When Two Rights make a Wrong: The arbitrary creation of rights and how it is destroying our most basic protections of law. Click the link to hear the show

Human Rights are a Christian idea. Others might use, borrow, steal, reinterpret, or deny them but they are only possible within a worldview sufficient to give them proper grounding. Without this, they are just words that correspond to no existing object.

The Enlightenment fell in love with rights talk, especially natural rights talk, because there seemed to be a way to draw legal boundaries from mere consensus. When a society has a sufficient moral/rational foundation to compel self restraint, even when the outward form is in the runny language of the Enlightenment, individual rights and the common good can coexist, and even thrive. Christianity has provided that basic ethical form for thousands of years in the West, and more specifically, in the American experience. In this, every inch of our progress or social advancement has been a Christian inch.

With that Christian ethical environment rapidly evaporating over the last few decades and nothing to replace it, it has become increasingly plain that Enlightenment rationalism and/or empiricism, plus nothing, equals an unintelligible mess of contradictory ideas, none of which hold any persuasive force in regard to the measurement of social norms. But the language of rights continues unabated regardless of the “rights” so called lacking any identifiable justification or clear meaning. In contemporary use, “rights” have become a simple synonym for whatever I or my group of confederates want and are willing to manipulate the political system to ensure. Rights have been reduced to a combination of political power and the force of the state, and this combination is neither something new to political history nor unpredictable in its inevitable effects.

There is incredible danger in the change here described. When everything becomes a right, nothing remains a right. The existence and recognition of human rights, much less civil rights is an extraordinarily delicate thing. Rights, unless very carefully measured can easily become the mere effect of an arbitrary state; the rule of men replacing the rule of law. The unshackled will replacing moral reasoning and time tested precedent. The reason that the wholesale creation of “rights” detached from any metaphysical or ethical worldview sufficient to give them meaning is so disturbing is because there are very real dangers and powers in the world with magnificent animosity to the most basic ideas of human rights and these thinly disguised promotions of self interest cast doubt on even the most obvious moral duties. Thus when genocide and slavery are still the rule rather than the exception in much of our small world and children are trafficked for sex and labor, the claims of human rights to polygamy, or pornography, or therapeutic abortions begin to look and empty as they really are.

Before and right or a duty can be reasonably maintained one must establish the kind of a thing that we are and the conditions in which we exist. The Christian Worldview expresses inherent human value as one of its most basic presuppositions due to the creation in the image of God of every human being. Most of the recent claims to rights to this and that being rooted in naturalistic and materialistic worldviews, the claim to have an actual right of whatever kind, seems to be in direct conflict with very nature of the rights themselves.

If rights are given by God, and God made people to be a certain kind of thing, and made them to do certain kinds of things and to not do other kinds of things, one cannot then argue for a right to do the kind of thing that God did not make people to do. If rights are God given, then they are limited in their scope to the rights God gives; if rights are not God given then we have no duty to regard them. Either way, we have no duty act as if people have a right to anything immoral or unchaste or to pretend that people have a God given right to do that which is unnatural in regard to the kind of thing that God made them to be.

Thus rights to life, liberty, peace, property, worship, the maintenance of an ordered community, to raise one’s children according to one’s faith, and to protect oneself and one’s family from harm are rights and not much else is.

Neiswonger

Click link below to hear the show.
When Two Rights make a Wrong: The arbitrary creation of rights and how it is destroying our most basic protections of law.

Title: Apologetics.com – Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation

http://apologetics.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=422:martin-luther-and-the-protestant-reformation&catid=43:kkla-995-fm-los-angeles&Itemid=74

“Everyone that is a Protestant of whatever flavor has a debt to those that came before. October 31st is Reformation Day, when we take the time to remember our brave and noble dead. They brought us back the Holy Bible, and for that we hold them in high esteem. Men like Martin Luther, John Calvin, Theodore Beza, John Knox, Martin Bucer and Heinrich Bullinger did the heavy lifting in the defense of the Gospel at a time when such often resulted in persecution or death. So much of what we enjoy today is the result of their labors that it is difficult to measure. Everything from constitutional jurisprudence in the form we enjoy to the clear presentation of freedom of conscience were their produce. Scripture Alone as the sole infallible rule was their formal cause; Justification by Grace Alone through Faith Alone in Christ Alone to the Glory of God Alone their final end. Simply, God was greater to them than He is to Christians today and so they accomplished ends worthy of their high estimation. With Special guest Pastor Philip George of Calvary Presbyterian Church of Glendale California, Christopher Neiswonger and Lindsay Brooks.”

“The about-to-be released DVD, Collision, is an important work that I heartily commend. The immensely talented and passionate Darren Doane has directed a gripping piece highlighting the debate over God’s existence between Pastor Doug Wilson of Moscow, Idaho and the well-known secular writer, Christopher Hitchens. The video is gripping, the participants are most-compelling, the editing is fantastic, and most importantly, the great divide in the debate over God’s existence is spendidly exposed.

Nearly twenty-five years ago my late father, Dr. Greg Bahnsen, debated the highly acclaimed atheist scholar, Dr. Gordon Stein, at the University of California in Irvine. The debate caused shockwaves then, and continues to stir interest today, probably selling more MP3’s, CD’s, and tapes over the years than all of my father’s work put together. And for good reason: it is a simply stunning apologetic for the Christian faith from an immensely qualified philosophical intellect. And at the risk of sounding like a biased son, I am rather certain it is the best defense of the faith I have ever heard.”

To read the entire review, click the link

www.apologetics.com

http://apologetics.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=421:collision-highlights-the-great-antithesis-a-dvd-worth-having

“God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so as neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creature, nor is liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established. This third chapter, first section of the Westminster Confession asserts that God has ordained everything that comes to pass. As we know many evil things come to pass and yet while God has ordained it He is not the author of sin, He does not violate the will of the creature, nor is the liberty of second causes taken away, but rather established.

This idea that God has ordained whatsoever comes to pass has been challenged and fought heartily against by many Christians. The writers of the confession knew what the implications of this statement would be, namely that God was the author of sin and they immediately address the issue. It is one thing to make the assertion but quite another to prove it’s validity, and we will need to attend to scripture to see if what is asserted is indeed true.

Isaiah 46:9-11,
Remember the former things of old,
For I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like Me,
Declaring the end from the beginning,
And from ancient times things that are not yet done,
Saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,
And I will do all My pleasure,’
Calling a bird of prey from the east,
The man who executes My counsel, from a far country.
Indeed I have spoken it;
I will also bring it to pass.
I have purposed it;
I will also do it.
1 Samuel 2:25,
If one man sins against another, God will judge him. But if a man sins against the LORD, who will intercede for him?” Nevertheless they did not heed the voice of their father, because the LORD desired to kill them.
2 Samuel 17:14,
Absalom and all the men of Israel said, “The advice of Hushai the Arkite is better than that of Ahithophel.” For the LORD had determined to frustrate the good advice of Ahithophel in order to bring disaster on Absalom.
Acts 2:22,
Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves also know– Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it. For David says concerning Him:
Romans 9:17-19,
For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth.” Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens. You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?”

We see that Eli’s sons continued to do evil for the Lord desired to kill them, we see Absalom taking the advice of Hushai for God determined to bring disaster on Absalom, we see lawless hands committing the most heinous crime ever, putting Jesus to death by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God and we see Pharaoh being raised up by God and hardened by God for the very purpose of showing His power through the plagues. Yet God is still not the author of sin.

B. B. Warfield concerning this issue states: “That anything—good or evil—occurs in God’s universe finds it’s account…in His positive ordering and active concurrence, while the moral quality of the deed, considered in itself, is rooted in the moral character of the subordinate agent, acting in the circumstances and under the motives operative in each instance…Thus all things find their unity in His eternal plan; and not their unity merely, but their justification as well; even the evil, though retaining its quality as evil and hateful to the holy God, and certain to be dealt with as hateful, yet does not occur apart from His provision or against His will, but appears in the world which He has made only as the instrument by which He works the higher good.”

clay

You promote by action as much as by word.

Words often say things that we do not intend but deeds are disturbingly accurate measurements of character. Sins of omission are less obvious than overt acts but cumulatively, what we chose to leave undone speaks volumes. These days it’s popular to say that it doesn’t matter what you think, but what you do. Really, what you do is what you think, just out here in the air.

