passing the hat

First of all, those hats:

This is a guy who is a world-class apologist and a brilliant thinker, and he's wearing these hats. On YouTube. I just can't think of anything quite edifying to say about that.

But I can say this: my friend johnMark has started an auction for a big stack of great books, the proceeds of which will got to AOMin.org, and I think it's a worthy cause. Go bid, pay if you win, and help support the ministry of James White proclaim the offense of the Gospel to the ends of the Earth.

And by "offense of the Gospel", I don't mean "teaching people to wear those hats".

Seriously now -- the auction is real. Only my jokes are fiction.

HT: Doug Wilson

ne becomes somewhat indifferent when dealing with those whom every word offends. I notice that, when I have measured my words, and weighed my sentences most carefully, I have then offended most; while some of my stronger utterances have passed unnoticed. Therefore, I am comparatively careless as to how my expressions may be received, and only anxious that they may be in themselves just and true.

-- Charles Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, pp. 282-283

an interesting magisterium

Alert Reader Gil Thomas pointed me at the Acts29 blog to some comments by Mark Driscoll, particularly about a phone call he got from Rick Warren.

I'm going to drop those comments in here, and do some color commentary:

Third, I got a call from Pastor Rick Warren last week. He called simply to see if there was anything he could do to help. His kindness was humbling and helpful.

Which, you know: I get that. I get it that Rick Warren would call Mark Driscoll to lend him a (kind of) elder-statesman thing -- especially since guys like Dever and Piper and Mahaney are doing that. I get that someone who is perceived by many as a leader in the American church would call Pastor Mark so that, as a leader, he could give him some leadership advice.

I think, however, it begs the question of "what kind of leader of the American church is Rick Warren?" And that's not a rhetorical question, but some of you will take it that way because I don't answer it right here. Let me say only, for a moment, that he's a different kind of leader than Dever or Piper or Mahaney and we'll come back to it.

I asked him how he handled his critics and he had a great insight that in our day criticism has changed. He explained that there was a day when a critic would have to sit down and write a letter and then mail it into a newspaper. With limited space, the paper would then be able to only print a fraction of the letters they received. The printed letters were often not read and quickly became dated.

See: that's an interesting insight because, regardless of what follows, it says that in the past some criticism was sort of cast away because it didn't get through the filters of newspaper editors, and that was a way to get past it.

Let's think about that for a minute: someone like Rick Warren, who is responsible for a lot of things in popular Christianity today including the irresponsible idea that churches ought to be gigantic, and program-driven, and who operates a church which at best treats baptism like some kind of party favor, has the opinion that in the past some of that could get by without answering critics because the subjects didn't interest the editors of newspapers.

To keep this brief, that's an interesting magisterium. He's right in one respect: there are plenty of quacks out there, and I might be one of them. But his point that somehow that's a valid place to decide who is and is not a quack leaves so much to be desired that I'll let you, the reader, think about whether newspapers should decide what is and is not useful to report about men who lead churches.

However, Warren said, in our day criticism is marked by the following four factors:

1.Instant
2.Constant
3.Global
4.Permanent

He forgot "mean" and "impersonal" (meaning "they don't apologize for disagreeing", and "they don't call you on the phone first"), but I take exception to the idea that internet criticism is "permanent". Blogging, or erecting a web site, for the sake of some argument or issue doesn't make it "permanent" any more than getting you book published makes its contents "permanent".

What it does do is make it public, and the question then is "will anyone read it?"

If some guy named, um, "centuri0n" sets up a blog and starts saying that Rick Warren has 3 wives and practices Shinto in his basement at an altar to his father's father, the first question is, "did anyone really read that?" And the second question is, "can that be proven at all?"

That guy with a blog may never delete his blog, but if no one ever reads it, the only one who will judge him for it is Christ. The tree fell in the woods, and nobody else cared. So "permanent" is a bizarre category for what is different about criticism today, especially in comparison to criticism filtered by local newspaper editorial staff.

I'd also like to add that the attribute of "constant" criticism is only born by those who are doing something which somehow keeps drawing attention to their foibles or errors. For example, I am unaware of Mark Dever having to field "constant" criticism -- unless I should have read Steve Camp lately or something.

