other texts do not teach that God knows all things, or, the Bible holds to both of these two mutually exclusive propositions, in which case, the Bible is in error. Hence, the Christian worldview collapses. But we are not to think such things, as nothing of what I just said could possibly arise out of a concern for biblical texts, but is purely a case of we knuckle-dragging "fundamentalists" imposing our domga and systems upon the text!

Now to this other little high-browed fad, courtesy of our favorite high-browed ancestors, the Brits--and specifically, the Anglican bishop, N. T. Wright. The work of Dunn and Sanders doesn't concern me here, both because I consider their work to be openly skeptical and materialistic, and secondly, because another weapon of choice for the NPP is to distract us with the intelligensia version of a Chinese fire drill--"You can't really pin down a 'New Perspective' school or voice or model. They all come from such different angles and have different conclusions about different aspects of Pauline literature." Don't fall for it! Here's one thing they all have in common: They have given us the most brilliantly conceived system (you'll live) yet of avoiding the most obvious central meaning of Paul in order to do what all humans--simple and smart--always want to do, to represent themselves before God on the ground of their own inherent worth. I do not find this very new or particularly brave. Kudos, though, on making it painstakingly nuanced enough so that we cavedwelling doctrine-mongers at the local hut can't alert our indifferent brothers and sisters to it without looking like a short-bus full of conspiracy theorists from the Reformed Trekky convention.

Now what is the NPP and in what way does it employ the heresy-hugging hermeneutic? At its core, Wright claims two things that he and his groupies feel that the Reformed tradition has either missed or distorted: 1. Paul's usage of the word and concept of justification refers not to one's getting made right with God via a legal declaration by free grace; and 2. the historic doctrine of forensic justification via the imputation of Christ's righteousness is not intended anywhere in the New Testament. Indeed, the word "impute" is not mentioned. For a detailed argument against the first idea, read Guy Prentiss Waters' book Justification and the New Perspectives on Paul, and against the second idea, John Piper's smaller book Counted Righteous in Christ is a must read. I hear that Piper is currently writing a refutation of Wright on the larger scope of justification. That will be enjoyable to read. Hyper-Inductivism comes into play in three main ways: the examination process of the dikaioo (justify) word group, the argument against the "imputation" language via its relative absence, and the introduction into the Second Temple Judaism context--which, while one would think would be seen as a deductive category, seems to be held in high esteem because the Qumran/Midrashic texts that are drawn from are still contemporary texts that lend credence to the idea that these guys are simply engaging in cool-headed, indifferent scholarship.

Instructing people in this hermeneutic is a bit like training monkeys to fetch land mines or fly in space shuttles. Very impressive, but not the real thing. Dress them up if you like, but they are still not learning to be rational in a comprehesive sense. As is the case with the professor at the university, we aim for a very narrow specialization that may wow, intimidate, and the like, but at the end of the day, it is a paper-thin garnish in lieu of the more difficult and necessary task of allowing Scripture to interpret itself. And in order to do that, you have to allow for more and more context; and that takes time, sweat, skill, deductions, and, yes, maybe even the help of a couple of dead white guys who spoke a little Latin. It turns out that doing theology systematically (if one's deduction is consistently arising from what the Bible is actually saying) is to do it humbly. A humble theology just will be a systematic theology--always asking: "But what does the whole Bible have to say about this immediate inference?"

Hyper-Inductivism: The Heresy-Hugging Hermeneutic

PART ONE

One of the real silent killers in American Evangelicalism's penchant for hating doctrine in specific and despising the mind in general, is an insidious, yet unformulated, interpretive tendency that I call "hyper-inductivism." The name is taken from one of the two main forms of reasoning--induction (thinking from specific data to more general conclusions) as opposed to deduction (thinking from more abstract categories to more specific conclusions). Let me give an example of both, and then proceed to discuss how various systems and academic disciplines seek to balance this out.