There’s a lot to be said about “being conscious” of something. I know the odd sounding frame can carry all kinds of loose thinking, but if we are doing something, something that we either don’t intend or at least would not do otherwise, shouldn’t we try to see these things?

I used to know a man that would say rude things to his children. One day I asked him, “Why do you do that?” He was shocked, not that I asked, but that it was something he did. He said, “My Dad always did that. I always thought I never would.” From then on he was very conscious of that and as far as I know, never did so again. I wouldn’t have asked just anyone, but in this case the actions had such a dramatically contrary character in relation to the rest of his life that the question begged asking. There was something about it that just seemed so foreign to his general life and worldview. I started to think it was impossible that he actually knew what he was doing or that he knew and did so with conscious intent. He was not trying to produce in his children the actual effect of his words. So what then? Why do it? I don’t know, and really, it doesn’t matter as much as that he observed himself enough to guard his tongue. We can figure out why we do the things we do at a more appropriate opportunity but that we change our behaviour is an immediate need.

This is not to be confused into a runny psychologism but just to guard ourselves from being something that we would not like. We need to be careful to look for causes of our actions, because the cause is the meaning of the effect.

God’s usual method for our sanctification is not to fix us all at once. We are Justified all at once; we are Sanctified through a lifetime. He seems to do so through eras of tempering through experience, trial, ordeal, reward, and learning. Thus we do not expect a perfect Christian any more than we advance a perfect church. But the things that we can do we must do and looking at who we are is never easy.

Becoming a Christian is in some ways like coming out of the dark into a well lit room. We see all kinds of things that were heretofore hidden. Many of these things are delightful but some are disturbing. The worst, I think, are those things within ourselves that should not be so. There are things that we’ve done in the natural life that when the spiritual life begins, go from being badges of honour to hallmarks of shame. The very things in which the world finds glory, we find either morose or empty. The events themselves haven’t changed but we have changed in relation to them. The things that we once held up as the evidence of our greatness become symbols of our guilt. Our loves become embarrassments and our embarrassments joys.

All of this we need to go through in order to reach Christ more fully and in reaching Him more fully, to grow in grace and faith and the good works that flow from them.

Neiswonger

Here is a link to a sermon I preached recently at Communion Presbyterian Church on the cities of refuge and how they point to Christ. The text is Joshua 20.  The MP3 can also be downloaded at the link.

Christ our Refuge

God Bless,

Doug

The new Apologetics.com Radio Show

Click the link to hear the show at the www.apologetics.com website:
Hell No: The Doctrine of Final Punishment and Recent Attempts at Evangelical Revisions

“The idea that people will go to the final punishment because they want to, and so God is just giving them what they want, (C.S. Lewis, Dallas Willard) is a strange one indeed. Hell does not seem to be the Heaven for people with poor taste. Hell, is bad. And unpleasant. It seems from the biblical presentations that everyone that goes there will want to be somewhere else.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a lover of Lewis and his peculiar genius as well as a fan of the brilliant Dallas Willard. I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with him personally about these matters on more than one occasion, and was struck by the profundity of his intellect as well as his profound Christian character. Still, when someone argues against two thousand years of Christian theology and biblical interpretation the standards for persuasion should be extraordinarily high.

A friend wrote to ask about the idea that Hell is really the absence of God. It’s an interesting idea. It has certainly become common enough in Evangelical circles.

“Heaven and Hell are God’s provisions for who we choose to be. It is a natural extension of the way we live. I tell people that what they get out of this life—after this life—is the person that they become now…. You can get in a lot of arguments about the details, but the basic fact is that there are some people who just can’t stand God. That’s the way they are in this life, so he doesn’t force his presence on them in the next.”1

Willard also argues that being a Christian, a conscious believer in Jesus Christ, having a personal faith in Him, is not necessary to salvation, but that many Buddhists, for example, will be in Heaven for their final reward, on the basis of their good intentions and good works.

“It is absolutely crucial that we understand the statement correctly, for it has become the central bone of contention with reference to Christian pluralism or exclusivism. Clearly, according to it, Christ is exclusive. But is Christianity?

If you take the statement to be saying that no one can “come to the Father” (be accepted by God) without specific knowledge of the historical personage Jesus—as many people do take it—then of course billions of people, before, during, and after his time on earth are eliminated from all possibility of “coming to the Father” simply by accidents of time and place and over which they have no control… This is surely impossible in a world of which John 3:16 is true.”2

This becomes particularly important when we examine this issue of choice (I’m not going as far as thinking about choice in the context of the “free will” debate here, but just choice in general). Is a Buddhist that does not believe in God or in the goodness or deity of Christ, even in the most superficial sense, choosing God? Or heaven? Or anything similar? For the most part it seems that the sincere Buddhist is choosing nothingness, nonthought, and the absence of God in their lives and not choosing God in any sense reconcilable with common reasoning on the subject. In any case it would be hard to take the claim that their choices made them worthy of Heaven seriously, since it doesn’t even work that way for Christians.

The issue of choice and God’s supposed respect for it can become quite slippery, especially when we take into account that all through the Bible God seems all to clear on demanding that people do certain kinds of things and condemns them for making any kind of decision otherwise. The issue of choice seems to confuse the fact of the ability to make a choice with God’s so called respect for the choices in general. God creates sentient beings with moral agency and the ability to make decisions but could this really be interpreted as an endorsement of their power of judgment in such a way that it would lead us to believe that He will provide for every choice, even those that reject Him as Lord of Heaven and Earth? It doesn’t seem likely. This would seem to be taking the idea far beyond what the Scriptures tell us about these complicated issues.

Now we might take it as true that in making a law against “Murder” the legislature is giving everyone the choice of whether or not to murder, but that use of the words doesn’t seem to make much sense. That is not the intent of the making of the law; to give people the choice to murder or not to murder.

Even the idea that He is giving them a choice and that that is what all this is about is remarkably counter intuitive. God seems to give everyone under our current conditions one choice, and that involves repentance and faith. If we refuse we reap the necessary and inevitable consequence of that rebellion against one that has the authority, right, and duty to call us to account for out actions.

Can God have a duty to judge the world? He has a duty to Himself to be a good God, and that is what a good God does. It might be much more reasonable to see what God is doing here in the way that the Christian churches have viewed it for thousands of years, not as presenting a choice that He will respect so much as a command that people have the ability to disobey. The issue that we have here doesn’t seem to be any positive consideration of peoples capacity for self-governance on the part of God, but an affirmative action on the part of God in reaction to a choice already made.

What I mean by this is that God is does not seem to be reoffering a choice to be guilty or not to a people balanced in some neutral decision making capacity while measuring alternatives; He is acting as a sovereign over all things to make right something that was lost and corrupted long ago and demanding action on the part of those in a subordinate position. As parents have the natural right to demand that their children obey; as kings have the right to the obedience of their armies; as the shepherd has the right to the obedience of his flock; God is not asking nicely for that of which we already have an affirmative duty.”

Neiswonger

http://www.apologetics.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=411:hell-no-the-doctrine-of-final-punishment-and-recent-attempts-at-evangelical-revisions&catid=43:kkla-995-fm-los-angeles&Itemid=74

Tolerance and Teaching Homosexuality in the Public schools and the Christian Response (Chris Neiswonger)

From Apologetics.com:

“Christopher Neiswonger speaks to a group of concerned Christian parents in San Francisco, Alameda, California on the traditional Christian reasoning for the rejection of Homosexuality, why Christians will not subject their children to indoctrination, how the laws have changed from protecting the rights of religious people to specifically excluding the rights of religious people, the rationality of the Gay Activist arguments, and how Christians have lost the war of words without losing the battle for ideas.”

http://wp.me/p5zSb-tt

http://www.apologetics.com

To be outside of Christ is an absence horrific and unthinkable. Augustine wrote that every human heart has a God shaped void that needs to be filled. Uniquely, it’s a void that includes everything in the universe, and more. The alienation is utter. Every thought, word, and deed is emptied of meaning apart from Him and every experience loses its character and contemplation. In Him, all things consist.

Colossians Chapter 1 from verse 15

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation— if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.”

