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This Nunes disclosure...

All bets are off now that House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes has disclosed that intelligence agencies under President Obama spied on President-elect Donald Trump and his transition staff. From Nunes's statement, it's clear Obama's intelligence agencies refused to black out names in their transcripts of phone interceptions, then circulated those transcripts among those not authorized to see them.

The problem?

It's two-fold.

First, for weeks now, the media hasn't stopped mocking the President for saying President Obama was bugging him. Turns out he was right... 


Gov. Jerry Brown declares faith in the universal flood...

The Sacramento Bee just ran this headline:

Jerry Brown compares fighting climate change to building Noah’s Ark

Happily, Brown wasn't lampooning Noah, lumping "climate change deniers" in with him. Rather, he said:

It’s very hard to deal with something down the road. You know, when Noah wanted to build his Ark, most of the people laughed at him: "Why are you building this damn Ark?" Well, lucky he did, because that saved all the species and Noah and his family. [Brown added] We’ve got to build our Ark, too, by stopping climate change, by stopping dangerous pollutants and doing it as soon as possible.

Climate change Calamity Jane or climate change Denier, you gotta love the governor of California declaring that Noah's Ark "saved all the species and Noah and his family."


On the death of truth: a lament...

All the ways of a man are clean in his own sight, But the LORD weighs the motives. (Proverbs 16:2)

Recently, we've had several posts calling out Liam Goligher and Carl Trueman for misquoting Calvin. David Talcott's post explained why reformed men want to claim Calvin for their side. To the contrary, as Dr. Talcott gently warned readers, "Calvin thought sex meant something in civil society." This is the heart of the issue.

Sadly, the point is lost on reformed men today. Dr. Talcott's kind assumption that reformed men care about truth is wrong. What Reformed men keep track of isn't truth, but spin, relationships, and outward appearances. What else could account for the refusal of men like Goligher and Trueman to correct their blatant falsehoods? What else could account for the hostile response of other reformed men to these men being called out for their deception?

Truth matters. When Goligher and Trueman feed their readers a lie, it tarnishes their own reputations among the godly. Beyond that, their lie slanders a man who cannot defend himself. If he were alive, he could file charges against them, but John Calvin died some time ago...


James B. Comey is a liar...

FBI Director James B. Comey on how pristine his investigation of Hillary Clinton was:

"No outside influence of any kind was brought to bear."

Hillary Clinton's husband, Bill, on how pristine his conduct was in the Oval Office:

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman."

They take us for fools...


Pastors and rules of professional conduct...

Should pastors and theologians be held to at least the same ethical standards as lawyers? 

Scrupulous fidelity to truth and the meaning of words is not normally the first quality one associates with a lawyer. An undergraduate faculty advisor referred to my decision to go to law school as getting a "license to steal." The fictional law firm Dewey, Cheatham & Howe entered an appearance or two in a civil procedure professor's hypotheticals in the first year of law school. You'll also find the entry "Lawyers, Derogatory Names for" in a legal usage dictionary. Along with old standbys like "ambulance chaser," "hired gun," "pettifogger," and "shyster," other epithets like "latrine lawyer," "mouthpiece," and "Philadelphia lawyer" abound. This last one—"Philadelphia lawyer"—can bear either a positive or negative sense. It can mean either "an ultracompetent lawyer who knows the ins and outs of legal technicalities" or "a shrewdly unscrupulous lawyer."1

Because of this sadly deserved unsavory reputation, because of the awesome responsibility they have for the lives and property of their clients, and because of the complexity of the law even before it exploded like a supernova in the 20th century, lawyers must submit themselves to well-settled rules of professional conduct. One of these rules demands candor to the court.2 This rule requires...


Critique of Pastor Keller's promotion of woman deacons, part 5: RPCES history in need of correction...

The Presbyterian Church in America's magazine, byFaith, recently published an article by Tim Keller arguing that we should change our Book of Church Order to allow women deacons. We have had a series of posts critiquing Tim Keller's article and this is the fifth in that series. (Here are installments one, two, three, four, five, and six.)

First, this excerpt from Keller's article which we'll see is in need of correction:

A Personal History
In 1982 the Reformed Presbyterian Church Evangelical Synod (RPCES) joined with the PCA shortly after its 154th Synod had narrowly defeated a motion to ordain women as deacons. But the 156th Synod added, “We also remind churches that they are free to elect Spirit-filled women as deaconesses and set them apart by prayer... We affirm the right of a local church to have a separate body of unordained women who may be called deaconesses.” The 1982 PCA General Assembly did not consider the actions of the RPCES Synods to be binding on us, but rather “valuable and significant material which will be used in the perfecting of the Church,” and therefore to be granted respect.

In this first paragraph of his "Personal History," Tim Keller tells us the 154th (1976) RPCES Synod "narrowly defeated a motion to ordain women as deacons."

In fact, the request made by the Study Committee on Role of Women in the Church, that the Synod change its polity to "ordain women as deacons," received the following response...