Let me suggest that pastors who are in the scope of "constant" criticism either have established themselves as opponents of a very powerful and vulnerable enemy, or they are doing something which deserves criticism. There may be a third choice, but I'll bet if you can find one, it's really the first choice.

For example, there was a time when Phil Johnson took a lot of guff from Fundamentalists. Phil had made some statements -- which he stands by -- criticizing the problems with their movement, and the defend of Fundamentalism came out of the woodwork. The problem, however, was that Fundamentalism was both very powerful (in numbers, anyway) but also very vulnerable -- and it the advocates for such a thing had to try to push Phil over because, well, if he's right the movement was dead, dying, or worse.

The other example I'd tender is Joel Osteen. Why does Joel take guff from people as diverse as Michael Horton and Steve Camp? It's because Joel is off the apple cart, out of the street, down the storm drain, and rolling down into the swamp outside town.

Criticism is not just hard to bear because it seems to come often. It is hard to bear either when it is the truth or resembles the truth enough to cause us to pause. False criticism is pretty easy to bear unless it costs us money or prison time -- the rest of the time (like when people call me "mean") it's good for a laugh just to see how far someone will take their imaginary world.

So I find Rick Warren's explanation facile for starters -- but I can see why he adopts it. It is a very easy way for him to dismiss his many critics -- and to put himself in Jesus' camp, at least in his own mind.

I think there is another reason for his view here, which relates to what I started to say, above, but I'm not ready to spill the beans yet.

Warren then went on to explain that, as Jesus experienced, the strongest criticism for any Christian leader comes from rigid religious people.

See what I mean? They criticize you, Mark, not because you don't really get how to keep the pulpit free from cheap scatalogical jokes and irreverant speech: they criticize you because they are "rigid religious people". You know: you're doing ministry, and they're blogging or raving.

I think an interesting contexter here is that Abraham Piper recently called Mark Driscoll a jackass, and he wasn't accused of making an unjust criticism. Someone else points out that referencing Jesus' anatomy and digestive functions from the pulpit is unwholesome and it's suddenly a world of hurt.

So as we think about Pastor Warren's trajectory here, let's remember that it's selective at best, and that somehow I think the actual criteria for making the selection is hidden or stowed away.

When I asked him what someone should do when facing criticism, he gave the following insightful points:

1. Turn your critics into coaches by hearing what they are saying and humbly considering if there is any truth in their criticisms to learn from.

2. Never engage the critics on their terms because it only escalates the conflict and is not productive.

3. Be very careful with firing off emails or leaving voicemails and responding out of anger in a way that you will later regret.

4.Shout louder than your critics to define yourself and do not allow them to define you.

Of these 4, #3 I get. In fact, #3 is the best advice on earth to give anyone who is giving or getting criticism -- but you don't have to be a globally-recognized brand of inspirational publishing either to give it or to receive it. You just have to read the book of James.

Here's what I think about the rest:

#1 seems so obvious that to mention it seems a little, um, obvious. Yes: criticism is only any good if it's true, and if it's true, do something about it. That's why PDL underwent so many revisions after the critics started pointing out its foibles.

#2 ignores the real burden and real freedom of #1 -- that is, if #1 is true, valid criticism should be used to improve one's self, and false criticism is simply false.

And #4 reveals something about Warren that I never thought we'd find him saying out loud: he's willing to admit that nobody defines who he is but himself -- that is, there are no valid criticisms of him unless he says so. That's a doozer, folks -- a real eye-opener. Someone criticizes me? All I have to do is say, "I stand for ice cream!" louder and longer, and therefore the critic can't be right. Someone once called that "the big lie", but I can't remember who that is.

So that leaves us with my yet-unexpounded subtext -- "what kind of leader is Rick Warren?" and the "other reason" for Rick Warren wanting to make himself a member of the Jesus squad and his critics "rigid religious people".

If you haven't really been thinking about Rick Warren's trajectory, it's riding on a the social Gospel, highly critical of clear doctrinal affirmations, balanced on self-fulfillment, focussed on style and allegedly "brining people together". For those of you who can't put it together, it's emergent lite. Rick Warren is the "conservative" Brian McLaren -- though I will admit that Warren's theology is not as completely wretched as McLaren's.

