Michael: Are you sure that was a TR blog? A certain Lutheran blog was making the same point yesterday, describing Professional Catholic Apologetics™ as a “subculture of post-Protestants within Catholicism”. Just wondering whether you were trying to throw us off the scent with the “TR” reference. (jn)

In entirely unrelated news, Pirate Josh provides a great answer to a confused “evangelical’s” misuse of Pascal’s Wager in relation to post-conversion sin.

(Scare-quotes for “evangelical” because I’m still struggling to understand all the connotations of that word in the US context. Its “semantic range” is rather different here in the UK – more John Stott than Joel Osteen – which is why I’ve never seen any need to disclaim it.)

Lightning

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service- the best bookstore on the net- has a new web site. This is very user friendly and even has a wish list feature. The service from this store is really outstanding.

Michael,

I noticed the comments on the BHT about Catholic converts and their zeal (as commented on by a Calvinist/Reformed blog) as opposed to the lifelong Catholics.

Oddly enough, I find this to be the case with Calvinism almost as much. I grew up in the Reformed Church of America (RCA), and never heard about TULIPs, Limited Atonement, or any of the other hot button issues I hear from people who are new to the tradition. We talked a little about grace alone, justification by faith, and Martin Luther in catechism – but not much. The little kids sang “Jesus Loves the Little Children” without footnotes, even the second verse “Jesus Died for all the Children” without much controversy.

These days if I mention that I grew up in a Reformed Church, I notice that new converts have a much different set of priorities than we did (the Christian Reformed Church runs a ministry for disabled people in town, Justice for All and LOVE Inc do too—all things that got far more attention than Tulips and postmodernism). I sometimes think they’d find my church to be a letdown.

Always lurking,
Justin VanNingen

Let me just announce that none of you are as offended as I am by the things that offend me enough to ridicule them. The fact is, none of you are as offended and annoyed as I am, and that says something important about me.

Michael, that rings true for me.  The first  Roman Catholics  I met who talked about their faith were converts from conservative Protestantism, like Scott Hahn, who made no sense to me and who were obviously torturing scripture to support their journey.   Interestingly enough, one friend of mine who graduated Westminster Seminary and then “reverted” back to the Roman Catholic Church (cradle Catholic) and is now a priest wanted to distance himself from these apologists as much as possible.  He walked me through Catholic University’s book store and was embarassed they sold Scott Hahn stuff.

As I think about it, would you rather hear Calvinism defended by a first generation zealot or a person who grew up in the Reformed tradition?

A TR blog made an interesting comment about Roman Catholic apologetics. In short, this writer said that “Catholic Apologetics” these days is really “Protestant- usually evangelical- Convert Apologetics.” You rarely read or hear from an RC apologist these days who is a cradle Catholic talking to interested Protestants. Instead, it’s converts working over their past theological home, with the obvious psychological edge of needing to show how really right they are in their decision to convert.

I think this is true, and explains why the entire tone of most RC apologists is sometimes incredibly unhelpful to me.

Joel, Good job on the imprecatory stuff.  Christians need to expose Christians to preserve credibility with a world that has no time for this unbiblical, self-righteous, and self serving, nonsense.  To what you’ve written I say, thank you and Amen!

Your plea for others to join you in cursing two people in the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State organization included this:

Let us join Paul and declare anathema upon anyone “who loves not the Lord Jesus.” I Cor 16:22

Paul also says Conduct yourselves wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer everyone. The two individuals you have cursed are not subject to the discipline of your church. The Corinthian citation is misapplied; it does not concern how we are to relate to those outside the church.

Drake says—

Jesus in Matthew 23: 13, 15, 16, 23, 24, 27, and 29 gave us our New Testament marching orders as well.

Jesus also says Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If you think you’re the victim in this, Pastor Drake, you should still model what Jesus commanded even if you are in fact wrong that someone has cursed or abused you (which you are).