An example of inductive reasoning would be: Observation 1- "Water boils at X degrees in Y minutes on my stove." Observation 2 - "Water boils at X degrees in Y minutes on your stove." Observation 3 - "Water does not boil at X degrees in Y minutes in the Himalayas." Conclusion- "Altitude effects the rate of water boiling." An example of deductive reasoning would be: Premise 1- "Socrates is a man." Premise 2- "All men are mortal." Conclusion: "Therefore, Socrates is a mortal." Both forms of reasoning are perfectly valid. And, here's the kicker--There is not a single thing that we think or a single action that we perform that does not depend upon a seemingly infinite matrix of inductively and deductively arrived at assumptions. Many of the truly stupid rabbit trails in the history of Western thought emerged because one of these kinds of reasoning was overemphasized at the expense of the other. The initial split between Plato and Aristotle, the Medieval dispute between Nominalist and Realist, and the Enlightenment divide over Rationalist and Empiricist schools all arose because of a naive attempt to crown one or the other of these forms of reasoning as the epistemological king in all intellectual inquiry. But this is a fool's errand.

Now, out of the late Enlightenment arose a reaction to the inevitable skepticism of Hume that came to be known as Common Sense Realism. It was propounded by the Scot, Thomas Reid (1710-1796), as a means of simply moving on with both ethics and science. It was common sense that mediated between the mind and the external world, and that the self had direct access to the objects of the world "out there." Long story short, this became the dominant reactionary thought form among the American revivalists of the Second Great Awakening in the 1830's, a historical event already mired in anti-intellectualism. Cults and slightly more orthodox movements alike had a new hermeneutic to justify their contempt of, and embarassment at, the first eighteen centuries of the church. During the next fifty years, the vast majority of what is now present day American religion was born--Restorationist, Nazarene, Pentecostal, and, the more cultic extremes--all firmly rooted in the soil of the naive Realist assumption that to go directly to the text with a kind of Lockean tabula rasa (blank slate) was within the reasonable ability of the reader of Scripture. Even the Princeton theologians fell for this in some small measure. Charles Hodge, for example, refered to the Bible as the theologian's "storehouse of facts" in the same way that nature was for the scientist. Now this is not altogether ironic. The fact is that the scientific community in the twentieth century was exposed as opperating under this same presuppositional naivete; and, though the scientific method burns on the fuel of induction, still, inductivism was dealt a swift death by philosophers of science, such as Popper, Kuhn, and Polyani.

Yet no Evangelical thinker has really pulled the lid off of an even more rabid inductivism within the church--a hyper-inductivism. Its main feature is an all-out assault on understanding Scripture systematically. It puts the most minute detail of the leaf under the microscope of the latest layman's reference tool, yet forgets that this leaf belongs to a tree, and the tree in turn to a forrest. One of the more popular examples of this is Precepts Ministries and its celebrated Inductive Bible Study Method. Now I want to make it crystal clear that induction is good; and many of the tricks of the trade suggested by Kay Arthur's ministry can be of immense help. The trouble is that in a church culture that has cherished a suspicion of systematic theology and which has the attention span of a goldfish, to introduce the Bible via this intentionally "grid-free" grid becomes problematic. Is it at all possible that this approach is not the best starting point for the layperson? But let me turn elsewhere, since this is not a critique of Precepts per se.

It would probably be more helpful to see the tendency in action. We will look at the problem first on a popular level, and then in its more systematic (yes, I know: irony) form. In a more formal study of logic, the more simple application of the hyper-inductivist approach would probably better be called the fallacy of immediate inference--or the assumption that because two propositions are logically equivalent, that therefore the one in question is sound about the world. One word or phrase or concept either frequently used in x way or generally assumed in y fashion amounts to cracking the code to the Rosetta Stone. The chief offense in contemporary Bible study is to look up the Greek meaning of a word and behave as if that has settled the matter. I say this is the simple, popular version, but serious theologians such as C. H. Dodd have built entire cases on this meaningless drivel, such as when he dug up the whole corpus of the Bible's usage of hilaskomai (to propitiate) to prove that God's wrath did not need to be appeased in the atonement, and that the phrase "wrath of God" was frequently used "in the sphere of cause and effect: sin is the cause, disaster is the effect." There are clear naturalistic assumptions in Dodd. Orthodox theologians such as Leon Morris, Roger Nicole, and John Stott have all thoroughly refuted him on these points. But this scholar was doing with some degree of sophistication what so many churchgoers today do by means of what has been called "the versification of Scripture."