Neiswonger

Josh Hicks

It is a natural tendency of man to complain about effort exertion. It seems that in this day and age, however, it is glorified, exalted, and expected for a man to complain about the drudgery of work and the lack of “free time.” I know that I have been quite guilty of this sentiment in an unrighteous way many times. Consider, then, this pithy saying from the venerable Matthew Henry:

Observe here, [1.] That labour is our duty, which we must faithfully perform; we are bound to work, not as creatures only, but as criminals; it is part of our sentence, which idleness daringly defies. [2.] That uneasiness and weariness with labour are our just punishment, which we must patiently submit to, and not complain of, since they are less than our iniquity deserves. Let not us, by inordinate care and labour, make our punishment heavier than God has made it; but rather study to lighten our burden, and wipe off our sweat, by eyeing Providence in all and expecting rest shortly.

Let us, then, not grow weary in our vocations, duties, etc. but execute them thoroughly to the glory of God, giving thanks to Him Who has provided for us, despite our biting of His Hand that feeds us.

I have been a great beneficiary of Matthew Henry’s pious generosity, as can be gleaned from his commentary on the Scriptures. He, and other Puritan Divines, are an invaluable source of biblical piety (as opposed to the moralism of pietism) that all Christians, “great and small,” would do well to read, ingest, digest, meditate, and think upon.

Clay Atkinson

“The law of God is good and wise and sets His will before our eyes”, says the hymn from Matthias Loy. The law is indeed good and yet there is much misunderstanding on its application for us today in the New Covenant. Should we heed the wisdom of the law in this age of grace, if so how, or is it even for us today? Hopefully we can make some headway regarding these issues in this article.

I have often read that if you hold to any Levitical laws you must hold to all of them, I have also heard that we cannot pick and choose what laws we adhere to, and if we ever do it is arbitrary and subject to our own personal tastes. To this point I would somewhat agree, we can certainly pick and choose in a arbitrary manner, but when we hold to certain truths, that we are compelled to follow regardless of when they were instituted, is it always an arbitrary choice? For instance, if I say we are not required to perform animal sacrifices, yet believe that theft is wrong, am I picking and choosing in an arbitrary fashion? Perhaps. Yet, what if I say that Jesus has made an atoning sacrifice 2000 years ago that all of those animal sacrifices pointed to and that the atonement of Christ actually propitiated for the sins of all who believe and was sufficient for their salvation and that as a result of that propitiation man and God are now reconciled and the righteous requirement of God has been met and the righteousness of Christ has been imputed to the believer to where he can now stand before God and come to the throne of grace due to the mediation of Christ and be called righteous, would that still be call an arbitrary abrogation? Would that be called arbitrary picking and choosing, or would it be sound biblical doctrine? I know of no Christians asserting that we should still sacrifice animals and I know of no Christians who assert that we should not obey, thou shalt not steal. Obviously, there are some laws that are more easily understood than others, but that doesn’t mean that the more complex abrogations are capricious.

Some of the more obscure laws cause confusion in trying to dispel their significance today, to the point where some are compelled to do away with the whole law of God, even God’s moral law. But as we see over and over again in the New Testament, the moral law being invoked by the Apostles to spur on the believers to good works. Some confuse justification and sanctification, charging that we are no longer under the law appealing to Galatians 3 and destroying any distinction between what it is that justifies and what it is that sanctifies. How do we gage our sanctification as we grow and mature, what should we base our goals on to become more like Christ, the command to love our neighbors as ourselves? If so, you are citing a levitical law from Leviticus 19:18, and that being the case would you then be liable to hold to all levitical law? True Jesus said the second greatest commandment was to love your neighbor as yourself but after all, He was summarizing the Ten Commandments and quoting directly from Leviticus 19:18.

These picking and choosing and arbitrary abrogation arguments seem to be levied quite often when one tries to appeal to Old Testament laws governing sexual behavior. The general tactic is to ignore the specific law cited and move to more obscure laws and ask if they still apply today, and of course when the answer is no, the question shot back is, then how can you apply laws on sexual behavior today, you are picking and choosing, you must hold to all of the Levitical law or none at all. As I have shown earlier this argument does not hold up when we are comparing animal sacrifices and theft, and my intention is to show that they are just as weak when comparing obscure Jewish laws with laws governing one’s sexual conduct. Some of the obscure laws usually appealed to are those one can read in Deuteronomy 22: verse 5 “A woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment, for all who do so are an abomination to the LORD your God.” Verse 9 “You shall not sow your vineyard with different kinds of seed, lest the yield of the seed which you have sown and the fruit of your vineyard be defiled.” Verse 10 “You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together.” Verse 11 “You shall not wear a garment of different sorts, such as wool and linen mixed together.”

These laws can be confusing to many Christians today, and most likely most of us have violated some or all of these laws. How is it that Reformed Christians can appeal to laws in Leviticus 18 to condemn homosexuality, or adultery as sinful and yet neglect to bring a charge against a woman wearing pants, or a man wearing a wool and linen suit? Is this an arbitrary choice? Actually, to compare homosexuality and adultery, sexual behaviors which bring so much destruction and pain to so many of God’s creatures, to women wearing pants and wearing clothes with mixed fabrics is absolutely absurd! Yet, those with an antinomian agenda do just that and they do it with a straight face. So we must answer it doing our best not to laugh.

Before we can answer the assertion of arbitrary picking and choosing we must first explain a major difference between the old Covenant and the New Covenant. The Old Covenant dealt primarily with one nation, ancient Israel. God had set apart the nation of Israel from all the surrounding nations stating in Exodus 6:7 “I will take you as My people, and I will be your God.” Further separating Israel from the heathen nations about them, God makes impositions on their behavior, commanding Israel in Leviticus 18:24 “Do not defile yourselves with any of these things; for by all these the nations are defiled, which I am casting out before you.” God had chosen to reveal Himself to a particular nation, revealing Himself in miraculous ways to patriarchs and prophets that would proclaim this revelation to the people of that nation.

The New Covenant differs in that God is now commanding His people to proclaim His revelation to all nations, to all tribes, to all tongues; Matthew 28:19. God has invited the Gentile nations to His table of mercy, Galatians 3: 26-29 states “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” This greater covenant makes many of the Old Covenant laws unnecessary for the Christian. Circumcision, the Old Testament sign of the covenant has been replaced by the greater sign of baptism, animal sacrifices have ceased due to the greater sacrifice of Christ, Jesus has declared all foods clean in Mark 7:19, proclaiming that men are made unclean not by something from the outside entering him but from what comes out of a man, from within his heart.

God had separated Israel from the surrounding nations by His sovereign choice, and by His command they were to obey His laws. Many of those laws pointed to this separation or distinction and God wished to model to the Jews how they were separate unto God by these laws. Separating men’s clothing from women’s, separating crops in a field, separating animals on the plow, separating fabrics from one another. Matthew Henry suggests that God wanted to “intimate how careful they should be not to mingle themselves with the heathen, nor to weave any of the usages of the Gentiles into God’s ordinances.” As the sacrificial laws pointed to Christ and His sacrifice, these laws pointed to Israel’s separation from the surrounding nations, and like the sacrificial laws are no longer required for the New Covenant believers consisting of all nations.

To accuse a man of arbitrarily picking and choosing laws when he asserts that stealing should be obeyed and performing animal sacrifices should not is ludicrous and should not be taken seriously. Likewise, when appealing to separation laws and how we are no longer compelled to obey them in order to justify disobedience to laws on sexual purity should also be considered fallacious and just as ridiculous. The arguments are less obviously apparent, but when held under scrutiny they fall apart in the same manner.

The law of God is good and wise and when properly understood, directs one in the way of his sanctification before God. Let us love the law of God and like David in Psalm 119:12-16 let us say:
Blessed are You, O LORD!
Teach me Your statutes!
With my lips I have declared
All the judgments of Your mouth.
I have rejoiced in the way of Your testimonies,
As much as in all riches.
I will meditate on Your precepts,
And contemplate Your ways.
I will delight myself in Your statutes;
I will not forget Your word.
Clay

Neiswonger

“The sad fact is that today people are looking at themselves and trying to see into—to understand and to comprehend their own nature apart from the Bible. However, the deeper you go into your own nature, the more you find out that God’s Word is true — the heart [of man] is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?( Jeremiah 17:9). You can sit cross-legged on the floor and have all the late night pseudo-intellectual conversations that you want to. You can study all the philosophy you want—and contemplate stones—and contemplate pools of water or spiders spinning webs. Hey, you can contemplate an old sack of potatoes if you want to; whatever it is you want to concentrate on.