Drake says—

John Calvin gave the church its marching orders from Scripture. The righteous have dominion, but only through imprecatory prayer against the ungodly.

Yet Jesus says: Do to others as you would have them do to you. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.

Pastor Drake, I would like to make three radical suggestions. (1) Admit that your endorsement of Huckabee was a violation of federal law. Ask for mercy from the state authorities over you (but don’t expect it) and promise not to do it again. (2) Go in person to the two people you are cursing, tell them that you acted in a way exactly the opposite of a true disciple of Christ, and ask for their forgiveness. (3) Tell your congregation and radio audience that what you did was illegal, morally wrong and you made it exponentially worse by the cursing. These three actions would be a good start.

Jesus was pronouncing woes upon pharisees. This isn’t at all relevant to the two people from Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. Nor is your earlier invocation of Matthew 18.

Back on the Osteen beat.

Can anyone confirm for me that Lifeway is selling Osteen?

TSK comments on recent criticisms of the EC and recent criticism of the critics.

Twelve great points on handling criticism.

Wyman Richardson with a good Barth post.

Wiley S. Drake

I have this irresistible image of a cartoon duck setting up complex traps involving ACME rockets, explosives etc to trap the godless liberals who incessantly cross the landscape – only for all his schemes to backfire, with hilarious consequences. Except without the hilarious consequences in this case.

This from the LA Times, not The Onion:

Wiley S. Drake, a Buena Park pastor and a former national leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, called on his followers to pray for the deaths of two leaders of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Drake is being gigged by the AUfSoCaS for endorsing a presidential candidate on church letterhead. Based on his personal interpretation of the imprecatory psalms, Drake wants the leaders to pay the ultimate price for calling him on it.

I’m embarrassed, once again.

PW: ROFLMAO. Made the day.

Randy,

I am somewhat prone to obsessive and compulsive behavior…

So, how many times a day do you check the BHT feed?

Phillip, is the transgarbulator’s exegesis open for revision? I can’t wait for version 4, when it produces infallible magisterium.

Re: Substances, I’m currently sipping a cup of blue mountain coffee that a friend brought back from her trip home to Jamaica. If I start writing incoherently, let me know. This cup is almost too smooth.

I personally see no connection between holiness and teetotaling.

Ahhh, what a beautiful sentence.  Well, I guess roast heretic is off the menu for lunch. :-)

Shea, I am a teetotaler because I just never started drinking.

I grew up in an alcohol-free zone at home and at church. For some reason that I can only partially explain, booze didn’t grab me when I went away to college. I theorize that it was because of watching my friends puke in the john and fall into the lakes on campus and stuff like that. I just didn’t get involved in the drinking, even while staying very involved with people who did. I will admit to doing other stuff that I’m not proud of, but none of it has to do with intake of foreign substances.
My wife is from a similar background, and I guess it just never came up as a real adult.

Teetotaling is nothing to be proud of, particularly, and I am not. It just so happens that I don’t drink. I find it quite awkward on business trips and the like, and sometimes I wish I could just have a glass of wine when everyone else does, but I haven’t done it. You could probably build a case that I am more ashamed of it than proud of it.
I am somewhat prone to obsessive and compulsive behavior, so perhaps I have saved my self and my family some grief by never getting started.

I personally see no connection between holiness and teetotaling. Some of the most unholy people I know are teetotalers. But my denomination discourages drinking alcohol, at least.

You allow [...] women, to speak.

Yes, but they very rarely do, do they? (jn)

sigh

Sharon! Sonia! You there? Missing you… :-)

Shea: Bill is also a non-drinker, despite a very brief foray into wine consumption on doctor’s orders a while back. He’s a Baptists, but the alcohol thing is apparently primarily preference. He doesn’t like the taste.

I’ve got this nonsense-to-English translator almost working now, let’s see what we get…

The simple truth is well… simple, some things we will know when we see Him.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Simplicity is too complex to understand. Effort is meaningless.

To swill beer then theorize is good, but how many of you folks refine your identity this way?