Neo-Puritanism

Labels are both unnecessary stumbling blocks as well as tremendous time and ambiguity savers. I use them for function B. If anyone asks what I "am" at the end of the day, then I am a Christian [1 Cor. 1:10-13]. So don't get carried away. I only want to lay out the distinctives of our vision of what the church ought to be and what our church, by God's grace alone, will be. Therefore, what I am calling Neo-Puritanism is a combination of all six points below:

1) Christian Hedonism - The chief end of man is to glorify God and (by) enjoy (ing) Him forever. This is true, as it turns out, because God's chief end is to glorify Himself and enjoy Himself forever. This reflects the Greatest Commandment [Mk. 12:29-30] where God's one singular Trinitarian passion spills over into our passion for His glory with our whole being. And this two part singular Commandment, Jesus defines as the essence of Christianity. We are more like God (personal) when we more perfectly reflect His passion for His own glory--Hence, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. This is inseperable from Calvinism, which teaches us that God demands of us what we cannot produce on our own; and what He demands of us is nothing short of our whole soul's approbation of His worth. This sets the gospel at warp speed, both in the church and to the unbeliever.

2) Reformed Theology - This includes both the Covenantal/Federal overarching schema of scriptural interpretation as well as the vaunted Five Points of Calvinism. Christian Hedonism is the matador's red flag for which Calvinism is the bull. When we are liberated to discover that God's central concern for His glory and His design for me to tend toward happiness are the object/subject aspects of the same chief end, then we see God as the gospel and ultimate satisfaction as our life's pursuit. But then, at once we are crushed by the bare fact that we do not in fact pursue our satisfaction in God as He demands. The bar and the stakes of both sin and conversion are raised by infinity, and the Five Points are seen in 3D and color, where once they were merely a creed that one could not intellectually discard. Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and the Perserverance of the Saints are bigger facts about reality for people who do not desire God as they ought than anything else in creation, indeed, bigger than creation itself, since to "get behind" the doctrines of grace to a "superior" missional-creational context is to be guilty of the arrogance of what Luther called the Theology of Glory, when everything must be seen dimly through a Theology of the Cross.

3) Gospel Shepherding - the Puritans understood that the gospel is not simply a marketing slogan to attract people to a building, but it is an infinite well of life that saves the believing/perservering ones [Rom. 1:16, 1 Cor. 15:1-2]. Because the gospel alone has this power, then we not only evangelize with it, but we counsel with it, we relate to each other with it, and we discipline with it. Thus, the more practical-counseling material of Bridges, Tripp, Welch, Powlison, Mahaney, etc. present answers to life's more day-to-day questions by advising us to "preach the gospel to ourselves every day," which amounts to transfering the root of our assurance and answers to our guilt not in our performace but in Christ's finished work. Every mundane problem is seen through cross-shaped lenses. This is one of the main reasons I call this entire approach "Neo-Puritan," because these guys seem to understand the gospel the way that the Puritans did, and apply it to all of life's various problems the same way that those old saints applied it from the pulpit. The gospel is a shepherding thing, and so its content is indispensible if the believer is to...well, believe, and keep on believing.

