BaylyBlog: Out of our minds, too...

Still evangelical after all these years...

(Tim) Some of our elders and closest friends think the commitment David and I have to evangelicalism is quixotic, with the kindest of them hoping we'll see the light some day, and give it up. It's not likely.

Take the sermon text this past Lord's Day, for instance. It was Matthew 22:34-40, where Matthew records the exchange between Jesus and a lawyer who asks Him which is the greatest commandment? Jesus answers that the greatest commandments is to love God with all our heart and soul and mind.

Today's evangelicalism has eviscerated love of much of its objective biblical content, so I'm not suggesting anyone take out membership in a megachurch and join in a sing-along...

Complementarianism simply a private Christian conviction...

(Tim) Several of us have been having a conversation about what I consider far and away the best work on sexuality in print today, Stephen B. Clark’s Man and Woman in Christ. If you’re a Titus 2 woman, a pastor, or an elder and you haven’t read Clark, you should know that this book written by a Roman Catholic layman is indispensable. Traditional complementarian literature such as Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood can never be more than a stopgap measure. Although helpful, such works are only a hodgepodge of viewpoints and perspectives, never approaching a theology of sexuality. Why?

At the heart of the movement known as “Complementarianism” is the commitment to saying sex matters only in the church and home and only among Christians. It’s a private affair for those who affirm the authority of Scripture because of their Christian faith, and this private affair is only applicable in the private Christian spheres of the church and the home. One looks in vain for complementarians’ application of the order of creation to the military, courts, law enforcement, education, business, or government. The silence is deafening.

As with abortion in the late seventies and early eighties, we again are humiliated by having to turn to Roman Catholics for the doctrinal work needed for our time. While evangelical marketing mavens cop relevant postures and talk loudly in restaurants about being missional and the necessity of contextualizing, Roman Catholics do the heavy lifting against the heresies of our time. What shame we should feel.

These comments exchanged with several brothers by private E-mail led to this response by Bill Mouser, a dear brother in the Lord who's been a great encouragement to me for many years, now. Mouser, the head of the International Council for Gender Studies, writes...

Muslim evangelism, the evangelical or Coptic way...

(Tim, w/thanks to David) The International Foundation (aka The Family, The Fellowship, The Fellowship Foundation, and Jesus Plus Nothing), is the sponsor of the National Prayer Breakfast, long seen as ground zero of evangelical influence in Washington D.C. More recently, though, The International Foundation has become better known for promoting syncretism with its rabbis and imams at the podium. In keeping with its promotion of Muslim-Christian rapprochement, The International Foundation has become much-enamored with Mark Siljander and his approach to Islam.

Mr. Siljander, a former high-profile evangelical congressman from Michigan recently indicted for money laundering, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice, just published a book opposing the historic Christian position on Islam (that it's simply another Christian heresy). Mr. Siljander is touring the country with his revisionist gospel of misunderstood Islam and its Quran, and in this he's typical of a host of former-evangelical (my label) missionaries who say 'God' and 'Allah' are both names for the True God, that there's no reason for Muslim converts to Christianity to stop going to the mosque for daily prayers, and that baptism of these converts and membership in a Christian church is unnecessary given the dire consequences of conversion in an Islamic nation...

Not your mother's DTS...

"The fact that the women were there during the most significant events in the life of Jesus meant that the apostles, the male apostles could not write the Gospels without collaborating with the women." -Ms. Carolyn Custis James in Dallas Theological Seminary chapel on March 28, 2008

(Tim, w/thanks to John) During a CBMW council meeting about ten years ago, I listened to one of the high priests of evangelical exegetical scholarship rebuke the council for our work opposing gender-neutered Bible translations. Wayne Grudem had been excited at the possibility that an invitation to sit in on the council meeting might be enough of an enticement to get this scholar to allow CBMW to use his name on the council or as a member of the Board of Reference, but instead of being awed by the company he'd been given entree to, he took the opportunity to poke us in the nose...

Fleeing sinking ships

(David) It's hard for anyone committed to ecclesiastical purity not to view J.I. Packer's recent departure from the Anglican Church of Canada through jaundiced eyes.

Dr. Packer, at age 81, finally finds a cause worth quitting Anglicanism over. According to Packer, "poisonous liberalism" has consumed the Anglican church in the form of her recent dalliance with homosexuality. Packer leaves the Anglican Church of Canada for the extra-territorial "Province of the Southern Cone" based in South America.

Our appreciation for Dr. Packer's opposition to homosexuality is tempered by the realization that his stalwart support for Anglicanism influenced many into the Anglican church despite its long history of opposition to Biblical truth both corporately (women's ordination, authority of Scripture) and personally by its officers (Williams, Robinson, Spong, et al).

Indeed, as with Dr. Stott, the die was cast as early as 1966 when Martyn Lloyd-Jones warned Stott, Packer and other Church of England stalwarts of the need to break with their denomination at the annual meeting of Great Britain's Evangelical Alliance--a warning scorned by Stott and ignored by Packer. It's to Dr. Packer's credit that he actually leaves--something Stott never did. But it leaves a sour taste in the mouth to know that neither Stott nor Packer have ever acknowledged the slightest debt to Llloyd-Jones for his 1966 warning, or the slightest error in ignoring it for so many years.

Slip sliding away: Twenty year Wheaton prof on "sexual preference"...

God only knows
God makes his plan
The informations unavailable
To the mortal man
We work our jobs
Collect our pay
Believe we're gliding down the highway
When in fact we're slip slidin away

                        - Paul Simon

(Tim) Yesterday, one of our congregation's Wheaton alumni was talking about other Wheaton alumni she keeps in touch with. She described her friends' typical post-graduate spiritual condition as consisting of a crisis experience a few years after graduation in which a decision is made between throwing it all away or turning and facing the fact that they're a sinner and coming to true Christian faith. Her grief was obvious as she described the spiritual bankruptcy so often characterizing her friends' post-Wheaton lives...

Just down the street from our church-houses...

"For from the least of them even to the greatest of them, Everyone is greedy for gain, And from the prophet even to the priest Everyone deals falsely. They have healed the brokenness of My people superficially, Saying, 'Peace, peace,' But there is no peace. Were they ashamed because of the abomination they have done? They were not even ashamed at all; They did not even know how to blush. Therefore they shall fall among those who fall; At the time that I punish them, They shall be cast down," says the LORD. (Jeremiah 6:13-15)

(Tim) A few years after Yale was founded, a student spoke critically of one of Yale's tutors saying, "He has no more grace than this chair." Yale's response was swift: The student was expelled and, despite his apology (contra Wikipedia), Yale refused to reinstate him. Centuries later, Yale named one of her Divinity School buildings for this student. It's the only building ever named for a student who was expelled.

One of this student's contemporaries also attended Yale a few years earlier when Yale was just being chartered. At that time, Jonathan Edwards himself was caught up in the discipline of Yale's tutors. Their infraction?

They were promoting Arminian theology. Yale had been founded because of Harvard's betrayal of Christian doctrine, so no one involved in Yale's founding was about to let it happen again.

What does Yale discipline today?

This past year, a Yale art student regularly impregnated herself (artificially, with a syringe), then killed the babies she never knew by taking oral abortifacients--all of which she carefully documented with a video camera for display at a Yale art exhibition. Yale's administration was quite embarrassed and released a statement...

Putin, patriarchs, and thugs...

(Tim, w/thanks to Lucas) From my perspective, there's little difference between the claims of unity of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. Both amount to little more than, "We're real, real old."

No duh.

