Nobody asked me

But I'm asking you:

[1] In the last 24 hours, Alpha and Omega Ministries was burgled and somebody stole James White's computer equipment. That is: his T5 and his PC Tablet (and apparently his iPod). While I am sure none of you did it, maybe you will run into a guy trying to sell a PC Tablet for cheap in the Phoenix area. I am sure the local police would love tips.

[2] More importantly, AOMin could sure use your help in replacing thoe stolen items. Insurance? Yes, I'm sure they have that, but deductables are the worst. Wander over to their donation page and give a little for the sake of reformed apologetics.

Thanks. Have a nice day.

"like ministry"

K: I was going to TeamPyro this one, but Thursday is Dan day at TeamPyro (somehow I get some Mondays and most Wednesday -- except on the Wednesdays everyone tacks onto my post because they think we're an episode of the Outer Limits or an argument against cessationism or something) and I just can't keep this one in any longer.

I dunno what made Phil think about the symmetry between the anti-intellectualism of the Emergents and the same in Fundamentalism, but I know exactly what made me think of it: interacting with both groups in close proximity in the last seven days.

I was reading an SBC tirade against Calvinism and the deemin likker, and this person started up on SBC bloggers who are not line-toers and tea-totallers and "bible-believing baptists" (such marvelous alliteration). The resounding note this person struck was the fact that he didn't have time to blog -- he was out knockin' on doors (apparently not selling Amway or Shaklee or the Book of Mormon, but F.A.I.T.H. evangelism -- between hunting vacations and the other things he does when he's not keeping office hours). To make sure the reader "got it", he made it clear that he had better things to do with his time -- like ministry.

You know: he doesn't buy t-shirts from my pawn shop. That doesn't hurt my feelings any. But it was an interesting attempt at sarcasm that sort of made me laugh -- like when you watch a kid try to be very angry with you and they spill out a malaprop in frustration.

Anyway, I've also been interacting with Matt over at From The Morning (because he thinks I'm a little sneaky), and in his meta I mentioned the specific dimness of Rhett Smith -- and Rhett Smith showed up! It's that cool? Well, Mr. Smith was very stern (as far as ECs get stern, anyway) about my referring to him (apparently I have violated the copyright of his name or something -- see: when he takes a shot at John Piper without first having a private conversation with him, it's all good, but when I mention his silly ideas in the meta of a widely-ignored blog, I'm a scoundrel), and in mentioning it he makes sure to also mention that he has better things to do with his time than debate with people who think he's wrong -- like ministry.

Isn't that strange? I mean -- surely he doesn't mean he's out doing the retail politics thing by knocking on doors and handing out tracts like the unnamed SBC pastor, does he? See: I thought that the Emergents had a corner on the new media -- like ministry in the blogosphere. I thought they at least "got" the idea that we can conduct ministry in cyberspace instead of only in the coffee shop or the punk rock concert or whatever.

I also thought that they had read the Bible -- they complain so much about not being understood and that they affirm the Bible and they "get" the Gospel and all that. But they apparently missed the part where Paul "reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath" (Acts 17:17; 18:4).

But there it is: the same sly inference that somehow blogging about error and being willing to stand up and defend one's point of view is somehow unacceptable -- from both the politically-rabid fundie and the trendy "culture" missionary (whom I will call the "indie" hereafter). Now, since these guys don't ever run in the same circles -- they'd rather be caught dead than be in the same place at the same time -- how is it possible that they both came up with such witty repartee? Coincidence?

Oh brother: if you believe that, let me see your wallet -- I think I left $20 in there and I need it back.

Pay attention, folks, because this is critically important to any continuing discussion on this blog. The reason both the fundie and the indie find the phrase "like ministry" so avant garde is that they both see argument the same way. That is: they see it as something to be avoided at all costs.

Now, why is that? Really, I think they both have the same problem at different stages of diagnosis. The fundie has the problem of rejecting all reasoning as inherently worldly and therefore sinful -- which is both extra-biblical (meaning "not found in the Bible" as opposed to "having extra Bible added") and being duped by rationalism's promise that it can replace God (not to mention that he has to get to those conclusions by ... reasoning them out). The indie has the problem in that he thinks arguments are mean and hateful and therefore sinful -- which is both extra-biblical (see above) and being duped by rationalism's claim that emotions are invalidators of the search for truth (even though, of course, he's validated by his positive vibes in this beautiful day in the neighborhood).