Warren is the nice suit for the left side of the evangelical divide. And it makes sense for him to give Pastor Mark an open hand -- just in case the MHC Pastor has one too many MHC-17 moments and Dever or Mahaney or Piper calls him on it and he doesn't want to hear it.

I think Warren's advice is bad advice, especially to Mark Driscoll. It is sketchy at best, flippant and self-deceptive at worst, and leaves one in the really unhelpful position of not having to listen to anyone who disagrees with you.

And now that opinion, apparently, is permanent. We'll see if it has any impact.

gingerbread man

This weekend as we were building up to the big thing tomorrow, my wife pulled out a bag of gingerbread mix (listen: if you add the eggs and milk and whatever, it's home made) and my kids started cheering. They love the gingerbread stuff -- the house, the people, the tree.

"So you're going to make the gingerbread this year?" I asked her, trying not to imply anything.

"Nobody'll care after we frost it," she said, trying not to concede anything, and I realized I had the headline for my Darrin Patrick post.

Now, don't get me wrong, OK? I liked all of his 3 talks at Covenant Seminary, and especially liked his talk which he called "the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" of the emergent church. But after listening to part 3 there, I sorta felt like he thought that if he layered on enough rhetorical frosting, nobody would care that he was really telling the radical edges of the ECM that they were preaching a different gospel, and that they needed to get over others pointing that out because that's the only way to resolve the differences.

I mean: that's how he pretty much ended that talk, and I was sort of blown away by how frank he was about it. And if you listened to only, say, the last 10 minutes of the talk (prior to the Q&A portion), you probably will get a very different impression of what he intimates about that movement than if you sit through all the "good" part, and even through the "bad" part. His description of the "ugly" is spot-on, even if it's covered in all kinds of other things to sweeten it up.

There where were moments in part 3 where I had to pull out a pen and scribble down a note or two. For example, it was a little sheepish (trying to avoid saying "coy") to use Justin Taylor as a cover for the "bad" segment of the talk. Sure: JT was plainly the source of that segment, and good on Pastor Darrin for citing his source. But it seemed to me that he was trying to avoid being the bad guy by pretty much reading what JT wrote on the subject of the ECM word for word.

Another moment was when Pastor Patrick followed a rabbit about what it means to preach to the culture -- you'll find it in the section where he says he wants to be preaching to "dudes", among other "cultures".

Here's what I don't disagree with: I think we have to context our churches in a way that the people to whom we are reaching out will give us a listen. You know: I'm the guy with the comic book blog, right? I don't think Fuller-brush door-to-door evangelism is useful today, and I think it is more useful to find social forms which people today can relate to in order to present the Gospel to them there.

But here's my problem with where I think Darrin's talk leads to: I think it leads to a place where we forget that the Gospel is (sing it with me) the solution to culture. That is: it's fine to get to the "dudes" and the "DINCs" and the farmers and so on by having some kind of way of talking with them and to them. It's another altogether when we avoid, because it is hard, the fact that the Gospel is supposed to reconcile races and cultures and all kinds of men not just to Christ but to each other -- that is, that all kinds of men are (not will be) reconciled to each other because they are reconciled to Christ.

I think that's the fundamental challenge to the current iteration of "missional" thinking -- failing to make reconciliation a real issue for people. It seems to me -- and people are welcome to knock this one down if they can -- that making "dude" churches (as one example) overlooks the fact in Scripture that "dudes" need older people to have a complete body of Christ, and vice versa. It's not enough just to say that your church is part of the greater, invisible church.

So that said, I enjoyed Darrin Patrick's impression of the gingerbread man. You may have a different opinion, and you now have the full-fledged version of haloscan into which to express it.

And have a napkin -- you have some frosting on your lip.

All Saints Kiwi

I have a pdf of a book which I am going to review in the near future, but somehow I found myself reading Tall Skinny Kiwi today, specifically his iMonk-like Reformation Day post. It has several points, and I’m going to address them here:

1. The Reformers were committed to an ecumenical consensus of unity. They wanted to reform the whole church, not just one break-away segment that became the Protestant Movement. Sectarianism was not the intention.