But the truth is you are never really going to understand what’s wrong with you, and why you keep doing things that hurt others and that hurt yourself, until you recognize that man fell from his state of fellowship with God in the garden of Eden. And that this fall is not remedied by looking inside yourself, that fall is remedied by outside yourself to God—who in Jesus Christ on the Cross reconciled the world to Himself. You see, [from the influx of] these eastern cultic structures, which forms the basis for this New Age-type thinking everybody now is looking within themselves.

In Christianity God has us look out to the Cross and to the Resurrection. That is our only deliverance-through faith in Jesus Christ. The end result of this other selfish kind of philosophy is that man is taught to float along like a ping pong ball skirting over the “troubled waters” of life. What a magnificent picture of self — the sinful nature! The world around us is a churning cesspool of depravity, and do we then plunge into this filthiness with the Gospel of Jesus Christ to bring men and women and young people to a redemptive knowledge of the Master—and to freedom from sin—and the power to walk with God?

Or do we tell them that the ultimate in life is to so detach oneself from humanity and its concerns as to rise to the top of the cesspool and float along like the proverbial ping pong ball? Which way really is both practical, meaningful, and that which will produce the most for mankind? Quite obviously it’s going to be the productive world of plunging in preaching, living, answering, proclaiming and then seeing the power of God the Holy Spirit touch the lives and the souls of people and to bring them out of the cesspool of sin to glory and eternal life in Christ Jesus.” Walter Martin

(Zen Buddhism, available from Walter Martin Religious InfoNet)

Neiswonger

Pro-life views gain with Obama in office

Support for Abortion Rights Declines

By Julia Duin
www.washingtontimes.com

Popular support for abortion rights has dropped seven points in the past year due in part to the election of a pro-choice Democratic president, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life said Thursday.

In the largest shift in sentiment since pollsters began asking about the topic in 1995, support dropped from 54 to 47 percent in one year. Opposition rose from 40 to 44 percent and the percentage of undecided rose from 6 to 9 percent.

“It’s pretty unusual,” senior Pew researcher Greg Smith said of the change in public attitudes about abortion rights. “In 2007 and 2008, supporters of abortion clearly outnumbered opponents by a 14-point margin. Now the margin is 3 percent. Basically, they are evenly divided.”

Pew’s findings square with a similar Gallup Values and Beliefs survey in May that showed more Americans consider themselves to be pro-life (51 percent) than pro-choice (42 percent).

They also square with a Pew survey released in May showing an even larger drop of 8 percentage points – 54 to 46 percent since August 2008 – of abortion rights advocates. The biggest drops in support were among white mainline Protestants and men. Approval among both groups fell by 10 percent.

Although opponents have yet to actually outnumber supporters of abortion rights, the balance of opinion has shifted dramatically across the culture and multiple religious groups ranging from Catholics to Jews, Mr. Smith said.

And the idea of a “common ground” on abortion, a key tenet of the Obama administration, is apparently not resonating with either major political parties or the religiously affiliated and non-affiliated. The most disenchanted with the idea are white evangelical Protestants, whose support for a middle ground dropped 21 percentage points (from 61 percent to 40 percent) since 2006. The one exception is Roman Catholics, whose support for common ground rose 4 points, from 63 to 67 percent.

Pew figures showed that a large number of liberals no longer consider abortion a key issue, whereas conservatives are increasingly more entrenched in their opposition to the nation’s annual total of 1.2 million abortions. Fifteen percent of all liberals consider abortion an important issue today, compared with 28 percent in 2005, the survey said.

The survey of 4,013 adults, conducted in August, is one of the first indicators of public sentiment on the Obama administration’s first nine months. It has a margin of error of 2 percent.

Pew researchers pinpointed the this past spring as the turning point of public perceptions of the issue.

“There is no one answer that explains the shift,” Mr. Smith said. “The election of a Democratic pro-choice president could be a contributing factor.”

Although survey results showed a drop in approval of legalized abortion, it also showcased a large swatch of the public that wishes the matter would be laid to rest.

In a question about President Obama’s handling of the issue, 42 percent said they didn’t know his stance on abortion, “which is consistent with the decline of the importance of this issue for a lot of people,” Mr. Smith said.

Of the remainder, 29 percent said the president is handling the issue “about right,” 19 percent worry he is supporting abortion too much, and 4 percent say he is not doing enough.

Pew found that support for abortion rights has dropped among Catholics of all stripes, with the biggest decline – 10 points – among white Catholics who attend Mass weekly.

All religious groups on the survey showed sizable drops in abortion rights support. Double-digit drops included Jews (10 percent), white mainline Protestants (10 percent) and white evangelicals who sporadically attend church (12 percent).

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/oct/02/pro-life-views-gain-with-obama-in-office/?feat=home_headlines

The great thing about Obama is that he lives up to the hype. He got us out of Iraq, won the war and rebuilt Afghanistan, closed down Guantanemo, built a wonderful new relationship with Iran through diplomacy, brought peace to the middle east, secured our good relations with Russia and China, recycled the environment and ended world hunger.

Genesis 6:3

And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.

As I was reading through Scripture and Matthew Henry’s Commentary this morning, I was struck by the callousness and coldness of my heart in the area of sanctification. Henry had this to say (emboldened text my emphasis):

Note, 1. It is the corrupt nature, and the inclination of the soul towards the flesh, that oppose the Spirit’s strivings and render them ineffectual. 2. When a sinner has long adhered to that interest, and sided with the flesh against the Spirit, the Spirit justly withdraws his agency, and strives no more. None lose the Spirit’s strivings but those that have first forfeited them.

III. A reprieve granted, notwithstanding: Yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years; so long I will defer the judgment they deserve, and give them space to prevent it by their repentance and reformation. Justice said, Cut them down; but mercy interceded, Lord, let them alone this year also; and so far mercy prevailed, that a reprieve was obtained for six-score years. Note, The time of God’s patience and forbearance towards provoking sinners is sometimes long, but always limited: reprieves are not pardons; though God bear a great while, he will not bear always.

This, of course, is not meant to make downcast the believer, who might be tempted to despair due to the medieval whip; rather, it is but a reminder of God’s work toward sinners. Thankfully, we are not bastards, but sons, and the Lord does not leave us to our own destruction. He has means by which He does this, of course, one of those being Scriptural precepts and examples from which we may draw application to our own lives.

Let such passages be a fearful and reverent reminder of God’s Holiness, but also His patience; His wrath and hatred of sin, but His mercies toward repentant sinners; His justice toward the impenitent men, but his longsuffering and loving discipline toward His children. Blessed be the Lord God Who will save us from our sins and conform us to the likeness of His Son. May we be reminded of such wonderful yet terrible truths when our judgments are clouded by sin and our practice muddied with iniquities. Then let us cling to that mercy that is found only in Christ, trusting not in our merit, but His. Upon considering such, may we be all the more driven to holy and biblical piety, casting off the sin which so easily entangles.

The Lord is good to His children.

Josh Hicks

John M. Frame
Review of Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy

This review appeared originally in Act 3 Review (formerly Reformation and Revival Journal), 14.3 (2005), 97-105. http://www.thirdmill.org/

There is considerable overlap between McLaren’s concerns and mine. I too would like to see less doctrinal wrangling in the church and more love. [1] Like McLaren, I think it’s important to learn from traditions other than our own (43-67) [2] and in controversy to be both more winsome to those who disagree with us and harder on ourselves. I like McLaren’s way of putting it, that in theological dialogue we have the unfortunate tendency to compare our opponents’ worst with our best (136, 140). And I have argued, like McLaren (105-114), for a missional concept of the church: the Great Commission of Matt. 28:18-20 is the fundamental task of the church, so that everything the church does, including worship, ought to have an outward-facing aspect. [3] It has always seemed to me that the church (including its theology) tends to be healthiest when mission is in the forefront, least healthy when it is preoccupied with its own history and trying hard to prove itself right in controversies with other Christians.