But the are indicative of their movements.

The Fundie thinks he's got truth nailed down -- because he's in the right denomination with the right men who will do anything for the sake of the truth (including, apparently, lie and assassinate the character of those who disagree with them). If the truth's nailed down, there's no room for argument, and the ham-handed "like ministry" snark-o-graph is his way of saying, "you're not worth arguing with".

The indie, on the other hand, doesn't want to nail the truth down -- because he's not really trying to set forth the truth: he's trying to make best buds and get people to hold hands and sing whatever the iPod video podcast equivalent of "Kumbaya Milord" is. And there's only really one reason to have an argument anyway: to set forth the truth. All other reasons pale in comparison. And thus the snark-o-licious "like ministry" is shorthand for "dude: that went out with Howard Jones (except, of course, for the classic 'No One Is To Blame') -- your arguments don't matter to me."

Two dead ends: one tactic. And it's funny, really: who knew they had so much in common? They should have lunch and compare notes -- maybe this time they can really give it to those dirty Calvinists and their stinking propositional affirmations and confessions.

There: I said it, and now you can call my blog a "hate site" along side Slice and the other places which think the EC is harming the body of Christ -- but make sure you mention that I also think wobbly Baptist political attacks against confessional Baptists are equally-dispicable. That way all the right people will be mad at me and I can have a clean conscience.

double-secret technorati tags: emergent SBC

Pawn Shop Update

The Homeboy Collection



Yes, I'm serious. If these go over big, we'll add based on requests -- John Owen, Hodge, Luther even. I might add Luther just because it will make people crazy. Especially Baptists.

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...updated... Luther added ...
...updated again -- Warfield and Calvin added ...

Too good to pass up

I don't even have to comment on this one. Anyone who wants to comment on this can do so, but I've got nothing to say about it that isn't only half as funny as the article itself.

double-secret technorati tags: vatican

What? Tuesday?

Ah, I forgot to make a post yesterday. Will you ever forgive me.

Anyway, in the meta from another post, a visitor who's calling himself "Isaiah" wanted to talk about the topic of mean-spirited TR bloggers. Since I am certainly one of those, I thought I'd give him a chance to make the front page. Here's the deal.

Isaiah said this at his own blog:

So despite the fact that many Fundamentalists would act like spiritual slaveholders by attempting to bind my conscience and the consciences of those I love with human commands, I must not allow them to make me hate them.

I admit I have lifted this quote out of context and have not linked back to Isaiah's blog. The reason is this: I want Isaiah to do a little work on this statement here in the meta to see what comes of it. Then the rest of you snarling hounds can do what you do best.

I think this will be a fine topic, and it will allow me to go about my business today without having to babysit you-all.

---

Other notes:
if iMonk can podcast, so can I -- but I need some tech assistance to get the feed working. If you know how to do this, e-mail me at the link in the sidebar.

I was reviewing the sales in the salesbar to the right, and guess what? You people buy more t-shirts than you do books -- and the books are cheaper than the shirts and junk. Now, don't get me wrong: a sale's a sale and all that. But are my t-shirts really that much more intriguing than the Dever book? Sheesh. I thought we were anti-anti-intellectuals around here even if we are not actually intellectuals. Now I find our we're actually pomos who wear slognaeering t-shirts.

double-secret technorati tags:Slice of Laodicia

Unity

One entry found for unity.

Main Entry: uni·ty
Pronunciation: 'yü-n&-tE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -ties
Etymology: Middle English unite, from Anglo-French unité, from Latin unitat-, unitas, from unus one -- more at ONE

It's been almost a year since we took the polling data and ignored Dave Armstrong, and let me admit that I have betrayed you, my readers. I stopped ignoring him this week, but it's all Phil's fault for mentioning ol' Dave in a TeamPyro post. See: I thought Dave was not not-interacting with “anti-catholics” again, and I went over to see what the hub-bub was about.

What I found was a discussion about how disunited Protestantism was, and how that's an affront to the statement Jesus made about unity, and of course some hoopla over some things Phil's Pulpit Live article (which is a reprint of old material) got (in Dave's words) wrong.

In the mix of things happening in Dave's meta, the matter of unity somehow continued to be the topic. In fact, I was chastised for not understanding what “unity” is (and therefore I am, apparently, unable to understand what “disunity” is), so I thought I'd do a little thinking out loud here at the blog for my own benefit and the benefit of you faithful readers who share my utter fascination with the English language.

m-w.com has 6 major headings under the noun “unity”, and we're going to think about them in reverse order.