Read Calvin's Institutes and you'll see that evangelical reformed doctrine and practice are much older, going back to the Apostles themselves with much support in the early and medieval church. I like to tell my congregation that the Roman Catholic church didn't exist until the Council of Trent when it went off in schism. Yes, it's slightly hyperbolic, but a good bit true, too.

Here's an article from the New York Times documenting something those of us with brothers and sisters in Christ working in former Soviet bloc countries knew already. Just as Orthodoxy's scribes were tight with the KGB before Communism's fall, they're tight now with the blinkered nationalistic thugs governing these countries today. And Orthodoxy's patriarchs are in The Man's hip pockets...

Young evangelicals: "I'm not for killing babies, but I'm pro-choice."

(Tim, w/thanks to David and James) Tonight, our third year Pastors College students start studying Iain Murray's splendid Evangelicalism Divided. If you haven't read it, do.

When it came out in 2000, I marked pages right and left. Now, getting ready to teach the class, I'm reading it again and it's packing the same wallop it did the first time. Murray proves evangelicalism ceased being a community of faith at least sixty years ago, and now is only a community of experience and sentiment.

In other words, today's evangelicals are the great, great, great, great grandchildren of Schleiermacher, the great, great grandchildren of the Auburn Affirmation heretics, the grandchildren of Nelson Bell and his son-in-law, Billy Graham...

Chelsea Clinton drawing water at the well...

(Tim) Within the church today, why are we so reticent to recognize sexual distinctions that go beyond God's command or certain "roles" the result of His command? Pastors and elders can bring ourselves to swallow the very specific biblical prohibitions against women serving as elders, and the equally specific commands for wives to submit to their husbands--even going so far as to defend those prohibitions with some small talk of the nature of sexuality (although we always call it "gender" rather than "sex" because gender is a social construct while sex is a hard biological reality); but still, despite this supposed submission to the biblical command, we show a complete absence of any biblical theology of sexuality.

Why? Why are we so chip-on-the-shoulderish when it comes to a discussion of the nature of man and woman beyond the obvious body parts (which are undeniable and very useful for advertising), and certain small aspects of authority in the church and home? Why do we read sexuality in such a mind-bogglingly narrow way? We claim to love diversity, right? So why such a penurious, such a tight-waddish reading of this one so basic to our lives?

A central part of understanding our culture is seeing the hatred for distinctions at its core, and few distinctions are more despised than this one present in the womb from our earliest days--male and female.

Typical believers in Jesus Christ will think we've seen the goodness of sex when we've decided to marry a woman rather than a man...

Franky's Haming it up again...

(Tim, w/thanks to Mark) Speaking of Senator Obama, Franky Schaeffer's using the current ruckus to kill his father. For the second or third time.

Remember the account of Noah's sons, how the youngest, Ham, saw his father in a drunken stupor and left the tent to broadcast his father's nakedness? How did Noah's two eldest respond?

Is the PCA fundamentalist?

(Tim) Ross from New Zealand, by way of Scotland, comments: "I have just come from a Fundamentalist list which looks and sounds remarkably like this one. Would it be fair to call the Presbyterian Church in America the fundamentalist wing of the broader Presbyterian & Reformed tradition? "

Ross, here in America, 'fundamentalist' is used in a variety of ways, most commonly for those who hold a religious belief in life after death and act accordingly. Although he'd deny it, this is the best way to understand the Fundamentalism project of the elder dean of American church history, Martin Marty.

There's another sense, though, that hearkens back to the early decades of the twentieth century when Christians first starting fighting with some zeal against modernism's heresies and got a bad name for it...

A statement to sign...

(David) Evangelicalism's perfervid heart pulses with non-binding statements signed by non-ecclesiastical authorities: the climate yesterday, the essence of the Gospel the day before that, the real status of Israel before God last month, the meaning of manhood and womanhood last year....

Today it's how we should get along with Muslims. Tomorrow, who knows? The only thing certain is that with tomorrow's dawn will arrive another piece of Evangelical pablum to which significant signatories will have added their agreement.

Oh, another weighty Evangelical statement on an important issue of our time? Nahh. Just a Hot or Not test for mid-tier Evangelical celebrities. Am I alive? Yup, read my name in print today. Hot? Well, I was just asked to sign another statement. How hot? At least a 6: CJ signed it too.

It's been this way for decades, to our shame. Year after year of meaningless statements, each statement dwarfed by the list of signatories appended to the end. Don't think it's the statement that matters. The thing that really matters is the signatories. They got asked. They live. Their stock's still afloat.

If the people ...do at all hide their eyes...

• The LORD said to Moses, “Say to the people of Israel, Any man of the people of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, who gives any of his children to Molech shall be put to death; the people of the land shall stone him with stones. I myself will set my face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people, because he has given one of his children to Molech, defiling my sanctuary and profaning my holy name. And if the people of the land do at all hide their eyes from that man, when he gives one of his children to Molech, and do not put him to death, then I will set my face against that man and against his family, and will cut them off from among their people, him and all who follow him in playing the harlot after Molech. (Leviticus 20:2-5)

(Tim) Last Sunday, about two hundred believers went to the Monroe County Courthouse on the Square to protest the slaughter of the unborn. This protest is held each year to memorialize the fifty million--that's 50,000,0000--babies that have been slaughtered under the protection of our Supreme Court's blood lust known as Roe v. Wade. That's sixteen thousand, eight hundred and twelve times the number of deaths caused by the nineteen terrorists on 9/11.

Here in Monroe County, six hundred and seventy-six infants were murdered by Planned Parenthood and its hired guns in 2005, the most recent year stats are available.

Show up at this protest and you'll witness the anemic witness to Jesus Christ that prevails the rest of the year in this community. Five or so from Evangelical Community Church (less than one percent); five or so from our evangelical megachurch, Sherwood Oaks (less than a quarter of a percent); thirty to fifty from the various Roman Catholic parishes (less than one percent); a smattering from each of a number of other churches; five or ten from the Reformed Presbyterian Church; the occasional vegan or atheist who agrees with Nat Hentoff that "For an atheist, life is all we have;" and the remainder from Church of the Good Shepherd.

No, I'm not bragging; I'm shaming. It's unconscionable that Christians are silent year in and year out as babies are slaughtered in our fair city. When I used to preach at Evangelical Community Church, if I mentioned abortion in the sermon the wife of one of our elders would stand up and parade out of the sanctuary...

Revelation, authority, dreams, and visions...

(Tim) At ETS's recent annual meeting in San Diego, J. P. Moreland gave a paper titled, "How Evangelicals Became Over-Committed to the Bible and What Can Be Done About It." And in the wake of Francis Beckwith's recent conversion to Roman Catholicism, Moreland's paper carried quite a punch. Apparently Moreland failed to acknowledge that evangelicals' overemphasis on Scripture's inspiration has not resulted in any overemphasis on Scripture's authority. Yet, I'd like to note this excerpt from his paper and make a comment on a related matter...

Alister McGrath, part II: his work on justification...

Note from Tim: Under Pastor David Wegener's prior post concerning Rev. Dr. Alister McGrath, Bill R. asked Pastor Wegener for an evaluation of McGrath's $80 volume titled, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification. Did I mention this work lists for $80?

Rather than bury Pastor Wegener's response in the comments under his post, it seemed good to put it here on the main page with the hope that many more will read it than otherwise might.

Dear Bill R.: Sorry for the delay in responding to your question about McGrath’s book on justification. I have a copy of Iustitia Dei and have studied parts of it. It is one of the few treatments of the history of the doctrine of justification, so maybe that is why people regard it as seminal.