In more theoretical matters, too, I resonate to his emphases, for example, on the importance of reading Scripture in its historical context (166-171), and the relational elements in the divine nature (76). I also have called attention to what McLaren calls the “hermeneutic of love” (18, n. 6, 184-85), that knowledge itself is dependent on love in important ways, as in 1 Cor. 8:1-3. [4]

And it may be worth pointing out that one of McLaren’s very negative critics is also one of mine (285). I would defend McLaren against that critic’s charge that McLaren’s gospel is “radically indeterminate.” McLaren does teach, not only generosity, but a generous orthodoxy. And he defines this orthodoxy often in the book. It is orthopraxis, the practice of humility, charity, courage, diligence, (30) love of God and neighbor (184), and it is also an orthodoxy that

…consistently, unequivocally, and unapologetically upholds and affirms the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds. It also acknowledges (rather perversely) that a number of items many hold as vital for orthodoxy are found nowhere in these seminal creeds and adds (somewhat sheepishly) that the creeds should never be used as a club to batter into submission people with honest questions and doubts. It also affirms (this is so Protestant) that Scripture itself remains above creeds and that the Holy Spirit may use Scripture to tweak our creedal understandings and emphases from time to time, so that new creeds are needed to give voice to the cry of faith today. (28) [5]

I love the phrase “generous orthodoxy.” It has a nice ring, like “compassionate conservatism,” and it suggests a balance that should be a goal for all of us. So if “generous orthodoxy” is a movement open to all who share these convictions and seek to practice them, sign me up.

But we need to get more specific. Both God and the devil are in the details. Probably every Christian tradition would say that in the faith there are some nonnegotiables, and there are some other doctrines or practices about which sincere believers may disagree. Where the nonnegotiables are concerned, we seek to be orthodox, without being overbearing about it. Where negotiables are concerned, we seek to be generous. Christians of many traditions have appealed to the old saying, “In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; in all things, charity.” [6]

The problem is that Christians are disagreed about what the essentials are. Doctrines that one group considers essential, other groups consider either untrue or nonessential. This is the reason (together with a general lack of spiritual maturity) why Christians appear, and often are, ungenerous to one another. So one would hope that a book like McLaren’s, which seeks to encourage both orthodoxy and generosity in a fresh way, would try to help us resolve some of these disagreements.

But in that respect, the book is disappointing. Although McLaren renounces relativism (35, 286), it is not clear when and how he would fight for the truth over against error. As we’ve seen, he thinks Scripture and the two early creeds are fundamental. And he says,

Let me go on record as saying that I believe sound doctrine is very, very, very important (Titus 2:1-3:11), and that bad doctrine, while not the root of all evil, is a despicable accomplice to a good bit of the evil in the world. In fact, this book is an attempt to correct what I perceive to be some bad doctrine, including bad doctrine about doctrine. (32)

In the book he fights hard for orthopraxis as he understands it, and for the orthodoxy of his distinctive emphases. But as for the orthodoxy of the teachings of the creeds and Scriptures, McLaren is far more eager to correct cocksureness than to show how us how to correct doctrinal error. This reader, at least, gets the impression often here that we should not bother trying to do that, but should focus on other things. McLaren says on 33 that orthodoxy is “a kind of internalized belief, tacit and personal, that becomes part of you to such a degree that once assimilated, you hardly need to think of it.”

Perhaps that’s the way it will be in heaven. It has not been that way in the present world. The Nicene Creed, which McLaren affirms, for example, is the result of a long period of fierce theological combat. Defenders of that creed, like Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, endured terrible persecution for the truths that McLaren affirms as orthodoxy. Athanasius did need to think about orthodoxy, and constantly. Orthodoxy was under attack, and he saw it as his responsibility to defend it. Would McLaren have joined with him? This book leaves the answer to that question at least unclear.

I doubt that Athanasius would have claimed “to have final orthodoxy nailed down, freeze-dried, and shrink-wrapped forever” (286). He was remarkably flexible on technical theological terminology, for example. Nor did Athanasius, so far as I know, use his doctrinal teachings to “batter into submission people with honest questions and doubts,” but rather to combat those who were subverting the faith of believers and turning seekers toward serious error. There were some fundamental truths that he believed were biblical and worth contending for. If Jesus is not God, he said, then our worship is idolatrous and we have no salvation. The Bible too affirms the Lordship of Christ over against any rival lordship and defines that conflict as spiritual warfare. The prophets, Jesus, and the apostles engaged in sharp theological controversy.

My biggest problem with McLaren is that he does not see doctrinal conflict of this kind as spiritual warfare, as something to engage the Christian’s energy. He thinks he can bypass the need for such warfare by invoking a form of postmodern epistemology [7] and by making broad-based judgments against theological controversialists. He makes vague statements about how we must go beyond both the false certainties of modernism and the uncertainty of pluralistic relativism to some third alternative (287). I presume that he intends this book as an exhibition of that third alternative. But I can’t find in the book any clear instruction on how to deal with the kind of doctrinal controversy Athanasius faced, beyond general admonitions toward gentleness and self-scrutiny. McLaren proposes emergent models of Christian growth, in which earlier stages are preserved, yet transcended, in later stages (275-288), [8] but although these are interesting, they don’t give us any direction on how we should intentionally seek to defend orthodox doctrine.

One cannot, however, invoke the Scriptures and creeds as authoritative without honoring the labor and sacrifice that went into their formulation, and without recognizing that believers may again and again have to emulate that labor and sacrifice. And if we are to invoke the Scriptures when they enjoin generosity, it is important to have some reason to believe that the Scriptures are true and to oppose those who deny their teachings.

McLaren’s actual discussions of doctrinal issues are often very weak. Contrary to his discussion on 161, for example, God-breathed in 2 Tim. 3:16 does not refer only to “creativity and life-giving vitality.” To say that the biblical text is God-breathed is to say that it is the very speech of God, as truly his speech as the divine voice at Mount Sinai. As many evangelical writers have shown, that proposition does not entail a “dictation” theory of inspiration (as McLaren fears, 162, 252-53) or a mechanical view of the contribution of the human writers. It does, however, insure that what Scripture says, God says. Although inerrancy is an extra-biblical term (164), it is important for us to affirm that Scripture doesn’t make mistakes, because God doesn’t make mistakes.

Similarly, the deity of Christ, in Scripture as well as in the Nicene Creed that McLaren affirms, means much more than he says on 69-77. It is not just that when the disciples were around Jesus “they felt—no, more than that, they somehow knew—they were experiencing God” (72). One can “experience” God, of course, in all sorts of ways. Jesus is more than a source of such experience. He is nothing less than “God of God, light of light, very God of very God.” [9]

McLaren’s treatment of theological liberalism is perhaps the worst thing in the book. His parable on 141-143 gives a plausible reconstruction of the motives of some liberals, though I think not of most. But the issue here is not motives but, again, doctrinal content. I still believe with J. Gresham Machen [10] that liberalism is not a form of Christianity, but a different religion [11] altogether. Liberalism can tolerate, when it does not actually teach, wholesale denials of the doctrines of the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, which McLaren affirms. McLaren, again, offers us no resources for dealing with such outright denials of the biblical worldview and the biblical gospel.

I don’t want to press these theological lapses too harshly against McLaren himself. He admits that he is untrained in theology (34). I wish he had chosen not to tread into these waters as deeply as he did, but sometimes “uncredentialed” writers like Blaise Pascal, Soren Kierkegaard, G. K. Chesterton, and C. S. Lewis do have insight not given to us official theological academics. And as I said there is much in McLaren’s book that is true and important. But he seems to lack any understanding of what is required to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). He tells us how not to do it, sometimes helpfully. But he doesn’t tell us how to do it, except, perhaps, by the method of benign neglect. Therefore, he doesn’t give us much useful guidance on how to balance this concern with the others he prefers to talk about. Rather, he seems to say again and again that we should just forget about defending orthodoxy. I have to regard that attitude as naïve. In theology as in international affairs, it is a dangerous world out there. I believe Scripture gives us some directions about church discipline (Matt. 18:15-20, 1 Cor. 5), about the governmental structure of the church (Eph. 4:11-12), about standards for church leaders (1 Tim. 3:1-13), the authority of leaders (Heb. 13:17), tests of orthodoxy (1 John 4:2), and so on, that help us to fight these battles. But you would never guess that from reading McLaren’s book.

McLaren’s theological pacifism is seen also in his statements about non-Christian religions. Here too much of his advice is good: We should see members of other religions as “beloved neighbors, and whenever possible, as dialogue partners and even collaborators” (35, cf. 249). I agree with him that at times we should even protect the interests of other religions (251-258). And we should emphasize that the gospel brings blessings even to those who never come to believe in Christ. But again, McLaren is insensitive to spiritual warfare.

