"Then the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. When the Philistines took the ark of God, they brought it into the house of Dagon and set it by Dagon. (1 Sam. 5:1-2)
[And it came to pass that the Israelites considered why they had failed to triumph against the Philistines even though the ark of God had been taken with the Israelites into battle. Eventually, many said it was because Dagon, the god of the Philistines, had much to say about how the world was made and how the world functioned. They said that Dagon should be honoured alongside the God of their fathers. Others cried that this was wrong and that Israel should hold only to the God of their fathers. However, these were few in number and the supporters of Dagon in the camp of the Israelites prevailed. It followed that Israel worshiped a new god, a god who had something of the God of their fathers and something the god of Philistines - Dagon.
In the years hence Israel became more and more like the surrounding nations though it seemed to Israel that it was successful in proselytizing some citizens of those nations. All the while, however, Israel was becoming less distinctive. The gods of the other nations were also seen to be as impressive as the god who was a mix of Dagon and the God of their fathers. So much was this so that these gods too were absorbed into the faith of Israel while the proselytes simply brought to Israel a faith in a god who was amenable to what they wanted to believe and how they wanted to live. As such, the proselytes were of no benefit to Israel.
The day came when a distant nation grew in power. Its people worshiped another god. It was the plan of the priests of this nation that their people should infiltrate all the nations of the world and establish the faith of their god so that their god would rule the world. These people were most prolific in producing sons and daughters within the nations of the world. Some priests of Israel saw the danger and urged the people of Israel to pray to their god. Yet the god they now worshiped was deaf, mute and without capacity to help Israel whatsoever. And so it was that the distant nation overcame the nations of the world including that once great nation Israel. Only a remnant remained in the world whose trust was in the God of the fathers of Israel. This remnant were persecuted with many afflictions but their hope remained in the one true God of their fathers. Their hope was not in vain for the God of their fathers had not forgotten them. He took them out of the world, destroyed the world and made a new Creation where there was no suffering or death, only everlasting joy in the presence of their fathers and suffuse with the glory of their God.]
Well might that have been the story but the time was not right for the God of Israel. The right number from all over the earth had not yet come in for establishment of His kingdom. The scenario described in parenthesis had a time for fulfilment sometime later.
What actually occurred in the temple of Dagon was as follows:
"And when the people of Ashdod arose early in the morning, there was Dagon, fallen on its face to the earth before the ark of the Lord. So they took Dagon and set it in its place again. And when they arose early the next morning, there was Dagon, fallen on its face to the ground before the ark of the Lord. The head of Dagon and both the palms of its hands were broken off on the threshold; only Dagon’s torso was left of it. Therefore neither the priests of Dagon nor any who come into Dagon’s house tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod to this day." (1 Sam. 5:3-5)
Nevertheless, the alternative scenario is in progress today.
Sam Drucker
Showing posts with label Church. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Church. Show all posts
Monday, December 26, 2011
Sunday, August 8, 2010
History a Warning to the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney (Part 3)
Herewith, the final instalment of the article "The Decline of Evangelicalism in Nineteenth-Century England" by R. J. Sheehan in Issue 278, November 1986, of "The Banner of Truth". Reference notations continue in sequence from the previous blogs:
"THE BLUNDERS OF THE CONSERVATIVE EVANGELICALS
With hindsight, it is possible to see that the conservative evangelicals made two major mistakes in their opposition to the higher critical movement. Firstly, they paid so much attention to declaring their opposition to it, especially in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, that, 'the orthodox attacks on the critics. . . were one of the chief means by which a knowledge of higher criticism was disseminated in England'.20
Closely related was the second mistake. The conservatives did not take the higher critics seriously enough. 'In 1880 it was still possible for orthodox Bible scholars in England to consider higher criticism as the temporary form taken by infidelity and Germany and confidently to predict the scholarly victory of tradition'.21 C. H. Spurgeon dismissed the teachings of Julius Wellhausen as, 'calculated only to befool those who are ignorant',22 as late as 1887!