It is a pretty accurate truism of historical theology that justification by faith alone was one doctrine the Reformers recovered from the Scriptures. Yes, you can find comments in a number of earlier authors that would line up with Protestant doctrine, but by and large, it was a key truth that the patristic (including Augustine) and medieval theologians got wrong.

However, I’m not convinced that McGrath is correct on the Reformed teaching on this topic. He tries to pry apart the unity of the Reformers on justification (p. 188). It is easy to do that with Zwingli and Bucer. Neither were so reliable as theologians. But it is more difficult to do that with Calvin and Luther and the evidence McGrath presents can be used against his attempts to pry them apart.

McGrath’s conclusion to the book is much more troubling...

Alister McGrath: several caveats...

(Note from Tim: On another thread, someone asked about Alister McGrath. I asked my dear brother, Rev. David Wegener, to provide the answer. David serves on the faculty of the Theological College of Central Africa and is a missionary of Mission to the World, the PCA's sending agency. David, his wife Terrianne, and their four children are supported by both Christ the Word and Church of the Good Shepherd. For her senior year of high school, Mary Lee and I have the privilege of having David and Terrianne's eldest child, Elizabeth, living with us and keeping our daughter, Hannah, company in the basement.)

I was asked to write a bit on Alister McGrath since he is a prolific author and is publicly identified with the evangelical movement. For a while, at least one of his publishers was puffing him as the next C.S. Lewis, working the Oxford angle. Mercifully, that kind of nonsense has stopped. While there is some value in McGrath’s works, let me make a few comments and give several caveats.

1. An Irishman by birth McGrath took an undergraduate degree in chemistry from Oxford University and later received a Ph.D. from the same institution in molecular biophysics. He was converted from atheism while at university and did an undergraduate degree in theology while getting his doctorate in science. Most folks would have trouble doing one of those, so, clearly, McGrath is very bright.

After graduation, he studied theology at Cambridge for two years, served two years as an assistant pastor (during which time he was ordained to the Anglican priesthood) and then embarked on a teaching and writing career. He began teaching at Oxford in 1983 (when he was 28) and has been there ever since, in various professorships, holding different administrative posts and interrupted by visiting lectureships in the U.S. and Canada.

2. McGrath is indeed a very prolific author and most of his writing is on historical theology (much of it Reformation history), the whole range of systematic theology, and the relationship of science and Christianity. But, don’t be intimidated by the sheer volume of his books. There is a fair bit of cutting and pasting going on...

Whitefield, Edwards & evangelicalism today...

(Tim) Under the post, “Who’s kidding whom…,” Dr. Darryl Hart and Rev. David Gilleran commented, expressing support for Dr. Mark Noll’s criticism of leaders of the Great Awakening such as Whitefield and Edwards.

Dr. Hart wrote: My one quibble (with your post) concerns your reading of Noll and the First Great Awakening. It could be that the anti-formalism and subjectivity of revivalism has done more to undermine contemporary Presbyterian doctrinal and liturgical rigor than you allow.

Pastor Gilleran agreed: Those of us in the Reformed tradition seem to be unwilling to go back and give a sympathetic but critical evaluation of both the First and Second Great Awakenings. Are we afraid to say that our heroes in the faith may have over reacted to the problems of the day and have left us the heritage of subjective religion and revivalism?

Hatred for authority permeates our culture and has been one of the largest factors in the absence of any doctrine of the Church, as well as the insipid worship and preaching so characteristic of evangelicals today. So, sticking with the First Great Awakening, did Edwards, Whitefield, and the Tennents lay seeds that can be traced to this present unhinged subjectivism that is at the heart of the emotive and experiential marketing behemoth headquartered in Nashville, Colorado Springs, and Wheaton known as “evangelicalism?”

Sure, no question about it. And likely, I’d trace the seed path similarly to the way others have. But would I assign any similar proportion of blame to Whitefield, Edwards, or the Tennents?

No, I don’t think so. Reform has a cost that must be paid...

Martin Luther's commentary on Galatians, gagged...

(Tim) The second group of men have now matriculated in our pastors college and, as part of the heart religion emphasis during the first of three years' study, I'm leading a seminar on Luther's commentary on Galatians. I have an old copy of the commentary published in 1953 by London's James Clarke & Co. which I've used preaching through Galatians the past couple of years. But I went ahead and bought a second copy of the commentary since the most widely available and cheapest printing today is a paperback edition sold by Wheaton's Crossway Publishers. It's one volume in their Crossway Classic Commentaries series and we had assigned it as the edition of Luther's commentary the men were to read for the seminar. It made sense for me to be on the same page with the men. Literally.

Still, I wasn't entirely happy with the situation. Concerning evangelical publishers and their theological trustworthiness, I have a naturally suspicious mind. "Surely no need to worry about Crossway, though," I thought. "They publish many good authors and, although Alister McGrath is one of the series' editors, Jim Packer is the other and he wouldn't allow them to bowdlerize Luther." In his essay, "Sola Fide: The Reformed Doctrine of Justification," Packer cites the same edition of Luther on Galatians I use, translated by Philip S. Watson and published by James Clarke & Co. He's drunk at the same well so he'll not allow anyone to ruin Luther.

And yet I had a nagging thought at the back of my mind that we'd made a mistake by going with Crossway's edition... 

Richard Cizik's religious crusade: confessing green sins...

(by Tim) If you've listened to Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals, you know he speaks in heavily religious terms of the co-belligerency he shares with Al Gore warring against the demons of carbon emissions. He liberally sprinkles his advocacy with testimonies of his "conversion" to the green crusade and he calls others to join him worshiping at this altar. As Cizik put it himself in his op-ed piece in the Washington Post on Earth Day this year:

Thus, our family will worship together at National Cathedral in Washington with other environmental, scientific, and faith leaders and then enjoy the outdoors together. It's all part of a faith commitment we've made to do everything in our power to preserve this precious gift the Creator has given us.

If any doubt remained concerning the religious zeal of these crusaders...

Positive worship and nice stories...

(by Tim) Promoted from the comments beneath another post, this from Pastor Benjamin Glaser:

I mentioned Satan and eternal damnation in a recent sermon I did during supply preaching and a person came up to me after the service and subsequently told me that "We do not like to use words like that here. We like Positive worship."

And this from Fr. Bill Mouser:

Benjamin's comment reminded me of a conversation I had with an Epsicoapl matron 15 years ago, as we walked between the sanctuary and the parish hall after worship one Sunday. We were, at the time, in the middle of a survey of Genesis which I was teaching the adults. I had asked them each week to quickly skim the narrative portions of Genesis in one sitting. Repeated exposure to Genesis in this fashion would, I hoped, help them see its contents in overall perspective.

"I will be so glad when we are finished with Genesis," she said. 

"Oh?  Why is that?"

"Well, each week, I read Genesis quickly, as you asked."

I waited for further comment, but her lips were pressed firmly together.  Taking a gamble, I said, "And, that's a problem?"

"Well," she sniffed. "It's full of many things that are not nice."

Reading Fr. Mouser's comment to my dear Mary Lee just now, she chuckled and said, "It certainly is."

Korean Presbyterian and PCA Mission to the World women as martyrs...