I’m a teetotaler, but I still practice drunken character assassination.

Not that I am against theological discussion or education, or that I have found fault in your site, but I have begun to wonder what motivates folks who participate in public forums such as yours.

This new-fangled “computer” stuff is all strangeness. In my day it was fashionable to wear a potato on your belt! Of course, your motivations are open to question, while the motivation for me sending this email is self-evident.

When preaching a message the last thing needed is for us to do it to define ourselves.

“The name Sinn Féin (pronounced /ʃɪn feɪn/ in English, [ʃiːɲ fʲeːnʲ] in Irish), which means “ourselves” or “we ourselves,” has been applied to a series of political movements since 1905 in Ireland, each of which claim or claimed sole descent from the original party established by Arthur Griffith in 1905.”

If definition of “ourselves” is not the last thing needed when preaching, it’s certainly pretty low on the list. I’m mentioning preaching here as a random word-association thing, because I figure most of you have heard some preaching before. Also, turnips.

What is it you wish to archive in shaping the motivations of Christians?

[ Note: The Transgarbulator 3.11 beta suggests that “archive” should actually be “achieve,” but it’s only a beta, so I’ve told it to go with the translation as written, without making word-substitutions. ]

You’re Christians—most of you, anyway—and I flatly disbelieve your claims to enjoy conversation with each other, so I’m going to suggest some alternate, more nefarious motives for your ongoing participation in this site (as well as your refusal to properly wear potatoes on your belts). You’re attempting to brainwash Christians by forcing them to load the site, make the commitment to read backwards, memorize the dozen or so active players, and then “educate” them. And you archive it all! Clearly, this is subversive, so what are your demands?

I assume you consider the motivations of commenter’s secondary in preference to the material submitted if it makes for good discussion.

[ Note: The Transgarbulator 3.11 beta suggests that the apostrophe in “commenter’s” is misplaced, and the “secondary” is not actually a possession of a singular “commenter.” Even though it is still a beta, the sentence is completely incomprehensible with the apostrophe in place, so I removed it before feeding it back through the TG 3.11 beta in only moderately incomprehensible form. ]

You allow donkeys to speak truth. You allow people who have matured beyond the point of sending random critical emails to disinterested websites owners to participate in this so-called “discussion” you claim to be having. You allow people with impure hearts, and women, to speak.

Thanks for reading my e-mail.

The nurse is coming with my meds, I’ve got to run!

I love this opening line from the top-ranked Amazon review on the NT Wright book linked by Joel yesterday:

The standing joke about Tom Wright goes like this: An inquiring student gives Dr Wright a call. His secretary says, “Sorry, but he is busy writing a book”. To which the student caller replies, “That’s OK, I’ll hold”.

Ah, the old ones are the best, aren’t they? (sw)

I thought the Nicene Creed and beer were the only things that held this group together.  So what’s with Randy being a teetotaler?  (jn) But seriously, I am curious if your teetotaling is just a preference, a precaution, or if you believe that alcohol and holiness are incompatible.

I have no idea what the lurker is trying to tell us.  Does anybody?

China to the monks of Tibet: you need our permission to reincarnate.

The State Administration for Religious Affairs has introduced a new law which “strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate”, describing it as “an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation.”

Of course, the real story behind this absurdity is that the Chinese are trying to control who becomes the next Dalai Lama.

Michael, be sure to save that email for a banner quote.

I received the following e-mail today. I think it has to do with why you people are afraid of comments, or why John is going to the hell he doesn’t believe in, or why the earth will soon be hell according to Bill and Joel.

The simple truth is well… simple, some things we will know when we see Him. To swill beer then theorize is good, but how many of you folks refine your identity this way? Not that I am against theological discussion or education, or that I have found fault in your site, but I have begun to wonder what motivates folks who participate in public forums such as yours. When preaching a message the last thing needed is for us to do it to define ourselves. What is it you wish to archive in shaping the motivations of Christians?