Um, depend what you mean by “ecumenical unity”.

2. If there is a Babylon the Great today, it is not the Roman Catholic Church. It is probably something closer and dearer to us.

Well, if the Emgerents want to take on that mantle, it’s no skin off my nose – they’ll just wind up owing Ken and Ingrid an apology.

If what Andrew means by this is that there’s somebody in Memphis or perhaps at a megachurch someplace that’s inadvertently but actively supplanting Christ from His position of Lord in the church, fine. The RCC has way worse theological problems today than it had 500 years ago, including the phony ecumenism which include Jews and Muslims as true worshippers of the God of Abraham.

3. If USA and England had as many Czech immigrants as they did German, history would probably show that the Reformation started much earlier and its geographic center was a few hundred miles eastwards of where we currently believe it to be. YES - I am talking about Jan Hus.

Yawn.

Um, Wycliff? Francis of Assisi? You’d think a friend of emergent would be in for Francis. Yes, Hus is fine – he wasn’t the first guy in for reform and confronting the Pope with his big problems. The question, really, is who brought the matters to a head. Luther had a different political environment to work in, which is why he gets more press than Hus – and you also can’t go with #1 on this list and count Hus in as a guy who wanted “ecumenical” reform – again, because of the political environment he found himself in.

4. The Reformation was initiated NOT because of doctrinal purity, as commonly taught, but because of corruption in the use of power and wealth. Doctrinal reform was a bonus, but not the primary motivation.

Wow. My suggestion, Andrew, is that the Protestant reformation was seeking to remove political flaws in Christendom by clearly expressing theological truths – leveraging the truth of Scripture to reform the hearts and actions of men. Doctrine wasn’t a “bonus”: it was the foundation. That’s why Wycliff was the guy the Pope was trying to suppress in Hus’s day.

5. There is reform in the church today because there is corruption in the church today. God still cares about his church. So should we. The way we play with ecclesiastic power and the way we spend the Bride's finances should concern us all, not just our commitment to a common creed.

Agreed in principle. Which is, of course, where the deepest divisions begin ...

6. The emerging church might well be a protest (Don Carson) but it might also be a corrective measure to the excesses and imbalances of the reformation and the Enlightenment.

Which, of course, is the rosiest view of the movement. There’s nothing “corrective” about turning out the doctrine of penal substitution or throwing rocks at the book of Romans because it’s a didactic letter and not a piece of flowery narrative story-telling.

Let the charity police cry havoc and let loose the wiener-dogs of their disappointment …

Smartest. Friends. Ever.

James Swan is officially the smartest guy on the internet, bar none. May his tribe increase.

Welcome to the Club, Tim Enloe

I even hesitate to link to this site as it brings out the worst in everyone involved, but as evidence that the term "anti-catholic" now means absolutely nothing at all, I welcome Tim Enloe to the ranks of anti-catholic protestant apologists.

HT: "mean" Gene Bridges

Meet Slicey

There's a fellow calling himself (or maybe it's a woman calling herself) "Slicey" in the meta, and yesterday I clowned Slicey for saying this:

Your Cartesian understanding of knowledge, and lack of recognizing your own pre-understanding was my point.

Which, I think, long-time readers of this blog will find especially amusing. However, Slicey isn't happy about being clowned:

Tell me what it means before you "clown me." Because you don't understand something don't resort to a graphic.

Let's hang on a minute here -- because the irony is pretty delicious. Slicey -- who has called the poster video "cartesian" in presupposition -- wants me to explain the category "clown" to him/her before I apply it. I should be more rational, apparently, rather than intuitive.

I'll wait for you to stop laughing before we go on.

You OK now? good.

See -- Slicey doesn't think I know what he/she means when he/she calls me "Cartesian", and ... well, he/she tells it so well:

Typical evangelical.

Which, of course, is not a label, right? Just an obvious fact based on evidence. Nothing "cartesian" about that -- that's not a wholly-westernized criticism based on Enlightenment-style classifications. That's just the truth in love, I am sure. We'll get back to that in a minute.