6 capitalized : a 20th century American religious movement that emphasizes spiritual sources of health and prosperity

While I hesistate to say that anything in this discussion might be clear – especially without a magisterial decision on the matter – it seems clear to me that when DA and his current bevy of meta-readers use this word, they do not mean the abberant pseudo-religion of Unity. I could be wrong, but since the Pope doesn't belong to Unity, this is probably not their point.

Thus, the next definition:

5 : any of three principles of dramatic structure derived by French classicists from Aristotle's Poetics and requiring a play to have a single action represented as occurring in one place and within one day

I'm pretty sure DA and JPrejean aren't talking about French lit aesthetics, either, although I am sure they would have something absolutely rivetting to present on the subject. Maybe we'll have a seminar next year or something.

Next:

4 : a totality of related parts : an entity that is a complex or systematic whole

Seriously now: this one actually has some potential. They might actually be saying that Roman Catholicism has “unity” because it has a complex or systematic (I would argue for “and” not “or”) totality. It is an assembly of parts which all fit together, and therefore it has unity.

So for example, when Dave says, “Doctrinal contradiction of any sort is absolutely at odds with biblical teaching, which repeatedly urges unity and forbids divisions of any kind among Christians,” Dave may in fact be thinking that the Bible says unless every doctrine fits inside the “totality” of doctrine in “relation to” the rest of the parts, the doctrines which do not fit must be false. Keep in mind that the texts he's using to get there is John 17:22-23, Acts 4:32 and 2 Peter 2:1-2.

The really odd thing is that systematic theologies exist inside Protestantism. Charles Hodge wrote one; Robert Reymond has written one; Wayne Grudem has written one. So there is clearly at least one systematic understanding of the Christian faith from outside of the Catholic paradigm, and those systematic theologies have, by a long shot, more in common than not. So if the objection is that Protestants don't have a systematic understanding of the faith, that's just not true.

It is also possible that Dave means that we don't have “just one” systematic understanding of the faith – for example, there are some differences between Grudem and Hodge which cannot be resolved except to say that one of them must be wrong. In Dave's view, that's simply poison: you mean Grudem and Hodge do not agree to the efficacy and acceptable modes of baptism? Why – that's devastating! You cannot be in Christ if you don't have a systematic theology of baptism which can correctly outline every possible effect of baptism on the belief and on the church! You must be wrong! And disunited!

The problem with that view of what Dave is trying to say is that Dave doesn't think that it's the beliefs of the layman which is the measuring stick of unity or disunity. So if someone – as he has mentioned on his blog just recently – doesn't have the same view of the Eucharist as the Magisterium, that's not disunity but ignorance or rank disobedience and sin. If that's true, then the same ought to be true of the ranks in Protestantism. You know: Wayne Grudem is a guy with a Ph.D. – not a pastor. So his Systematics may be academically interesting, but they are not necessarily binding, and you can't actually judge all of Protestantism by the views of one layman, or even two or three laymen. Because laymen aren't the measuring stick, right?

But to get clarity on what Dave means, he takes that and applies it in this way: “Virtually nothing is more strongly and repeatedly condemned in the Bible than divisions, sectarianism, and denominationalism. The Bible teaches that there is one Church only, with one truth and one unified apostolic tradition.” So unity is not just about having one systematic reference point, but it is actually about having a “unified apostolic tradition” and also having “one Church only”, and also about being forbidden to have “divisions”.

So ultimately, Dave doesn't mean definition 4, it seems.

Let's try #3:

3 a : the quality or state of being made one : UNIFICATION b : a combination or ordering of parts in a literary or artistic production that constitutes a whole or promotes an undivided total effect; also : the resulting singleness of effect or symmetry and consistency of style and character

Ah, yes! Yes! “being made into one”, especially “the resulting singleness of effect”. I am certain I could not have said it better myself.

So having one leader, or one institution – that's unity! So for example if there is an Eastern Orthodox branch and a Roman branch there's ... not ... um ... there's not any, uh, there's a lot more unity than, say, in Baptist churches where we count every Baptist church as its own denomination because they technically have local polity and not a global corporate network. All those local Baptist churches are schismaniacs – joined together as they are to send out missionaries and form the largest relief organization in the world.