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her… (Ephesians 5:25)

(by Tim) In the discussion of the current suffering and martyrdoms of our Korean brothers and sisters in Afghanistan, Valerie comments:

Here’s a thought I offer rather tentatively: What concerns me is… that the great majority of the (Korean) group’s members are women. Yes, we are all soldiers of the cross, but St. Paul didn’t take a wife on his journeys because of the danger.…

I’m reminded of an account I received a few years ago from a dear friend who is a pastor in my denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America. My friend recounted an experience he and his wife had while going through cross-cultural training under Mission to the World, the PCA’s mission agency. (MTW had subcontracted the training out to a company that specialized in providing this service to a number of evangelical mission organizations.)

Here's my friend's E-mail describing one day's training in which all the missionary candidates were captured by terrorists who then demanded that each group of missionaries provide volunteers to be executed. What follows is the account of the ensuing battle among the missionaries over whether Christian fathers should bear the primary responsibility of danger and death, or whether mothers should die so that fathers could live...

The selling of presidents and evangelical leaders...

(by Tim) Our dear brother, Pastor Erik Braun, comments on what he terms "the rather scathing assesment of Rudy Giuliani's political career by Kevin Baker in the latest Harper's." Pastor Braun notes this quote from the Harper's piece:

In the new politics the candidate is everything. The post ideological party distinguishes itself from its rivals not through any particular program or deep moral conviction so much as by the character and charisma of its particular leader - its Sarkozy, or its Berlusconi, or its Clinton - and by its brand selling strategies.

Pastor Braun goes on to point out the parallels between the way politicians and evangelical leaders are sold to the masses, writing "It is interesting how such a statement stands may stand as an indictment of the current state of evangelical Christianity as well."

Continue reading here...

Richard Cizik's "new moral awakening"...

From my youth, I've been an environmentalist. My wife and I, sometimes with our children, have backpacked in the Canadian Rockies (Jasper National Park), the Tetons, the Colorado Rockies (both eastern and western slope, last year outside Ouray). We've also taken a number of canoe trips in Boundary Waters Canoe Area (US) and Quetico (Canada). We've toured the length of Southeastern Alaska and gone on safari a couple of times in Zimbabwe/Botswana/Namibia and Zambia. For many years, we drove a diesel VW Rabbit, averaging 44 miles per gallon and spewing soot from our tailpipe. To this day I continue to read about renewable energy sources including wind, geothermal, and solar. Being a states' rights man, generally, if there's an area I'd be willing to see our national government abuse the Commerce Clause, it would be our nation's energy policy.

Having said all that, our readers will, I hope, be less likely to misunderstand me when I say that I view Richard Cizik's new Gospel as no gospel at all...

The Submerged church...

Some years back, I had a young elder much enamored with evangelical Bible scholarship and all things Academe. One day he brought a good friend of his in to the church office for me to meet. The friend taught at a seminary my Dad had been invited to take the presidency of a few years before he died, so I was interested to know what sort of man taught theology there.

I was reminded of this young man this morning while reading an article from the Christian Science Monitor titled "Reinventing Church." It was a piece on the Submerged Church, a trendy movement promoted by long-hairs recently added to the AARP mailing list who have had the astounding insight that--well, let me allow them to speak for themselves:

What he did know was that the institutional church wasn't attuned to the world he lived in; open to theological questioning; or responding to the challenge of a postmodern culture in which institutional authority, absolute truth, and even a rationalistic world view no longer hold sway.

Brilliant! Brilliant!

But I digress. Back to my young elder and his friend, John Franke...

Parodies of the Apple commercials...

If I got in trouble for quoting Iranian President Ahmadinejad, I imagine I'm really going to catch it for linking to these parodies of the Apple commercials you've all seen on television. The first and third are my favorites. And yes, I do think they're helpful.

(Thanks, Brian.)

Cool dudes or a pregnant mother of four: evangelicals, take your pick...

-posted by Tim Bayly

So, twice in three days, I was depressed hearing about the influence of a certain cool dude's ear-scratching book telling everyone how wise he is at meeting the culture where it's at, and how unutterably stupid the Church is. Oh, how weary I grow of these Bible-betraying fools and their sycophants. They sell out to the world and call it thinking biblically. They betray the Lord and call it God's new thing. They are cowards and call it tact--sometimes even evangelism! But do they bear one iota of resemblance to the Apostle Paul? No, the thought of them being lashed or stoned is laughable. The world wouldn't bother. Well, God just reminded me that there are still many who have not bowed the knee to Baal. He has promised that the gates of Hell will not prevail against His Church and He's always faithful to His promises. How was I reminded? I came across this most excellent comment by one of Mom Taylor's granddaughters under my tribute to Mom on her 90th birthday. May God give us many more mothers like Leslie Taylor. But more, may He fill His Church with Titus 2 women who WILL teach the younger women of the church to be godly women, and therefore godly wives and mothers. If Leslie is the kind of woman evangelical feminists are trying to push into the pulpit, I say "You go, girl!" Here's Leslie's comment:

It is tragic that home economics has largely disappeared because I am convinced that being a mother requires more education and training than any other occupation. One of the most noticeable effects of feminism is how unprepared and clueless many of today's mothers are (and I was one of them). I know that there have always been spoiled children and clueless mothers all throughout history, but what is going on in America today is an epidemic of enormous proportions, and the church is no haven. When Christopher [her husband] and I left the park with the kids yesterday...

Faithful shepherds stand in the gap...

We all know what it is to play warfare in mock battle, that it means to imitate everything just as it is in war. The troops are drawn up, they march into the field, seriousness is evident in every eye, but also courage and enthusiasm, the orderlies rush back and forth intrepidly, the commander's voice is heard, the signals, the battle cry, the volley of musketry, the thunder of cannon--everything exactly as it is in war, lacking only one thing...the danger.

So also it is with playing Christianity, that is, imitating Christian preaching in such a way that everything, absolutely everything is included in as deceptive a form as possible--only one thing is lacking...the danger

-Soren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon "Christendom" 1854-1855, translated with an introduction by Walter Lowrie, (Boston: The Beacon Press, 1956) p. 258.

Addendum: Wednesday evening, March 8, Bryan Chapell and I met together to discuss this recent series of posts. After our discussion, here are several clarifications and corrections that I believe need to be made. I have made them here, at the top of the post, because it would be difficult to weave them into the post itself in a way that would call attention to them sufficiently as corrections.

First, it is unclear that the paragraph beginning, "The whole things is a tempest in a teacup" is not my judgment, but rather a hypothetical construct of what the average member of the PCA might have thought to himself.

Second, I refer to "the Covenant/Redeemer/Reformed mantra, "A woman may do anything a non-ordained man may do." Bryan told me that this is not his position and that he speaks against this position as an adequate representation of the Biblical perspective. This is an encouragement to me.

Third, Bryan rehearsed his actions in response to the chapel time in which Diane Langberg spoke, and clearly my own summary of those actions is not accurate. Here is an accurate record of what happened:

When General Assembly convened that summer and the time on the agenda arrived when President Chapell was asked to give an answer for what had happened on his watch, President Chapell told the assembly:

That Diane Langberg had been told ahead of time what the standards were for her speaking during the chapel time;

That after she spoke at Covenant Seminary, Diane Langberg received a letter reminding her of the standards, and expressing concern that those standards had not been followed; and

That the administration of Covenant Seminary met with students to explain the situation and to assure the seminary community that what had happened was not according to the standards they were committed to upholding.

Since I implied Covenant Seminary was not upholding the PCA position in its response to Diane Langberg's chapel time, I regret this inaccuracy and now believe Covenant's response was good.