Call someone a "liberal" or the like then you don't have to listen to ANYTHING they have to say.

Now, here's what's interesting: I didn't call Slicey a "liberal": I called Slicey a "clown" -- in fact, I used the "angry clown" gravatar, not the "happy clown" avatar to make my point more pointy. So if Slicey wants to kvetch about "cartesian understanding of knowledge", maybe he/she should check his/her own epistemological Brita filter before coming here and getting all allegedly-informed on me.

It's like there is a chess game and by labeling you wipe their pieces off the board before the game begins.

Which, if we review the meta, the first person to start assigning labels was ... Slicey. To make full disclosure here, this is what the exhange looked like:

These posters were difficult to read spread out over time on Pyro. To see them so quickly together...the narrow world-view, the arrogance, it is difficult for those that recognize (sort-of with some help!) their own pre-understandings and biases that they come to the text with.

Descartes would be so proud of your grasp at knowledge. YHWH on the other hand...
Slicey | Homepage | 09.28.07 - 4:15 am | #

---

Slicey:

BWAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh brother -- that's the best joke of all, dude! It's an offense to God to say that the Emergent guys are unorthodox in their theology and adolescent in their ability to interact with those they disagree with!

Oh man -- whooh! That's better than coffee at 6:30 AM ...

... oh wait -- I just read your blog, dude. That's a shame. It's too bad you're serious.
centuri0n | Homepage | 09.28.07 - 6:35 am | #

---

I never said it was an affront to God to say stuff about Emergents. Stuff needs to be said about Emergents.

Your Cartesian understanding of knowledge, and lack of recognizing your own pre-understanding was my point.
Slicey | 09.28.07 - 3:45 pm | #

At which point I clowned Slicey and said, "'cartesian understanding of knowledge'? That is the dumbest thing I ever read, dude. Take your clowning like a man."

So as we consider who broke out the Enlightenment Dymo labeler and started tagging things with categories in order to dismiss them, poor Slicey was the one who thought labels would clear things up for the rest of us. Especially in God's eyes.

For the record, Slicey, you got clowned for being self-controdictory and more smug than informed. One of the reasons for that would be a conversation I had with Tim Enloe about two years ago in which he accused me of the same thing, and I told him that, in the first place, I wasn't a dualist; in the second place, Descartes' "cogito ergo sum", in spite of his good intentions, was and is a form of idolatry which places experience before divine revelation. It's humanism, as you would agree, I am sure -- but in that, it violates the precepts of Romans 1:18-end, replacing God as the cornerstone of how we know anything.

But let's be clear about something -- it's your position, Slicey, that labeling things is an enlightenment task betraying Enlightenment epistemological presuppositions. The problem is that God is a covenant God, and He sets aside Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob -- He in fact gave a name to Abraham and Israel to set them apart for all time. It's funny how God makes such a big deal about setting apart Israel but that act somehow gets lost in the eyes of people who want to be more Eastern or more into context. It is in that way, by that method of separating our work from His, which God tells us what is true about Himself.

That's not an Enlightenment view of things: that's the Old Testament view of things, which predates Descartes by two millennia.

So you get clowned for buying into a Chomskyite reduction of western civilization, and not being half as concerned with a God-centered view of the mind and reason as you like to think you have.

If you need more detail there, we can probably cover another 1,000 words on the subject before its get mind-numbingly boring and all my readers have slid off to cut grass or whatever.

It's your site, do what you want, "clown me" if you must. I'm still fairly certain though that if there might be people reading this that understand the term Cartesian, they will see you don't even begin to understand what I meant, because I used a term you didn't recognize, and inadvertently clowned yourself by trying to cut me off with something so shallow.

Aha. I didn't clown you: I clowned me. I didn't realize that you're rubber and I'm glue -- because if I did recognize those categories, I would have ended my comments with "double jinx infinity -- no takebacks!"

You got clowned for doing the thing you say is bad, Slicey. You got clowned for trying to fish the mote in my eye out with your half-informed, self-congratulatory stage-prop-sized powder puff rather than something which will actually accomplish the job -- and you hit yourself in the face with it, and got mad at me for laughing.