4) Classical Apologetics / Worldview - I couple the words apologetics and worldview here because I am not as concerned with apologetic method (in a local church context) per se as I am with the freedom and ability of leadership to put first things first in all things, in other words, to take Colossians 1:16-20 seriously in both Bible study and church vision. When the clear and distinct ideas presented in general revelation and in Scripture, concerning the Being and Attributes of God, are compromised or moved to the periphery by those with undisciplined minds, then the whole mission of the church is endangered. As a case in point, Open Theism exists because we are not permitted by the new orthodoxy to set the didactic statements of God's classically defined attributes as determinative over narrative portions where God appears to be taking on human characteristics (anthropomorphisms)--that is, we are not to allow syllogisms (or anything like them with more steps) to be a part of "biblical theology." But this is to nueter the Word's ability to speak for itself from itself. It is to deny the coherency of revelation. Like it or not, the one who graps the four classical non-negotiatbles as proven and invincible (cf. Sproul's Classical Apologetics or Defending Your Faith) will be set to grasp everything else that we are talking about here, and the one who does not (including those who gravitate toward the ill-conceived Reformed model of Presuppositionalism) will have more difficulty. There may be exceptions (i.e. Frame's arguments against Open Theism and charity toward contemporary church practices have been helpful), but thus far I have not found many.

5) Missional Ecclesiology - In spite of going through Acts29 as The Well is, we would place our missional plank down at fifth for the reasons we have just set forth. It is just as indispensible, since the mission of the church flows forth from the missio Dei [Jn. 20:21-22]. However, if we attempt to see the mission of God apart from those cross-shaped lenses I mentioned above, we will distort it into this or that creational/pro-creational/re-creational program that assumes a posture more indicative of a pre-fall Adam then a sin-ridden church and culture. Reformed Theology precedes Missiology, not because God is more God-centered than He is about His mission. Rather, it precedes because God's God-centerdness is His mission, and sinful human beings (including Christians) are not fond of this. Having said that, however, it remains true that as the Father has sent the Son, so He sends us. The church is sent. The whole church (every Christian in it) is on mission, or else, they lack evidence of their conversion--which is to be converted not only to Jesus, but to His mission as well. The Western church has reduced missiology to the compartment of the one brave soul that we ship off to Zimbabwe more to assuage the guilt of our affluence and lukewarm faith than to reproduce God-centered worshipers. For our church to be a missionary in our culture, we must exegete that culture, each Christian identifying his "tribe," and bringing the first-century gospel to the twenty-first century context.

6) Modified Charismatic Practice - None of these things could be possible if in fact the only thing the Holy Spirit does to us or in us is to convict of sin at the outset and illuminate the mose base level meaning of the text of Scripture. That level of Cessationism is a practical atheism. Moreover, Cessationism is hung by its own noose. It argues that a) the baptism of the Holy Spirit refers to every Christian's inclusion into the body of Christ (which I agree with); b) the endument of power aspect of the Spirit, manifested by "sign-gifts" was only for the apostles; c) Jesus connects that baptism with that endument [cf. Acts 1:4-5]. Conclusion: Every Christian is an apostle! How inconvenient! Believe me, no one wanted to believe Cessationism more than I did when I fled the AG as an early Christian because of their rampant anti-intellectualism. The case just cannot be seriously supported by the standard 1 Corinthians 13 and Hebrews 2:4 "sign gifts" routine, even though I wanted it to be true so I could just get on with my bookish fight of faith. I found that having begun by the Spirit, I could not be perfected by the flesh [cf. Gal. 3:3], and that to attempt it was sheer arrogance. We need the empowering ministry of the Spirit to be His flaming witnesses, though it will not look like the modern Charismatic movement, where experiences are sought after as an end in themselves. We believe in the continuation of the gifts, though we do not pretend to know exactly how and why they are to be used in all cases. We can see that they are for the edification of the body and the glorifcation of Christ. The word must be kept central in Christian worship (not experience), but the true word will produce an experience that will not be able to lay dormant and live with no expectancy for revival!

http://www.thewellboise.com/

Greetings from The Well

Hello blogosphere. My name is Matt. I'm a 31-year old pastor/church-planter in Boise, Idaho. I have a wife and two kids (a third on the way). About 30 of us started a church called The Well a few months ago and we are, for lack of a better phrase, a pack of Christian Hedonists (Why reinvent the wheel?). It's late, so I'm not going to blog, but just thought I'd throw an intro out there.