Some wonder how I could accuse prominent teaching elders of the Presbyterian Church in America and the institutions they lead of sympathizing with the egalitarian, feminist cause? Don't I know the PCA's reason to exist is tied at the heart to opposing these ideologies? When a group of mainline PC(USA) churches left their own denomination for a more conservative one back in 1983, wasn't it necessary for them to found the new denomination, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, precisely because the PCA wasn't willing to compromise on women in office? And isn't the same reason behind our present failure to bring into the PCA many churches currently departing the PC(USA) train wreck: that these churches and their pastors are determined to enter a denomination that allows their women to serve as pastors, elders, and deacons?

So, as a denomination we've paid our dues. We've seen the cost of our convictions, and haven't wavered. What on earth am I thinking, then, to accuse our seminary and its president of being allies of the egalitarian, feminist ideology?

It's a fair question, although I have no confidence I'll be able to answer it to the satisfaction of more than a few because the heart of the answer is tied up, not with specific arguments about Scripture's teaching about sexuality, but rather its teaching concerning the nature of pastoral ministry.

Several years ago, Covenant Theological Seminary had a woman preach in chapel. When it was reported within our denomination, it scandalized a number of presbyters across the country...

Lotz of picking and choosing in the Garden of Eden...

In her article cited in an earlier post, Anne Graham Lotz is pandering to some of the more ungodly prejudices of our culture by attacking the church for not being biblical on the meaning and purpose of sexuality. What she really means, though, is not that the Church isn't biblical, but that it's not enlightened or progressive--it's not, as they say, "evolved."

Before the watching world, Ms. Lotz argues that those who maintain distinctions between the sexes (other than those irrepressible biological and physiological ones) are bound for extinction as her new age of feminist gender equity finally dawns among the slowpoke people of God.

One looks in vain for any recognition on Ms. Lotz's part that she's thrown the entire history of the Christian Church's doctrine of sexuality in the dumpster. Likely she'd deny this, pointing to her strong stand against sodomy or divorce as proof that, where the rubber meets the road, she's rock solid on sexuality.

Yet the order of God's creation prior to the Fall is as clear concerning the sinfulness of women exercising authority over men as it is concerning the sinfulness of men having sex with men, or as it is concerning divorce. The authoritative primacy of man over woman, the heterosexual limits of physical intimacy, and the evil of divorce are each equally and undeniably established by our Creator in the Garden of Eden, and the rest of Scripture only reinforces God's Edenic order.

Asked whether divorce is right or wrong, Jesus responded by going back to Eden, prior to the Fall, making it clear that God's order from the beginning was heterosexual, monogamous, and lifelong:

(Jesus) answered and said, "Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate." (Matthew 19:4-6)

Asked whether it was proper for women to exercise authority over men, the Apostle Paul responded by going back to Eden, prior to the Fall, making it clear that God's order from the beginning was neither matriarchal nor egalitarian, but patriarchal:

But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. (1 Timothy 2:12, 13)

Do Ms. Lotz and other evangelical feminists really think they can pick and choose between the details of the sexual order God established in Eden which is reinforced repeatedly in the sacred words of Scripture?

"Let's see, I'll have some heterosexuality and monogamy, please. But no patriarchy today, thank you."

Well, any simpleton can see what's happened, and therefore what's coming.

What's happened? Well, for many years, now, evangelicals have lived in an increasingly egalitarian and feminist culture, and that culture has won us over--all that's left is the mop-up operation. Few of us would be willing to preach or listen to the sermons of past centuries our fathers in the faith preached concerning male authority or female deference and submission. And structurally, our practice bears no resemblance to the church's historical practice.

Denominationally, some of us are still forced to toe the line: we don't yet ordain women to the pastorate or eldership, but we've taken every other step we can. We have women leading our corporate worship, administering the Lord's Supper, preaching in our pulpits, teaching mixed-sex adult Sunday school classes, leading mixed-sex small groups, serving as commissioned deacons, serving on our national theological study committees, preaching at our conferences, serving as regional directors in our parachurch and mission organizations... Need I go on?

Yes, we have our Pharisaical righteousness in each place we're fiddling around the edge. Women preaching in our pulpits are the exception--not the rule--and they do so under the authority and review of the elders board. Our women deacons are not ordained--they're only commissioned. We've limited the Sunday school classes led by women to one quarter of our offerings each term. Women lead our call to worship and prayer of confession, but never our pastoral prayer. Women administer the Lord's Supper, but our senior pastor is a man and he's the one who hands the trays to the women before they go out into the congregation. The woman on the study committee has special expertise in the subject under review, and she's not a full voting member. Our conference isn't a church meeting, our speakers aren't really preaching, and we don't have any authority over those who attend. Our organization is parachurch--not church--so we have no need to submit to Scripture's prohibition of women exercising authority over men.

At this point, some readers are likely hung up on one or more of the particulars I've cited and are asking themselves, "Is it really wrong to have women deacons?" "Why shouldn't women lead in prayer during corporate worship?" "If women shouldn't be regional directors of mission agencies, should they be running for president?" Or, "If it's wrong for women to preach in morning worship, is it also wrong for them to serve as professors in Christian colleges and seminaries?"

Although these are important questions, such examples are only meant to be representative of the sea-change the evangelical church has embraced. We will differ over which of the above practices are within the proper boundaries of Scripture, but we must not differ in acknowledging that, taken as a whole, these practices are not a reformation returning us to the doctrine of Scripture, but rather a revolution leading us away from Scripture...

Ted Haggard: Truth is in order to goodness...

"Two consenting adults in a bedroom is not really the role of the state." -Ted Haggard in a 2005 interview from ChristianityToday.com

Asked about the Supreme Court decision striking down bans on gay sex, Haggard responded: "I'm pretty liberal on that actually. I don't think the state should have any business with what goes on between two consenting adults in their bedroom." -BBC News Online, 16 October 2004

Almost one year ago, on November 15, 2005, I posted the following article on this blog. Now I'm putting it back up on the first page because there's a lesson here for those of us who belong to Jesus Christ--particularly those who serve as officers of Christ's Church.

Back in 1788, two geographical centers of American presbyterianism, the Synods of Philadelphia and New York, composed and adopted as the introduction to their Form of Government what were then, and still are, known as our "Preliminary Principles." Between one and two pages long, these eight principles continue to be foundational to presbyterian polity today to such an extent that the Orthodox Presbtyterian Church, the mainline and liberal Presbyterian Church (USA), and my own denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America, all continue to adhere to them.

Since hearing about Haggard's resignation, the fourth of these principles has been at the front of my mind constantly, and I reproduce it here believing it's worth careful consideration in this present context. (I'd also recommend that pastors and elders memorize it.)

Here then is Preliminary Principle Number IV, followed by the blog post from one year ago:

That truth is in order to goodness; and the great touchstone of truth, its tendency to promote holiness; according to our Saviour's rule, "by their fruits ye shall know them:" And that no opinion can be either more pernicious or absurd, than that which brings truth and falsehood upon a level, and represents it as of no consequence what a man's opinions are. On the contrary, they are persuaded, that there is an inseparable connection between faith and practice, truth and duty. Otherwise, it would be of no consequence either to discover truth, or to embrace it.

In the nick of time, Ted Haggard says 'no' to sodomy laws... (November 15, 2005)

Ted Haggard is Senior Pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs and President of the National Association of Evangelicals. During an interview a few weeks ago, he said (thanks, David Talcott):

I think some issues should have rules within the church. For instance, we believe within the church that sexuality should be only between a married man and a woman. But in civil law, I would never want that inculcated.... There are many things that I teach in the church that I would never want integrated into civil law.... Two consenting adults in a bedroom is not really the role of the state.