The Bible is sharply negative toward false worship, the worship of idols, rather than the true God. Paul’s missionary labors were not only positive, but also negative: to turn the Gentiles away from their idols to serve Christ (as in Acts 17:29-31, 1 Thess. 1:9). McLaren confuses these issues by talking about “religion” in a negative way: [12] “Jesus did not come to create another exclusive religion…” (109). And he says,
I don’t hope all Jews or Hindus will become members of the Christian religion. But I do hope all who feel so called will become Jewish or Hindu followers of Jesus. (264)

Well, let’s talk about worship then, rather than “religion.” Clearly, followers of Jesus turn away from the worship of false gods (Hinduism) and from non-Messianic attempts to worship the God of the Old Testament. Once you break with the worship of Hindu gods, there is little reason to describe yourself as Hindu. Judaism is different, of course, because of its Old Testament roots. One can be a “Jew for Jesus,” maintaining many of the cultural and liturgical distinctives of Judaism. But Jews for Jesus know as well as converts from Hinduism that embracing Christ involves a sharp break with their former worship, and it can also mean a break with their former communities, even, often, their own families. Insofar as McLaren confuses the issue of false worship, he confuses something of vital importance to the God of Scripture.

So, although I too aspire to “generous orthodoxy,” I think McLaren’s book is often less than helpful in getting me there. And I fear that McLaren has loaded up the concept of generous orthodoxy with so many confusing arguments and unbiblical notions that he is likely to give generous orthodoxy a bad name. That, I think would be a very unfortunate result.

http://www.thirdmill.org/

[1] See my Evangelical Reunion (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991, available now at www.thirdmill.org), and “Machen’s Warrior Children” in Sung Wook Chung, ed., Alister E. McGrath and Evangelical Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 113-147. McLaren sings my song on 125 where he points out that “After protesting Catholic excesses, Protestants started protesting each other” (emphasis his) and ascribes to this battling, in part, the proliferation of denominations.

[2] Pages in parentheses are from McLaren’s book. Other references are in footnotes.

[3] As, for example, in my Contemporary Worship Music (Phillipsburg: P&R, 1997), 20-23.

[4] Frame, Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (Phillipsburg: P&R, 1987), especially 40-49, 153-55.

[5] Compare 261. The primacy of Scripture, even over the creeds, has been another emphasis (some would say hobby) of mine. See “Sola Scriptura in Theological Method,” Appendix 2 of my Contemporary Worship Music (Phillipsburg, N. J.: P&R, 1997), 175-201. I’ve also opposed the definition of orthodoxy in terms of what McLaren describes as “the historical accumulation of precedents” (28). See my Knowledge of God, 313-314.

[6] This saying has been ascribed to Augustine, but I have not been able to locate it in his writings. Hans Rollmann thinks that the earliest form of it was written by Peter Meiderlin in the early 17th century. See his “In Essentials Unity: the Pre-History of a Restoration Movement Slogan,” at http://www.believersweb.org/view.cfm?ID=976.

[7] I won’t go into that here, because McLaren doesn’t say much about it in this book, though he has invoked postmodernism elsewhere and mentions it in the introduction of the present volume (24).

[8] These strike me as rather Hegelian, and they are open to the standard criticism of Hegelian philosophy: if any stage of thought can be negated and transcended by a later one, then how can we have any assurance of truth in the present? McLaren might think this question demands an illegitimate (shrink-wrapped) kind of certainty. But it seems to me this question arises with regard to any level of confidence in one’s beliefs.

[9] I could discuss other theological issues. I think McLaren’s critique of Calvinistic “determinism” (186-87) is a caricature, most ungenerous indeed, and I don’t think McLaren has a clue as to the devastating theological consequences of affirming the alternative of libertarian freedom. See my Doctrine of God, 138-145. Also, I think that McLaren’s association of Roman Catholicism with an emphasis on the Resurrection (64-65), though it fits his larger scheme rather neatly, does not take account of the deeply cross-centered piety in that tradition that we have lately noted, e.g., in Mel Gibson film The Passion of the Christ. And then there are McLaren’s invocations of liberal political positions on the environment, feminism, and other issues which he elevates to matters of theological principle, while attacking fundamentalists for so elevating conservative positions (185).

[10] Christianity and Liberalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1923). Liberalism has, of course, changed its form since this book was written, and various hybrids between liberalism and evangelicalism have appeared. But Machen’s argument against the distinctives of liberalism has never been answered.

[11] I will not apologize for using this word. See below.

[12] This is reminiscent of Karl Barth. I don’t think it is helpful in theology to take a perfectly good word and give it a negative definition in order to achieve a polemical purpose.

I’m getting a lot this ‘what a “good god” would do’ thing now in emails and such (backwash from the new atheism).

Try this: Instead of looking supplicant and making excuses for God as if He had been having a bad day, say plainly that “any God that would not judge persons, nations, entire civilizations and even the world would not be a God of any great significance and so unworthy of true faith or sincere worship”.

One way or another we need to face the problem. Either we present God as a mushy glow of love and compassion that would really like to do something about evil but either can’t or won’t, or we present him as he presents himself in scripture and push the problem back at the accuser.

Those without God inevitably absolve the universe of evil in order to avoid the God that judges evil and so make themselves innocent at the cost of moral realism.

Since an ethical life is half of any kind of a reasonable human life once the good is drowned out there is little more about us of any real value, and this is where the atheist wants us to be; with them in the meaningless jumble of protons with neither truth nor goodness.

If we are going to have a God we need him to be a God worth having and anything other than the Christian God is easily reduced to triviality.

A friend wrote to me…

“Someone who says “but a good god would would do ___” is measuring his theoretical god against his *own* standard of what he thinks “good” is. In doing so, he really has made himself to be God, and what he calls “god” is merely a citizen of his own kingdom.” VW

And I think that that is true for the most part but we can also see that since God himself put in our hearts and very constitution (as sentient beings created in the image of God) his own moral law and ethical categories, we are born into the world with the ethical equipment to recognize justice and find God through such activity. Thus we can only in this limited sense “judge God” in that we have the ability to see what he does and that he is always good.

I think this kind of exercise of judgement is found even in holy scripture when we are called upon to not only relent, but to recognize the goodness of God. We are called not just to admit that God is powerful and sovereign over Heaven and Earth, but that he is actually good. His goodness is not reducible to merely his authority and omnipotence but is an actual moral quality inherent in the Godhead itself. Thus perhaps in judging God by the “good” we could say that we are really judging God by God, or maybe measuring God by his own moral consistency.

Neiswonger

Doug TenNapel: Changing the Rules for Telling the Story

http://www.apologetics.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=393:doug-tennapel-changing-the-rules-for-telling-the-story&catid=43:kkla-995-fm-los-angeles&Itemid=74 Click the link to hear the show.

C.S. Lewis is known for saying things no one else was allowed to say in ways that everyone was willing to hear it. Were he alive today he might have been writing graphic novels and designing video games. Doug TenNapel is walking in that same great tradition but communicating the timeless to a different generation with different needs and expectations. What he can do with a pen and paper is extraordinary, if sometimes disturbing, but acutely suited to the times. His success in video game design, comic books, graphic novels, television, and now film is no less extraordinary. The Apologetics.com Radio Show welcomes Doug TenNapel to talk about art, faith, hope, creation, aliens, monsters, God, cats, and transcendent themes of universal value with Christopher Neiswonger and Lindsay Brooks.

“THR is reporting that “Wolverine” star Hugh Jackman has signed on to star in and produce “Ghostopolis”. “Ghostopolis” is a soon to be released graphic novel from Doug TenNapel, and which was recently optioned by Disney. Hugh Jackman will also produce through ‘Seed Productions’ alongside the Gotham Group. TenNapel’s work is currently in high demand with “Tommysaurus Rex” set to go over at Universal Pictures, “Creature Tech” at New Regency and “Monster Zoo” at Paramount Pictures.” Paul Larn thecinemapost.com

A Person is a Person No Matter How Small: Bioethics and the Christian Faith

A Person is a Person No Matter How Small: Bioethics and the Christian Faith (click link for audio)

Join the apologetics.com team with their special guest, Jennifer Lahl of the Center for Bioethics and Culture CBC-Network.org. Bioethics can be confusing stuff. Embryonic experimentation, Cloning, Harvesting human body parts, preying on the weak and the sick, genetic manipulation; the list goes on.