The consequence of this under-estimation of the higher critical movement, until it was too late to reverse the trends, was that some of the opposition to the higher critics rose little above anti-German rhetoric and little real attempt was made to answer the critics at a theological level. W. B. Glover recognized the lack amongst the English conservatives of an equivalent to the Princeton theologians to defend their cause.23 The conservative attack was led by comparatively untrained pastors and in the eyes of many, as in the eighteenth-century Deist controversy, 'more attention was paid to learning, scholarship and oratory than to godliness, orthodoxy and evangelical zeal'.24 So the higher critics won the day.
6. THE BLUNDERS OF THE EVANGELICALS IN GENERAL
The less conservative evangelical leaders must bear the weight of the blame for the victory of higher criticism. It is clear that many of them put more value on maintaining unity and harmony than on the truth. They sold their heritage for a reputation of big-heartedness. C. H. Spurgeon warned them to no avail. 'On all hands we hear cries for unity in this and unity in that... It is easy to cry, "A confederacy" but that union which is not based on the truth of God is rather a conspiracy than a communion'.25
Many of the evangelicals showed a sad lack of discernment. They saw an acceptance of higher criticism as a means to further their scholarly reputations. In this way the Baptist John Clifford won an accolade for his, 'broad interpretation of Evangelicalism, his appreciation of the work of Biblical scholarship, his resolute opposition to blind conservatism, his repudiation of the antagonism between Religion and Science so often proclaimed by some in our church'.26 However, he was also responsible for opposing the stand of C. H. Spurgeon and enabling the higher critical takeover of the Baptist Denomination. Men praised him for his modernity but history condemns it as compromise.
In fact, while full weight must be given to the failure of many to see the real danger of higher criticism and its detrimental effects on evangelicalism, it must sadly be said that a charge of cowardice has to be levelled against many of the evangelicals of the nineteenth century. The nineteenth century saw three groups within the evangelical churches: the conservative evangelicals: the higher critics, and 'a great mixed multitude who from various causes decline to be ranked with either of them'.27 It was this 'mixed multitude' who would not side with either the old
evangelical view of Scripture or with the new view of Scripture, who held the key to the decline. They would not discipline error and so they were overwhelmed by it. The consequence of their indecision and cowardice was that whereas, 'The early nineteenth century saw a quickening of religious life all over Europe . . . when the nineteenth century closed Christianity was at a low ebb'.28
Most nineteenth-century evangelicals had a view of love to others that meant the abandonment of or compromise on truth. But as C. H. Spurgeon correctly observed, 'To part with truth to show charity is to betray our Lord with a kiss'.29
SOME CONCLUSIONS
1. That 'The first step astray is a want of adequate faith in the divine inspiration of the sacred Scriptures . . . Where ministers and Christian churches have held fast to the truth that the Holy Scriptures have been given by God as an authoritative and infallible rule of faith and practice, they have never wandered seriously out of the way. But when, on the other hand, reason has been exalted above revelation, and made the exponent of revelation, all kinds of errors and mischiefs have been the result'.30 Our doctrine of scripture is, therefore, not a matter of minor importance.
2. That Calvinists have historically left the doctrine of Scripture le[a]st of all of those who have departed from it. Therefore, Calvinism is an important safeguard against heresy.
3. That the basis of unity cannot be merely a shared spiritual experience or shared evangelistic zeal. A man who is converted and is a means of conversion to others can be more dangerous to the health of the churches than an outright heretic if he mixes his zeal for the gospel with defective views of Scripture and half-heartedness about other major doctrines.
4. That a false sense of Christian love can lead people to a total lack of discernment in which they treat wolves like sheep and maintain alliances with those who are enemies of the gospel. This is to the inevitable detriment of the churches.
5. That worldliness and looseness are inevitably companions of theological disinterest and looseness
6. That evangelicals have to take their opposition seriously at a theological level and not merely respond by abuse. The absence of a theological answer to the higher critics gave the evangelicals the appearance of theological ignorance.
7. That the ministers often become corrupt before the people. 'As a general rule laymen were slower in accepting higher criticism than the ministers'.31 Even as late as the 1890's, 'there remained large numbers of laymen and some ministers who never accepted the new criticism even in principle'. 32 But, with the pulpits of their churches hijacked, the people were left to rot, with blind guides leading them to nowhere worth going.