Pastor Haggard goes further...

After initial denial, Haggard admits gay massage and meth purchase...

We started getting tons of hits from Google this afternoon for this post made on November 15, 2005, and this post from April 1, 2006. Then, tonight I noticed we're getting traffic from a link on Daily Kos under a post detailing Ted Haggard's resignation as President of the National Association of Evangelicals and his taking a leave of absence as Senior Pastor of New Life in Colorado Springs.

After denying the charges, initially, Haggard is now admitting that he paid a sodomite prostitute to give him a massage and purchased meth from him. But he denies having "sex" with the man and said he didn't actually use the meth, but threw it out.

Haggard is on administrative leave from New Life while an investigatory committee of local pastors weighs the charges.

Lord, have mercy.

As in "Bible Church, Bible needed"...

Driving west out of Bloomington on State Road 46, you'll see this little church about ten miles down the road. But it's the sign that always gives me a chuckle. It strikes me as a parable of our American church.

The necessity of both orthopraxy and orthodoxy...

In his eulogy to Jaroslav Pelikan in the latest (August/September, 2006) First Things, Robert Louis Wilkens writes:

In the last generation, it has become fashionable among historians of Christian thought not only to seek to understand the Gnostics or the Arians but also to become their advocates and to suggest, sometimes obliquely, sometimes straightforwardly, that orthodox Christianity made its way not by argument and truth but by power and coercion. The real heroes in Christian history are the dissidents, the heretics, whose insights and thinking were suppressed by the imperious bishops of the great Church.

Pelikan never succumbed to this temptation.

Wilkens goes on to quote Lionel Trilling:

...when the dogmatic principle in religion is slighted, religion goes along for a while on generalized emotion and ethical intention...and then loses the force of its impulse, even the essence of its being.

We need to warn the souls under our watch-care frequently that evangelicalism has long since ceased to be a faith community, but is now an emotive community gathered around pious sentiments and religious exeriences. As such, it is neither Protestant, biblical, nor Christian.

Some of my experiences at Greenville College...

Note: In the continuing saga of Professor Gerald Eichhoefer's termination at Greenville College, here is another document recording other aspects of the story not previously told. It's particularly interesting to me to see the intense hostility those seeking to undermine the faith of their students at Greenville College had to reformed doctrine.

Men with responsibilities related to educational institutions, whether as a board member of a Christian college, department head, administrator, pastor recommending colleges to members of his church, or parents directing their children to consider this or that school, need to read this and the other Eighhoefer documents. They are an excellent introduction to the state of Christian education today, although I'll grant that the Greenville case demonstrates tactics more obvious than most. Wheaton, Gordon, Westmont, Taylor, etc. would be ever so much more sophisticated in how they did it, but the trends are the same regardless of the average SAT scores of the school's students. (For example, how many years did the faculty and administration of Wheaton College tolerate Professor Gilbert Bilezikian's soul-destroying work within Wheaton's Bible department, and exactly why was Bilezikian granted Professor Emeritus status?)

A short time ago, I sat at a dinner table with a board member of one of the top few evangelical colleges and a student who had just graduated from that school, and I listened as this recent graduate described how the school's Bible department was filled with what she called "egalitarians," and how as a result of their influence she had been leaning in that direction, but was now swinging back to what she called the "complementarianism" her parents had raised her to believe.

She said it matter-of-factly, not realizing my history of work in this issue, and then she concluded, "When I left (the school), I'd lost a lot of my theological foundations, but now that I'm (away from the school), I'm getting them back."

The board member demonstrated no alarm or inquisitiveness at all. It seemed entirely ho-hum to him. Why?

I'm not sure, but my guess is that he sees such placing of stumbling blocks in the pathways of his institution's students as the raison d'etre of higher education--including (and maybe especially) evangelical higher education.

Read on and weep, dear brothers and sisters, for the children who have been lost to our Precious Faith and Lord because of false shepherds with Ph.D.s and our own cowardice in allowing them to carry out their work unopposed. But praise God for men such as Jerry Eichhoeffer.

And remember my Dad's dictum after graduating from Wheaton College, then working on secular campuses for sixteen years with Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship: "You never know who the enemy is at a Christian college, but on a secular campus it's always clear."

Some of my Experiences at Greenville College

by Dr. Gerald W. Eichhoefer

In 1998, thirty years after I graduated from Greenville College, I returned with my wife and daughters to teach Computer Science. I was warmly received and supported by my Science Division colleagues as I began work on a new Computer Science curriculum and my family began to adjust to our new home. In my previous job I had a joint appointment in Computer Science and Philosophy and I looked forward to a congenial relationship with the Greenville philosophy professors even though my main focus at Greenville was Computer Science. I have a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Rice University and a bit of graduate work in Theology.

The Templeton Seminar - Fall 1998/Spring 1999

I approached a Greenville Philosophy professor and asked him to introduce me to the St. Louis philosophical community and was surprised and puzzled when he refused...

Loss of faith at Greenville College...

Note: A few weeks back, we introduced our readers to Professor Gerald Eichhoefer who, until December of 2004, was a faculty member at Greenville College in Greenville, Illinois. Then, the administration of this small evangelical college fired him as punishment for seeking to protect Greenville's students from spiritual destruction.

For two years prior to December of 2004, in addition to his duties as a professor of computer science, Jerry had been working to expose wolves who, under cover of faculty status in Greenville's Department of Philosophy and Religion, had been undermining the faith of their students. Jerry's work publicly opposing the department and its supporters infuriated the powers that be. Here, then, is the paper Jerry wrote that led to his termination.

David and I both think it's outstanding and hope you'll take the time to read it.

Loss of Faith at Greenville College
Response to Dr. Rick McPeak

by Gerald Eichhoefer, Ph.D.

Mary Chism, a senior at Greenville College and daughter of Professor Jack Chism, publicly announced that she is no longer a Christian in her February 20th editorial in the student newspaper, the Papyrus. Before attending Greenville Mary was an active member of the Greenville College Free Methodist Church, a Bible Quizzer and a pillar in her youth group. Her father Jack, who was my undergraduate roommate at Greenville, is a strong evangelical Christian who recently survived a nearly fatal bout with acute leukemia. Jack led one of his hospital nurses to Christ as he was receiving chemotherapy.

In her editorial Mary summarizes the collapse of her faith:

Random House expanding their borders...

From Chris Taylor, this link to a news item in Publishers Weekly about the pending sale of Multnomah Publishers to the secular media company, Random House. Multnomah is the Oregon-based evangelical publishing house that in 2001 sold eight million copies of Bruce Wilkinson's possibility-thinking devotional pamphlet, The Prayer of Jabez.

Money, money, money, muuuuuuuuney...

Money.

Mainline sodomites and evangelical feminists: Who really loves Jesus?

The 2006 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) met a few weeks ago and approved a measure that clears the way for practicing homosexuals to be ordained and installed as pastors and elders of the church. Many news organizations covered this event, but no one commented on the most newsworthy aspect of this radical step--namely, that the measure was itself the product of a Task Force that included a number of evangelicals, and that the evangelicals were instrumental in selling this proposal to the church. How does it happen that evangelicals promote the normalization of sodomy and advocate a plan that clears the way for sodomites to shepherd God's flock? There's a lesson here--a very important lesson--particularly for evangelicals who think all that's important is that people "love Jesus" and have prayed the sinner's prayer. Please read on...