The more our technological ability increases the more the scientific and medical communities seem to ask the rest of us to stay out of their business, and business it is to the tune of billions every year.

The Christian could be thought of as the first to pose important bioethical questions about life, the value of life, and the moral norms that should be in place to protect people from being used as things or treated like animals. How much more now when we are on the edge of being able to do whatever we will but have no idea whether we should.

Christopher Neiswonger and Lindsay Brooks.

http://www.apologetics.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=389:a-person-is-a-person-no-matter-how-small-bioethics-and-the-christian-faith&catid=43:kkla-995-fm-los-angeles&Itemid=74

The Center for Research in Science cordially invites you to celebrate the start of APU’s new academic year by attending our Science, Faith, and Culture lecture series. The 2009-2010 lecture series is entitled, “The Sermon on the Mount and Contemporary Christian Ethics,” reflecting our campus-wide Matthew 5 scriptural theme. The motivation for our focus on ethics is to encourage the audience to consider the way in which we conduct our lives within our chosen disciplines – vocationally and otherwise – in a Christ-like way in our increasingly sociologically and technologically complex world.

Please join us for our inaugural lecture, “The Ethics of God: a Closer Look at Traditional Christian Ethics,” by Christopher Neiswonger from World Vision International, at 6:30pm on Wednesday, September 16th, in Perry Lecture Hall at the brand new Segerstrom Science Center on APU’s West Campus (675 E. Foothill in Azusa). http://www.apu.edu/cris/lectures/

About the topic: These days everyone is trying to reinvent the wheel. The problem is that so few in our culture remember what the wheel looked like. The old ways have not outlived their significance and Neiswonger would argue that they may be our only hope at an applied ethic that is practical, reasonable, and reconcilable with sacred scripture. Far from being a secondary source in our axiology, revelation seems primary to the very idea of practicing an ethical life. The historic framework has always held two primary commitments: the moral law of God and the cultivation of the traditional Christian virtues. This lecture will take the listener from the existence of God, through the defense of a basic orthodoxy, to the promotion of a healthy spiritual life in faith and practice.

About the speaker: Christopher Neiswonger, JD; Global Centre – World Vision International. Specializing in classical Christian ethics, Christopher Neiswonger has taught and served in many churches over the past twenty years. His personal ethics are echoed in his work on child protection, immigration, and international trademark defense for World Vision International. Neiswonger received his Juris Doctor from Trinity Law School and his Master of Arts degree in Communication and Culture from Trinity Graduate School, and is currently completing an MBA in International Development.

Why is it that many Christians who decry Christian political involvement (read Tony Campolo types) because power and politics are tools of Satan, then go on to argue for government solutions to global warming and health care? Do they really want Satan and his tools cooling our plannet and running our health care? Perhaps a more balanced approach is needed. 

Should Christians be involved in government?  Isn’t Christ our hope not politics? Is any influence of Christian thought on the state a violation of the separation of church and state?  In this episode of Apologetics.com radio, Dean Donald McConnell of Trinity Law School, Doug Eaton, and Lane Chaplin discuss several questions that pertain to the Christian’s role in government and the governments role in Christianity.

http://www.apologetics.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=385:christianity-the-church-and-government&catid=43:kkla-995-fm-los-angeles&Itemid=74

This show can also be downloaded for free as a podcast in itunes. Simply search for apologetics.com in the itunes store.

Does God Exist? Putting Christian Claims to the Worldview Test.

Ken Samples of “Reasons to Believe” joins the Apologetics.com team to consider how the Christian worldview measures up against its rivals: with Harry Edwards, Lindsay Brooks and Christopher Neiswonger.

Click this link to listen to the audio of the radio show

From Kenneth Richard Samples book “A World of Difference: Putting Christian Truth-Claims to the Worldview Test“

“Learn How Historic Christianity Is Superior to Other Truth-Claims At a time when Christian belief is constantly challenged, understanding different worldviews can help Christians think and live faithfully. Kenneth Samples’s own life-and-death crisis encourages believers to develop a worldview perspective based on truth, critical thinking, and logic. In A World of Difference, he addresses the historic Christian worldview and evaluates four modern-day competitors–Islam, naturalism, postmodernism, and pantheistic monism. The use of nine distinct and challenging tests shows how all worldviews should be assessed. With compelling insight into Scripture, history, science, and theology, A World of Difference will challenge and strengthen your beliefs.

Endorsements:
“Christians can no longer afford to be ignorant of how to think and see the world in light of their worldview and alternative worldviews. A World of Difference is the right book at the right time.” –J. P. Moreland, distinguished professor of philosophy, Biola University; author, Kingdom Triangle

“One of my biggest concerns for Christians struggling to make their way through the intellectual challenges of our age is that they often don’t have the basic categories to think biblically about their own faith. Ken Samples’s A World of Difference will give them those categories.”–Kim Riddlebarger, co-host, The White Horse Inn; author, A Case for Amillennialism and The Man of Sin.

Kenneth Richard Samples is senior research scholar with a focus on theological and philosophical apologetics at Reasons To Believe, which provides research and teaching on the harmony of God’s revelation in the words of the Bible and the facts of nature. An adjunct instructor of apologetics at Biola University, Samples also tackles tough faith questions in his book Without a Doubt: Answering the 20 Toughest Faith Questions.”

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Click here if you wish to purchase the book.

http://www.apologetics.com/index.php?option=com_ixxocart&Itemid=65&p=product&id=85&parent=8

Psalm 119:4  Thou hast commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently.

While we can see the error of the Legalists on one hand and the Libertines on the other, we should never let such excesses paralyze our own due diligence in the pursuit of holiness. And, mind you, the pursuit of holiness cannot be rightly taken up without the Law of God, for it is the standard by which we measure our progress. Granted, we will only have gradual progress until that day the Lord returns and makes us like He is, but we are nonetheless charged to “keep [God's] precepts diligently.”

Do we love Jesus? Then we ought keep His commandments (John 14:15). Do we hate our sin? Then we ought diligently study the Law to see our sin in light of God’s perfection (Romans 7:7b). Do we love one another? Then we ought seek their good, for Christ’s sake (Exodus 20:12-17). Do we realize the exceeding sinfulness of sin? Then we ought see that the mortification thereof is more important than life or limb (Matthew 5:29, 30).

Christians have the privilege of possessing an alien righteousness that gives us a right standing before the Holy God of Scripture. In light of such a wonderful truth, is it really so difficult to believe that God expects, nay demands, our pursuit of perfect obedience to His Law? It shouldn’t be. Romans 12 calls it out “reasonable service.” Does this mean we can merit God’s favor by keeping His Law? Of course not, because even in our greatest law-keeping we are yet deficient. We don’t keep the law to merit favor, but as a response to undeserved favor lavished upon us.

Would that we can echo the Psalmist when he says, “O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day.”

Josh

Josh

Neiswonger says: “How do all of you anti-Natural Law extremists deal with something like this? I know how. You don’t.”

Saudi Child Bride Turned Back Over to 80-Year-Old Husband
Wednesday, August 26, 2009

A Saudi Arabian father forced his 10-year-old daughter to return to her 80-year-old husband Sunday, after she was found hiding at the home of her aunt for 10 days, Arab News reported.

The young girl’s husband, who denies he is 80 despite family claims, accused the aunt of violating the terms of his marriage, allowed by Sharia Law.

“My marriage is not against Sharia. It included the elements of acceptance and response by the father of the bride,” he told a local newspaper.

A member of the National Society for Human Rights said there are no regulations in place to stop the marriage of young girls, which is seen as harmful to their wellbeing.

“Such marriages are considered a gross violation of charters on the rights of children, which the Kingdom has signed and which set the age of adulthood at 18,” Maatouq Al-Abdullah told Arab News.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,543060,00.html

Neiswonger

Psalm 119:4 Thou hast commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently.

Previously, we discussed the Right Group (as opposed to the Wrong Group) within the context of the Libertines. Today I’d like to explore the Right Group within the context of the Legalists. It will really be quite brief, because I’d like to simply reference some sermons from Pastor Todd Ruddell that go into detail concerning the relationship of God’s Law to the believer.