8. That the dismal history of English evangelicals from 1900 to 1950 cannot be understood apart from this background of nineteenth-century compromise and failure. The present, comparatively healthier state of evangelicalism is closely connected to the 'revival' of Calvinism. All the present gains, however, could be rapidly lost if the lessons of the past are not remembered."
Thus ends R.J. Sheehan's helpful insight of the decline of evangelicalism in England in the nineteenth century. In the next instalment of "History a Warning to the Episcopalian Church of Sydney" I will attempt to observe the state of things today.
Sam Drucker
References:
20. Glover op. cit. p4L
21. ibid p. 36. 22.
22. Spurgeon, C. H. The Sword and Trowel, August 1887, p 430.
23. Glover op. cit. pp 219-221.
24. Summary of Shindler, R. The Sword and Trowel, March 1887, p 122.
25. Spurgeon, C. H. The Sword and Trowel, April 1887, pp 195-196.
26. Blomfeld, W. E. cited in Underwood, A. C. A History of English Baptists, 1947, Kingsgate Press, p 226.
27. Spurgeon, C. H. The Sword and Trowel, December 1888, p 619.
28. Glover op. cit. .p 11.
29. Spurgeon, C. H. The Sword and Trowel, February 1887, p 91.
30. Shindler, R. The Sword and Trowel, April 1887, p 170.
31. Glover op. cit. p 199.
32. ibid. p 217.
"THE BLUNDERS OF THE CONSERVATIVE EVANGELICALS
With hindsight, it is possible to see that the conservative evangelicals made two major mistakes in their opposition to the higher critical movement. Firstly, they paid so much attention to declaring their opposition to it, especially in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, that, 'the orthodox attacks on the critics. . . were one of the chief means by which a knowledge of higher criticism was disseminated in England'.20
Closely related was the second mistake. The conservatives did not take the higher critics seriously enough. 'In 1880 it was still possible for orthodox Bible scholars in England to consider higher criticism as the temporary form taken by infidelity and Germany and confidently to predict the scholarly victory of tradition'.21 C. H. Spurgeon dismissed the teachings of Julius Wellhausen as, 'calculated only to befool those who are ignorant',22 as late as 1887!
The consequence of this under-estimation of the higher critical movement, until it was too late to reverse the trends, was that some of the opposition to the higher critics rose little above anti-German rhetoric and little real attempt was made to answer the critics at a theological level. W. B. Glover recognized the lack amongst the English conservatives of an equivalent to the Princeton theologians to defend their cause.23 The conservative attack was led by comparatively untrained pastors and in the eyes of many, as in the eighteenth-century Deist controversy, 'more attention was paid to learning, scholarship and oratory than to godliness, orthodoxy and evangelical zeal'.24 So the higher critics won the day.
6. THE BLUNDERS OF THE EVANGELICALS IN GENERAL
The less conservative evangelical leaders must bear the weight of the blame for the victory of higher criticism. It is clear that many of them put more value on maintaining unity and harmony than on the truth. They sold their heritage for a reputation of big-heartedness. C. H. Spurgeon warned them to no avail. 'On all hands we hear cries for unity in this and unity in that... It is easy to cry, "A confederacy" but that union which is not based on the truth of God is rather a conspiracy than a communion'.25
Many of the evangelicals showed a sad lack of discernment. They saw an acceptance of higher criticism as a means to further their scholarly reputations. In this way the Baptist John Clifford won an accolade for his, 'broad interpretation of Evangelicalism, his appreciation of the work of Biblical scholarship, his resolute opposition to blind conservatism, his repudiation of the antagonism between Religion and Science so often proclaimed by some in our church'.26 However, he was also responsible for opposing the stand of C. H. Spurgeon and enabling the higher critical takeover of the Baptist Denomination. Men praised him for his modernity but history condemns it as compromise.