Now I ask you, lady, not as though I were writing to you a new commandment, but the one which we have had from the beginning, that we love one another. And this is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, that you should walk in it. For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist. Watch yourselves, that you do not lose what we have accomplished, but that you may receive a full reward. Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house, and do not give him a greeting; for the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds. (2 John 1:5-11)

The late Elizabeth Achtemeier was adjunct professor of Bible and homiletics at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia and served on the board of Presbyterians Pro-Life, a reform organization within the mainline Presbyterian Church (USA). Particularly because of her courageous opposition to some of the most poisonous aspects of feminism within mainline Presbyterianism, it came as no surprise that Elizabeth was appointed to the PC(USA) General Assembly's blue ribbon Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity as a representative of those on the evangelical end of the denominational spectrum.

This so-called "PUP Task Force" was formed several years ago to try to mediate the chronic tensions over sodomy that have split the PC(USA) since the mid-seventies. The denomination made a conscious effort to balance the membership of the PUP Task Force between those who still hold to Scripture's condemnations of sodomy and those who have rejected Scripture's condemnations and demand the Church endorse sodomy by accepting practicing sodomites as members and placing them in the office of pastor and elder.

When Elizabeth died in the middle of the Task Force's work, her son Mark Achtemeier, a PC(USA) seminary professor teaching systematic theology at Dubuque Theological Seminary, was appointed to take her place and he served on the Task Force through the completion of its work this past year. The Task Force brought a number of recommendations to the (national) General Assembly this year, all of which were carefully crafted to end the divisive battle over the normalization of sodomy.

Up until this time, those seeking to normalize sodomy and to ordain sodomites to the offices of pastor and elder had to contend with PC(USA) denominational standards that forbade such ordinations. If churches defied these standards, they could be brought up on charges, although through the years a variety of technicalities were used to escape accountability. True, the denomination's definitive guidance was a roadblock to those seeking to normalize sodomy, but the practice across the country was a far cry from that definitive guidance. Lesbians and gays were active at all levels of the church as members, leaders, and officers, and there was little accountability for those who flaunted their rebellion against God's Word.

Yet even as they rebelled against Scripture's doctrine of sexuality and got away with only a few slaps on the wrist, the sodomy lobby worked feverishly to change church law so that sexual perversion would no longer be formally condemned and informally overlooked, but positively celebrated. Nothing less would do. Thus for years every level of church government found its time consumed by the battle, and people grew so weary of the controversy that the PUP Task Force was appointed and given a mandate to find a way out of the quagmire.

This year's national General Assembly was D-day, and the Task Force released its recommendations a few months before the Assembly so there would be plenty of time for commissioners to weigh its recommendations before the assembly convened. When those with biblical commitments saw the report and read through its recommendations, they were sickened to see that the Task Force had thrown in the towel and called it quits. Assuming the General Assembly adopted the Task Force recommendations (which it now has), they knew the definitive guidance would become obsolete. Rather, local rule would prevail. True, in theory this meant conservative churches and presbyteries could enforce the definitive guidance if they so chose, but only within their own jurisdiction. Meanwhile, liberal churches and presbyteries would be cut loose to do as they thought best--including ordaining and installing self-affirming active sodomites as pastors and elders. Really, the recommendations amounted to a ceding of the historic Presbyterian principle of connectionalism to the all-American ecclesiastical default of congregationalism.

But as shocking as the parameters of the surrender were, the shock turned into disbelief when the names of those who had signed on to the surrender included a number of evangelicals, including Elizabeth Achtemeier's son, Mark. People were flabbergasted. How could Elizabeth's son betray Scripture and the souls under his protection in this way? Did he care nothing for those tempted by same-sex intimacy? Was he really prepared to join the long line of self-proclaimed prophets who cry "Peace, peace" where there is no peace? As the smoke cleared, there was no denying that Mark Achtemeier had been co-opted by the sodomites...

Greenville College, Prof. Gerald Eichhoefer, and academic freedom...

The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. This is a basic principle of spiritual leadership and it applies to those God has called as fathers, pastors, elders, or professors who, by virtue of their calling, are required to watch over and guard immortal souls.

If you were a professor at a state university and Alfred Kinsey was a fellow faculty member, would you speak out, warning student's against him? Or would you protect your tenure by sitting silently as Kinsey did his private and public work of normalizing sexual perversion?

Let's make the question harder. Say you were a professor, not at a secular university but a Christian college--say Westmont, Gordon, Wheaton, Taylor, or Covenant. And the colleague in question was not a zoology professor who was publishing studies that purported to show that sexual perversion was much more common than previously thought. Rather, it was a Bible professor who lectured and wrote books opposing the Scriptural doctrine of father-rule. Would you publicly warn students against him and seek to have him removed from his tenured position? Would you work to inform your students' parents that this man was undermining their son's and daughter's Biblical faith?

Let's turn up the heat even more. Say this same Bible professor not only attacked the Biblical doctrine of father-rule publicly, but was widely known on campus to have been involved in sexual immorality with one of his female students who had had an abortion but, from shame, was unwilling to testify against the professor. If you knew the story was true, would you take it to the administration for their action?

Reform is hard work and reformers frequently die bloody deaths, so if you answered "no" to any of the previous questions I commend your honesty and fully understand how the self-preservation instinct has led to your silence.

Occasionally, though, God blesses a home, church, or college with a faithful shepherd who, in the power of the Holy Spirit, is willing to die for his sheep. Such a man is my friend Professory Gerald (Jerry) Eichhoefer who, until recently, was a member of the faculty of Greenville College in Greenville, Illinois. Jerry gave up his life for his sheep when, in December of 2004, Greenville College's administration fired him as punishment for his work protecting Greenville's students.

For the previous two years, in addition to his duties as a professor of computer science, Jerry had been working to expose wolves who, under cover of faculty status in Greenville's Department of Philosophy and Religion, had been hard at work undermining the faith of their students. Jerry's work publicly exposing the department and its supporters infuriated the powers that be and led to his termination, although the administration disingenuously claimed that fiscal constraints were the reason for his departure.

What do Marcus Borg, Greg Johnson, Zane Hodges, and Gene Roddenberry have in common...

Another exercise in discernment: please join this work. Resistance is not futile.

In the godly, fear and love embrace.

Dear readers, my brother, David, and I have often written here that our work on this blog is an extension of our calling to serve as shepherds of God's flock. And although we recognize this calling is primarily to particular congregations in Toledo and Bloomington, we approach this blog as an extension of our local ministry and work to serve as shepherds here, also. In fact, a high proportion of our readers are present or past members of our congregations. Whether the medium is the telephone, E-mail, church newsletters, or blogs, David and I are working to correct, encourage, and rebuke, with great patience.

At times we give in to the temptation to waste these words on inconsequential matters, but we hope not too often. Seeing the title of my recent post, "The World Cup, racism, and the reprobate," some likely wondered why I was squandering time on soccer? But the post wasn't really about soccer, but rather the sin of racism, and the failure of pastors and elders who connive at this sin in their congregations.

Why this lengthy preamble?

Here is a link to a piece I believe to be terribly dangerous. I've considered whether it's too dangerous to be circulated, but I think we need to read it. It's a sermon by Lutheran scholar Marcus Borg, titled "The Character of God," given at Calvary Episcopal Church in Memphis, Tennessee, on March 24, 2000.