Stop hitting yourself, dude. You don't want me to laugh? Stop hitting yourself.

On removing posts

It's funny, but when I have Blogger set up to drop the 15th-oldest post, and it falls off, nobody notices -- no matter how incendiary it is. I have blogger set to drop the 3rd-oldest post, and suddenly I'm doing what all disreputable bloggers do: I'm revising history or shame-facedly and without comment removing something I am allegedly ashamed of.

Here's a tip for people who think they know something about their favorite bloggers: use your favorite search engine to discover how often they have offered up the following phrases --

"I apologize"
"I'm Sorry"
"I was wrong"

It will be very instructive to you about how they deal with their own alleged sobriety of thinking and circumspection.

This is reported to be Captain Drama, but it's only a copycat from a non-denominational summer stock troupe:



For the record, here's my favorite candid photo of Captain Drama:



Notice how it's impossible to tell if he's wearing a mask to cover his own horrible disfigurement thereby giving him a smooth porceline exterior, or if the mask he's wearing is scarier than what's actually underneath.

However, never let it be said that he doesn't have a lovely singing voice. He always brings down the house.

Salvation vs. Calculus

I've had interesting conversations during Hiatus (such as it has been), and it's interesting the common threads that has (ahem) emerged from them. One thread in particular interests me, and it's on the subject of … orthodoxy. You know: how right do I have to be to be saved?

This is a brilliant question, and the New Testament gives us a two-fold answer. And that is itself a brilliant answer because that means the truth is not a checkbox or a light switch: it's not either on or off but a nuanced distinction which sets it apart vividly from error.

One answer the NT gives us is this: you don't really have to know anything to be saved. That is, you can the faith of a little child, and God will welcome you (cf. Mt 18:1-6, for the proof-texters and OGs everywhere). You can have a simple faith, a milk-drinking faith (cf. 1Cor 3), and be saved.

But there's another piece of the NT which frequently gets soft-soaked, and it's the answer which James gives: while a simple faith saves, it does not save only in the eternal sense. That is: it saves you to maturity:

the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

That is, your simple faith is also a living and breathing faith which grows you through trials to a "complete faith".

Many folks read this – rightly, btw – to mean "a right faith does works", and that's fine. That's a good application. But is it the only application? Is it the only one James intends here?

For example, when James says,

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

isn’t James saying that God's word is there so that we can take action upon it, and learn how to live in faith?

And glancing up this post a second, isn’t it also Paul's point in 1 Cor 3 that the Corinthians ought not to be forever babies in the faith, but that eventually they have to move on to the meat of the word? That is: their faith ought to make more of them, and be more than (as Paul implies) baby food.

So in that, there is a second answer to what you ought to know to have a saving faith: it ought to be true, and correct, insofar as you are mature and maturing in your faith.

Here's what I mean by that – by way of example. Let's think about math for a second. My son loves math (thank God – please Jesus make him a man who has a heart for God and people who is an accountant), and we are working flash cards to learn how to multiply. He can add, he can subtract, and now he wants to learn how to do "times". Which is great, if you ask me: he ought to learn how to do "times".

The other day, he asked me, "Daddy, do you do math at work?" And the answer, of course, is yes – I do a lot of math at work, a lot of it requiring advanced algebra. So I told him, "yes, son: I do a LOT of math at work."

"Can you show it to me?" he asked.

Well, sure I can show it to him – so I open up my laptop, open up some spreadsheets, and I show him the greek-like formulas we have either borrowed or invented to discover things like how many dollars we are earning per hour, given the rate of production vs. the standard work for a given work center. And then there's the statistical stuff I have to do verify and compare forecasts. And then there's the financial comparisons vs. plan and vs. last year. And so on. (hey: wake up. The boring part's over)

So he says to me, "but where are the numbers?" See: in his understanding of math, you need two numbers to make an equation, and those two numbers yield a fixed answer – which, factually, is the right view of arithmetic, and ultimately the right view of how a formula yields an answer you can use.

So I tell him, "Son, we fill in the numbers when they come by. This kind of math shows us how to think about certain problems, and when a problem comes up, we change out the letters for numbers to get an answer."