But priests who don't deny the Eucharist to practicing homosexuals are inside unity, professors who teach liberal doctrine from tenured positions in Catholic institutions are inside unity, and the various and sundry “apostolates” run by lay-Catholics which seem to have discovered they aren't all reading out of the same play book: all inside unity. Because there's only one Pope, after all, and that's what we mean when we are being made into one and have a resulting effect of singleness.

Yeah. Number 2:

2 a : a condition of harmony : ACCORD b : continuity without deviation or change (as in purpose or action)

I asked Dave a question about baby baptism on his blog, and he didn't answer it as of this writing, so we'll come back to this one. My question was, “Roughly speaking, what percent of, um, Catholics in the second century were baptized as infants? I'd settle for really rough percentages -- less than 10%, 20, 40, 60, 80, more than 90%, or 100%?” Given that today roughly 99% of all Catholics are baptized as babies (the other 1% are adult converts), the issue of continuity can be quickly reconciled based on this critical piece of faith in practice.

We'll come back to that one. Last but not least:

1 a : the quality or state of not being multiple : ONENESS b (1) : a definite amount taken as one or for which 1 is made to stand in calculation (2) : IDENTITY; ELEMENT

Well, I have to give them this one: there's only one person who – in all seriousness – can really lay claim to the Papacy today, and if the Papacy if the cornerstone of unity, then that's that. If there's no question that there was a Pope in the sense that today Benedict is a Pope back in the first 3 or 4 centuries of the faith, then it's all over.

But you just can't find a guy like that prior to Gelasius in 492-496. For example: how did Peter the Fuller take the see of Antioch as Bishop in ~470 if Simplicious was Pope the way Benedict is Pope? Why did Martyrius (the guy Peter deposed) go to Constantinople to complain to the Emperor Leo rather than to Simplicious to get recourse for being deposed? Doesn't the Pope appoint all Bishops? Doesn't he have that kind of authority?

So if we're going to talk about Unity, let's do it. It is a great topic, and it gets so many people riled up.

double-secret technorati tags:apologeticschristianity

He asked

I answered. Not very complicated, but a coupla good things in there.

double-secret technorati tags:emergent

Internet Security tip #66-6

I just received an e-mail from a reader who shall remain nameless, and they have alerted me to an insideous plot on the part of Blogger to make all people servants of the devil. It turns out that if you enter your birth date in your blogger profile it assigns you a "Zodiac sign".

My Internet Security tip for you is to NEVER GIVE ANYBODY YOUR BIRTHDATE OVER THE INTERNET. That's a key piece of data used in identity theft, and giving it out is better for scoundrels than giving out your SS#.

Jesus doesn't care about the zodiac sign Blogger puts in your profile: Jesus cares whether or not you have a heart humble to God. I am willing to bet he doesn't want you to get stung in an identity theft scam, either, but I don't have a proof text for that one.

double-secret technorati tags:humor zodiac stupid religion

Especially to spite i-monk

Read this, and then ask yourself: "could this be a post at TeamPyro?"

I'm not inviting Mark Driscoll to be a member of the team (I don't have that kind of authority), but I am saying that he's right, he's struck the right tone for speaking to apostates and the people who love them, and if his 7-yr-old and my 7-yr-old ever got together, it would prolly be for the best.

Knuckle-busted booyah on that, yo.

double-secret technorati tags:Mark Driscoll liberal theology Christianity

Prayer warriors: ho!

here are all kinds of blog carnivals out there for all kinds of meta-disasters and whatever. I have something else I'd like to try.

Libbie, our English Muffin, is sick. Without divulging more than she already has on her blog, she's sick and will be sick until about Christmas, and she has 3 little ones and a loving husband who need her the way all of us need the wife and mom in our own houses.

As is the custom of the blog, we'll ask for prayer for Libbie. Right now, bow your head and tell God that in spite of our sinfulness, He's faithful and in that faithfulness we trust; and we are counting on His faithfulness to comfort Libbie -- with healing and with emotional and spiritual fortitude.

But I'm also asking you to blog for prayer for Libbie. You -- whoever you are, whatever false, non-baptistic counter-reformational cult you belong to (sorry: just kidding) -- pray, and then ask others to pray.

Can you be serious about prayer? Can you ask others to be? If you're tongue-tied, just track back to this post.

And, as a side note, I'd also ask for prayer for my wife today for (as we say in Baptist circles) unspoken requests.

Go on: don't be a slacker about this.