Professor Borg is leading the souls he's teaching in a liberal and academic context to a place that is similar to the place Covenant Theological Seminary graduate and PCA pastor, Greg Johnson, takes us in his piece , "Freedom from Quiet Time Guilt: The Rare Beauty of Weakness Christianity." Sure, Pastor Johnson uses terminology and arguments that would appeal to conservative reformed, rather than liberal Lutheran, academic types. But both pieces, I believe, lead souls to presume on God's grace and allow no place for the fear of God...

Poisonous grace: an exercise in discernment...

Here's an exercise in discernment.

Greg Johnson is a graduate of my denomination's seminary, Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri, and this article he's written strikes me as typical of the sort of poisonous grace talk I've run into too often, recently, including among men from Covenant. Because the error is so common, it might be good for us to critique this particular piece as a means of warning others away from these errors.

Note well: I am not saying everything in this article is bad. There are things here worth saying, some of which are downright helpful and good. But the admixture of truth and error ultimately renders this piece unsalvageable except as an exercise in the practice of that most-neglected-of-all-spiritual-gifts, discernment.

So would you please take some part of this article and, quoting it, show how it is contrary to Scripture? Don't worry if your work is duplicated by someone else. I'm hopeful we'll have thousands of words written about this piece, permanently deposited here in our comments section to be read by others. Of course, it's proper to note the good points Johnson makes, but my principal concern is to see the errors exposed as a warning to all.

Feel free to argue against another reader's critique. The goal here is to grow our discernment quotient, making us all more useful in defending the church against false teaching--particularly false teaching hiding behind the cover of "grace."

Freedom from Quiet Time Guilt: The rare beauty of Weakness Christianity

by Greg Johnson

1. The Diagnosis: Quiet Time Guilt

I recently watched as a congregation I love was spiritually raped. A Christian ministry came into the church for a three-day program whose purpose was to encourage believers to pray more. During one of the breakout sessions, a man expressed his frustration with unanswered prayer. He had faithfully prayed with and for his daughter for years, and still she was not walking with God. He was broken, depressed, perhaps more than a little ashamed. How does God in his grace speak to this man? A bruised reed was crying out for help.

"You need to try harder. You need to pray more." That was the message he was given. I was enraged. Having known this church for many years, I was horrified. What I was hearing was what one seminary professor calls sola bootstrapa. Self-reliance--we pull ourselves up by our own spiritual bootstraps. The teachers who said such things surely meant well. The problem was not a lack of sincerity on their part. The diagnosis is far more severe. The problem was heresy. Any heresy wounds the soul.

When I look upon the evangelical world today, I see millions of sincere believers who are loaded down with false guilt by teachers who fail to grasp the basics of biblical prayer. To sharpen the point slightly, Christ's sheep have been lied to. They have been told that prayer is a work that we must perform in order to get God to bless us. As heresies go, this one is often subtle. Prayer has become a work rather than a grace. The result has been a loss of joy in prayer.

And prayer is not the only grace we've turned into a work. Personal Bible study has become a source of bondage as well. A whole generation of Christians has been told that God will bless them if they read their Bibles every day, as if the act of reading the Scriptures were some kind of magic talisman by which we gain power over God and secure his favor. This is not the religion of the Bible. This pervasive belief that God gives us grace as a reward for our devotional consistency is antithetical to the religion of Jesus Christ. Prayer and Bible study--what evangelicals for the past century have called the "quiet time"--have become dreaded precisely because they have been radically misunderstood.

It's ironic, but the Quiet Time has become the number one cause of defeat among Bible-believing Christians today. At one time or another, nearly every sincere believer feels a deep sense of failure and the accompanying feelings of guilt and shame because he or she has failed to set aside a separate time for Bible study and prayer. This condition is called Quiet Time Guilt. And it's a condition with many repercussions. The shame of Quiet Time Guilt manifests itself in even deeper inability to fruitfully and joyfully study Scripture. Prayer becomes a dread; Bible study a burden. The Christian suffering from Quiet Time Guilt then despairs of seeing God work in his or her life, until finally he or she simply gives up. He may continue outward and public Christian commitments like church attendance, but secretly he feels a hypocrite. What is the root of Quiet Time Guilt?

2. The Culprit: Legalism

The root of Quiet Time Guilt is legalism. Often when we think of legalism, we think of the petty man-made rules that have so often strangled the churches--rules against dancing or drinking or makeup or 'secular' music. But these legalistic rules are merely an outward sign of a deeper legalism of the heart. When prayer and Bible study are thought of primarily as duties ('disciplines') rather than as grace, both prayer and the study of Scripture become unfruitful in our lives...

Click here to finish reading Johnson's article, "Freedom from Quiet Time Guilt."

Christian Booksellers Association (CBA): time for the chainsaws...

As CBA's annual trade show approaches, this year to be held in Denver, here's a post over at Pyromaniacs by Frank Turks worth reading. And here is the comment I left there:

When Christian Booksellers Association (CBA) started, it was quite small and insignificant with books at its heart. Now its constituents have sales each year in the billions, and books make up significantly less than half the market. (In fact, they've now changed the name to International Christian Retail Show.) This is part of the reason looking at Frank Turk's list of books and accompanying commentary doesn't come close to addressing the obscene reality of CBA.

For years, I've been telling my Wheaton publishing friends, authors, and relatives that it's time for us to go to CBA and rip it to shreds--chainsaws, sledhammers, leaf blowers, and belts. All the booths are so lightweight, made to travel, that in minutes we could reduce the whole thing to shambles. (Did you know each major evangelical publisher's booth likely cost them many hundreds of thousands of dollars?)

Anyhow, I tell my friends that when we finish obliterating the exhibits and displays in the exhibit hall, we'll get busted and have to do some time, for sure. But while we're led out in handcuffs, there will be a huge collective sigh of relief that washes across the exhibit hall, with everyone whispering to one another, "It was a nasty job, but somebody had to do it."

Most of the grand poobahs I've said this to laughed nervously, and agreed that it was a job that needed to be done. But only younger men with nothing to lose have offered to join me.

Gordon College & Tom Howard; Wheaton College & Joshua Hochschild...

With my two brothers, David and Nathan, I took my Masters of Divinity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, an institution bound historically with its sister institution about four miles away, Gordon College. Both schools are on Boston's North Shore. And although no formal ties remain, the two schools have always had plenty of Gospel ties coming out of their mutual Protestant and evangelical commitments, and their common heritage and close proximity.

In 1985, two years after I graduated from Gordon-Conwell, one of the more visible members of Gordon College's academic community, Tom Howard, converted to Roman Catholicism and resigned as a faculty member.

Howard is the younger brother of two prominent evangelicals, Dave Howard and Elisabeth Elliot Gren, but he also was an author with broad name recognition himself. Years earlier, he'd written his angry-young-man book, Christ the Tiger, which was widely read. He'd also done a number of other books, one an extended meditation on the Christian home called Splendor in the Ordinary which I commend to our readers. (Howard continues to write and publishes with the orthodox Roman Catholic publisher, Ignatius Press, one of the most noteworthy Christian publishers today.)

When Howard converted, it hit the evangelical world like a sledgehammer and his departure from Gordon College was not to be taken for granted. A rather typical evangelical institution--big-hearted, broad-minded, but atheological--many of us would not have been surprised for Gordon College to keep Howard on despite his conversion. But they didn't.

Shortly afterward, a document authored by Gordon College's Faculty Senate was released as a partial explanation of the college's decision. The document titled, Explanatory Statement to the Senate's Motions To Affirm the Existing Policy with Respect to the Hiring of Non-Protestants as Faculty Members at Gordon College, circulated broadly. As I've read the discussion surrounding Joshua Hochschild's departure from the faculty of Whea