"WHAT?!" he yells, sort of laughing. "Daddy, you can't add up two letters!? You can't add 'A' plus 'B' and get 'C' – they're LETTERS!"

Well, really: he's right. Even in algebra II, the formula gets solved down to its simplest state, or most useful state, and you don't really get numbers at the end – you get formulas. But understanding that requires a leap from linear, arithmetic thinking to something more conceptual – something which is taking in the big picture of how adding 2 + 2, or making 3 "times" 4, works.

So my son can have a completely –correct- view of arithmetic, and be –unable- to grasp algebra yet. That doesn't make his view of math "false": it makes it incomplete. He's not a heretic to the math community: he's a student. His view is correct insofar as it is advanced, but it doesn’t account for all of math.

Now, if in 10 years my son and I sit down and he says to me, "Dad, open up your laptop for me – I want to see what you're doing at work," I'll be glad to oblige. My fatherly optimism will be that he's just completed Trig and he's about to show me how to simplify some of my 3-legged-dog formulas into something a little more sleek and functional.

But if we open up the laptop and when he looks at the spreadsheets he says to me, "You know what, Sir Dude? [he uses 'sir' out of respect because he was raised right] I still don't buy the algebra thing. I know what you call it – I just don't buy it. It doesn’t work. 2 + 2 = 4; A + B doesn't equal anything. All this stuff you say you've been doing for the last 10 years is just guff. And there's no way for you to prove to me that it does work."

At that point, we have crossed over from incomplete knowledge to something else – a knowledge which refuses to grow, refuses to receive more. It's willful ignorance.

In Biblical terms, it's what Paul called the "shipwreck of faith" – that is, when some rejects "love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith." "Love" is certainly the product, but one of the components of that love is a "good conscience". In my example, my son can’t be said to have a good conscience – because he establishes what cannot be true apart from the facts which are plainly in evidence. In our faith life, we cannot be said to have a good conscience if we are unwilling to receive the facts of faith.

That's a big deal, for example, for Catholics – because the right-minded Catholic view is that Protestants who willfully refuse the teaching of the Church are unrepentant sinners. And if they are right about what kind of final authority the Church as an institution holds, they're right: you can't have a good conscience with you reject the truth.

But for Protestants – not merely evangelicals, but confessional Protestants – what Scripture teaches us is what we must accept as the truth about our faith. And as we advance out of spiritual immaturity to spiritual maturity, the burden upon us to accept and demonstrate the truth in Scripture becomes a greater responsibility. This is why the warning to teachers is such a serious thing; that's why the anathema against a different gospel – and the criteria for knowing what that is – is an anathema and not just a rebuke.

And for good measure, think about this: that's why John called the Pharisees who came to see him a brood of vipers, and why Jesus called the same men whitewashed tombs -- because the Gospel had not changed, but these men, who ought to have known better, did not know it when they saw it.

You don't need a perfect confession to save you, but you do need a faith which is perfecting you, not leading you into more error.

Compare and Contrast

I was reading the news this evening, and I came across this piece from AP on the rain in NYC. It made me think about a couple of things, and I thought I'd share.

The first thing is this:

The storm, which also spawned a rare tornado, hit just before dawn. By rush hour, the subway system was virtually paralyzed when pumping stations became overwhelmed. Bedlam resulted from too much rain, too fast; some suburban commuters spent a half day just getting to work.

"One big rain and it all falls apart," said Ruby Russel, 64, as she sat waiting on a train in Brooklyn. She had been trying to get to Manhattan for three hours.

Indeed. "One big rain". But seriously, you'd think a city like that would have someone checking the pumps or something. Maybe a rivet inspector. Where did inspections go wrong?

Because we don't want to be too God-centered, do we? We don't want the pith of an older woman to cause us to reflect on how fragile we really are, even in our monuments to ourselves in a city like New York. Thinking that maybe we shouldn't trust in chariots and horses, so to speak, but in God is far too high-brow at a moment like this.

Especially when there's one big rain and it all falls apart. God wouldn't do something like that, would He?

Mean Calvinists, part 54671

You should read this post by my friend Mark. In the comments, where George Bryson makes an appearance, will be an educational experience.