Although Legalists carry the aura about themselves as folks who love God’s Law, we must understand that such boastings are all a charade. Due to their misuse of God’s Law they may rightly be classified as antinomian, for their abuse and misuse is truly against God’s intended purpose of the Law in the life of the believer. Legalism proper can be defined in two ways:

1. Legalism: Trying to gain merit before God by keeping the Law.

2. Legalism: Requiring more of people than God requires.

Having already addressed the number 2 definition in a previous post, I’d like to hit on the first definition as it is the import of this particular series. The Law of God obeyed by the works of man cannot merit any favor from God, and that is not its purpose. While the Libertines have taken that and decided to abrogate or severely distort the purpose of God’s Law altogether, the Legalists have done quite the opposite.

The Pharisees not only thought they could merit favor before God by keeping the Law, but in order to “keep” the Law they had to change the depth and breadth of the Law altogether. Jesus called them white washed tombs because they “kept” these Laws on the outside, but they did not truly keep the Law in its fullness. Christianity is a heart religion. The Religion of Yahweh was a heart religion. It is not enough to simply keep the outward letter of the law, but we must be compelled to obey the Law in our hearts too.

This, of course, was Christ’s purpose in preaching the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5). He would say to the Pharisees, “You have heard it said, but I say unto you…,” and in doing so would tear down any pride the Pharisees may have had in their so-called “law keeping.” They were like white washed tombs because on the outside they looked nice and clean, but on the inside were full of dead men’s bones.

The Law is not a means of salvation for anyone. The Law cannot be fully kept by any mere human born to woman. All of Adam’s posterity have broken God’s Commandments in thought, word, and deed, so to pretend that we may attain salvation by the keeping of said law is a farce. The prophet Isaiah has referenced that even the “greatest” of our “righteousness” is filthy rags in the site of the thrice Holy God of Scripture. God does demand perfect obedience to His Law to have salvation, and that is exactly why Christ had to come and obey the Law perfectly on behalf of His people so that we will be able to stand before God as pure, holy, and undefiled. And THAT’s the good news of the Gospel, Friends!

Christ paid our debt that He did not owe. But we must never see God’s Law as a means to merit favor before God or a way to salvation. No, salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Rather, our obedience to God’s Law should be a loving response to the glorious truth that God, in His mercy, has saved us from ourselves, passing us from death unto life. Our love, study, half-obedience, and failure of God’s Law are to serve as a reminder that we cannot please God with our works, and a reminder of the good news that Jesus has pleased the Father on our behalf.

So, is the Law of God binding upon the believer? Absolutely. Does our half-hearted keeping of God’s Law merit us anything before the Almighty? Absolutely not. Does this fact negate our responsibility to obey God’s Law to the best of our abilities and with the utmost sincerity of our hearts and minds? Absolutely not. For God’s Law is good, perfect, holy and just. Our hearts are not. We seek to obey and uphold God’s Law because He has commanded it be so. Jesus said, “He who loves me, obeys my commands.” The following links are a sermon series that my pastor preached on Matthew 5 concerning the Law, the distinctions therein, the proper & improper uses thereof, and its relationship to the believer. I implore you to listen to them, as they are greatly edifying and helpful.

1. The Law or the Prophets: Who Are They?

2. Distinctions in the Law: How is Law Used in Scripture?

3. Distinctions in the Law, Part 2: Ceremonial, Judicial

4. Distinctions in the Law, Part 3: The Moral Law, Part 1

5. Distinctions in the Law, Part 4: The Moral Law, Part 2 – the Moral Law Abides)

6. Uses of the Law, Part 1: Unlawful Uses – As a Means of Justification

7. Uses of the Law, Part 2: Unlawful Uses (Cont.)

8. Uses of the Law, Part 3: Lawful Uses – Who’s Law Will Prevail?

9. Lawful Uses of the Law – How Do You Define Sin?

10. Preaching the Law – The Revealer of Sin

11. Uses of the Law, Part 4: Lawful Uses – The Law Binds us to Christ

12. Uses of the Law, Part 5: Lawful Uses – An Affectionate Rule of Life

13. Preaching the Law – Do You Love God’s Law?

14. Introduction – The Greatest and the Least

15. Are You Least or Greatest in the Kingdom?

16. Keeping the Least Commandments

17. Keeping the Least Commandments, Part 2

18. True Biblical Greatness

19. Doing and Teaching the Least Commandments

Josh

A 17-year-old runaway who claims she fled her Muslim family’s home in Ohio because she feared becoming the victim of an “honor killing” will stay in Florida — temporarily — a judge ruled Friday.

Rifqa Bary, a Christian convert whose parents are Muslim immigrants from Sri Lanka, will remain in foster care in Florida until another hearing is held Sept. 3.

The teenager disappeared last month and police used phone and computer records to track her to the Rev. Blake Lorenz, pastor of Orlando, Fla.-based Global Revolution Church, who she had met through an online Facebook prayer group.

Rifqa fled to Florida after her parents, Mohamed and Aysha Bary, learned that she was baptized earlier this year without their knowledge. The parents reported her missing to Columbus Police on July 19. Weeks later, using cell phone and computer records, police tracked the girl to the Rev. Blake Lorenz, pastor of the Orlando-based Global Revolution Church. FOXNews.com’s calls to Lorenz were not returned.

In an emotional six-minute interview with WFTV in Florida, Rifqa, who met Lorenz through an online Facebook group, said she expects to be killed if she is forced to return to Ohio.

“If I had stayed in Ohio, I wouldn’t be alive,” she said. “In 150 generations in family, no one has known Jesus. I am the first — imagine the honor in killing me.”

“There is great honor in that, because if they love Allah more than me, they have to do it. It’s in the Koran,” said in the interview, which has been posted on YouTube.

Rifqa, who is seen wearing a large diamond cross during the interview, said she had to hide her Bible “for years,” and she repeatedly “snuck out” to attend Christian prayer meetings. She referred to previous victims of so-called honor killings, in which young Muslim women were murdered for bringing dishonor to their families.

“They love God more than me, they have to do this,” Bary told WFTV. “I’m fighting for my life. You guys don’t understand. … I want to worship Jesus freely, that’s what I want. I don’t want to die.”

Contacted by FOXNews.com, Rifqa’a father Mohamed Bary said he has no intentions of harming his daughter.

“I love my daughter and I want her to come back to the family,” he said, declining further comment.

If sent back to Ohio, Rifqa would not be allowed to live on her own, since the state does not have an emancipation statute.

The Barys reportedly emigrated from Sri Lanka in 2000 to seek medical treatment for Rifqa, who lost the sight in her right eye following an accident at home.

Barbra Joyner, Mohamed Bary’s lawyer, declined to comment on Rifqa’s interview with WFTV but said transferring the case back to Ohio will be in the “best interest” of the girl.

Craig McCarthy, an attorney for Aysha Bary, agreed that the case should be moved back to Ohio and added that the girl’s mother is afraid for her safety.

“[Aysha Bary] has shifted to downright frightened, scared of what might confront her publicly on Friday,” McCarthy told FOXNews.com. “She is scared for her family, of losing her daughter, of never knowing the truth of what happened and for her own safety.”

McCarthy said Rifqa’s account of how she traveled to Florida has “holes in it,” but declined to elaborate. He also declined to respond to allegations that Bary’s father abused the girl when he learned of her conversion to Christianity.

Dr. Phyllis Chesler, an author and professor of psychology at the Richmond College of the City University of New York, said she believes Bary will be in danger if she is sent back to her parents.

“Anyone who converts from Islam is considered an apostate, and apostasy is a capital crime,” Chesler wrote FOXNews.com. “If she is returned to her family, if she is lucky, they will isolate her, beat her, threaten her, and if she is not ‘persuaded’ to return to Islam, they will kill her. They have no choice.”

Chesler, who wrote “Are Honor Killings Simply Domestic Violence?” for Middle East Quarterly, said the tradition of such slayings is not fully understood by most Americans, including those in law enforcement.

“She escaped from her family’s brutal tyranny and shamed her family further through public exposure,” Chesler said. “Muslim girls and women are killed for far less.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,541540,00.html

Neiswonger

http://apologetics.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=379:meet-the-staff-on-sept-5-2009&catid=64:staff