I assume you consider the motivations of commenter’s secondary in preference to the material submitted if it makes for good discussion. Thanks for reading my e-mail.

Thanks to the lurker, for whatever I think he/she is saying. :-)

To avoid turning this bar into a “John wittering on about hell all the time” blog, I’ve decided to set up a separate “John wittering on about hell all the time” blog over on Wordpress.com: And then comes the end. This is subtitled “an eschatological sketchpad”, as it’s a place for me to think aloud, record links and generally bash ideas around without boring people here or alarming people on my main blog. (jn)

So far it consists of cross-posted items from previous discussion here on the BHT, together with a post containing some very interesting material regarding Barth and Brunner on universal salvation. Comments welcome.

Michael: thanks for posting the update on the Korean hostages. I suppose it’s good for the 19 individuals concerned, but if the price is the South Korean government agreeing to underwrite the religious intolerance of the Taliban – to become, in effect, enforcers of fundamentalist Islamic policy towards Christianity – then that’s a very heavy price to pay. It suggests someone somewhere doesn’t really understand what all this is about.

Before giving a definitive judgment, though, I think I’d want to know more about what the S. Korean government has actually agreed to. Fox News says they agreed to “prevent Christian missionaries from working in Afghanistan”. The AP report published by the Guardian says Seoul has “sought to prevent missionaries from causing trouble in countries where they were not wanted”. Which isn’t quite the same thing.

But I don’t regard the Guardian (or AP) as a reliable source on anything to do with Christianity, and I don’t regard Fox as a reliable source on anything, so I’m suspending judgment for the moment. It doesn’t look good, though.

Thanks, Michael. Actually, it’s called, “Why Harry’s Christening, Mentioned by Rowling in That One Obscure Interview, was a Legitimate Baptism.”

That’s bound to sell lots of copies.

Travis Prinzi makes the announcement that he’s writing a book and being published. Congratulations Travis. The book is titled “Why Harry Potter Needed to be Immersed.”

I have done some fairly extensive editing of the rules. No changes, just editing, dropping a few, etc.

I thought I heard him say, “Don’t make it complicated.” Do you have to explain double imputation to proclaim the gospel? If so, I’d call that “contextualization.”

But it was beautifully presented, if you need that sort of high-concept atonement thing. I think it’s simpler here.

MOD: My thought was that he just gave about the best example I can think of for pulling out two points from the Biblical story and assuming that because they make sense to you, they make sense to your audience. I love some of these guys, and maybe it’s my career talking to non-Christians…..but they have a wooden ear on this one. That’s as much reduction as the Four Spiritual Laws. Talk about someone in the TR camp needing to shout “Where’s the rest of the stuff you gotta understand?”

Olson links a 2003 piece on Teresa’s Dark Night.

Piper takes 4 minutes to demonstrate that there is no contextualization needed to communicate the Gospel.

The Taliban have promised to free the 19 Korean hostages if all missionary work ends. Korea has agreed.

The review says…

He uses Bible verses that are clearly written to Christians but does not make that distinction. This is true not only in the words of John 3:16 (does God love everybody in the world without exception or everybody in the world without distinction?) but in other passages as well. This kind of talk can be dangerous—it can have consequences.

1. John 3:16 is “clearly written to Christians?” What particularly authoritative evidence is there for that claim?

2. Shouldn’t the claim that a passage of scripture about the love of God doesn’t apply to all people be made with some awareness that, with the exception of some dedicated “L”-loving Calvinists, most Christians would the claim outrageous?

3. This is precisely what bugs me about the “L.” “Oh Love of God, so vast and free. Limited for me….” Everybody sing. Is God more praiseworthy for being efficient?

It’s really strange to read that story about resolution, or the lack thereof. Interestingly, whenever I hear the unresolved four-note “theme” for Intel, I always have to resolve it by whistling my own four-note resolution. Yet my own life is so unresolved its not even funny.