In fact, while full weight must be given to the failure of many to see the real danger of higher criticism and its detrimental effects on evangelicalism, it must sadly be said that a charge of cowardice has to be levelled against many of the evangelicals of the nineteenth century. The nineteenth century saw three groups within the evangelical churches: the conservative evangelicals: the higher critics, and 'a great mixed multitude who from various causes decline to be ranked with either of them'.27 It was this 'mixed multitude' who would not side with either the old
evangelical view of Scripture or with the new view of Scripture, who held the key to the decline. They would not discipline error and so they were overwhelmed by it. The consequence of their indecision and cowardice was that whereas, 'The early nineteenth century saw a quickening of religious life all over Europe . . . when the nineteenth century closed Christianity was at a low ebb'.28
Most nineteenth-century evangelicals had a view of love to others that meant the abandonment of or compromise on truth. But as C. H. Spurgeon correctly observed, 'To part with truth to show charity is to betray our Lord with a kiss'.29
SOME CONCLUSIONS
1. That 'The first step astray is a want of adequate faith in the divine inspiration of the sacred Scriptures . . . Where ministers and Christian churches have held fast to the truth that the Holy Scriptures have been given by God as an authoritative and infallible rule of faith and practice, they have never wandered seriously out of the way. But when, on the other hand, reason has been exalted above revelation, and made the exponent of revelation, all kinds of errors and mischiefs have been the result'.30 Our doctrine of scripture is, therefore, not a matter of minor importance.
2. That Calvinists have historically left the doctrine of Scripture le[a]st of all of those who have departed from it. Therefore, Calvinism is an important safeguard against heresy.
3. That the basis of unity cannot be merely a shared spiritual experience or shared evangelistic zeal. A man who is converted and is a means of conversion to others can be more dangerous to the health of the churches than an outright heretic if he mixes his zeal for the gospel with defective views of Scripture and half-heartedness about other major doctrines.
4. That a false sense of Christian love can lead people to a total lack of discernment in which they treat wolves like sheep and maintain alliances with those who are enemies of the gospel. This is to the inevitable detriment of the churches.
5. That worldliness and looseness are inevitably companions of theological disinterest and looseness
6. That evangelicals have to take their opposition seriously at a theological level and not merely respond by abuse. The absence of a theological answer to the higher critics gave the evangelicals the appearance of theological ignorance.
7. That the ministers often become corrupt before the people. 'As a general rule laymen were slower in accepting higher criticism than the ministers'.31 Even as late as the 1890's, 'there remained large numbers of laymen and some ministers who never accepted the new criticism even in principle'. 32 But, with the pulpits of their churches hijacked, the people were left to rot, with blind guides leading them to nowhere worth going.
8. That the dismal history of English evangelicals from 1900 to 1950 cannot be understood apart from this background of nineteenth-century compromise and failure. The present, comparatively healthier state of evangelicalism is closely connected to the 'revival' of Calvinism. All the present gains, however, could be rapidly lost if the lessons of the past are not remembered."
Thus ends R.J. Sheehan's helpful insight of the decline of evangelicalism in England in the nineteenth century. In the next instalment of "History a Warning to the Episcopalian Church of Sydney" I will attempt to observe the state of things today.
Sam Drucker
References:
20. Glover op. cit. p4L
21. ibid p. 36. 22.
22. Spurgeon, C. H. The Sword and Trowel, August 1887, p 430.
23. Glover op. cit. pp 219-221.
24. Summary of Shindler, R. The Sword and Trowel, March 1887, p 122.
25. Spurgeon, C. H. The Sword and Trowel, April 1887, pp 195-196.
26. Blomfeld, W. E. cited in Underwood, A. C. A History of English Baptists, 1947, Kingsgate Press, p 226.
27. Spurgeon, C. H. The Sword and Trowel, December 1888, p 619.
28. Glover op. cit. .p 11.
29. Spurgeon, C. H. The Sword and Trowel, February 1887, p 91.
30. Shindler, R. The Sword and Trowel, April 1887, p 170.
31. Glover op. cit. p 199.
32. ibid. p 217.
Friday, August 6, 2010
History a Warning to the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney (Part 2)
Herewith instalment 2 of the article by R. J. Sheehan in Issue 278, November 1986, of 'The Banner of Truth". Reference notations continue in sequence from the previous blog.
"2. THE REVIVAL EMPHASIS ON EXPERIENCE
One of the effects of the eighteenth-century revivals was to turn men from mere head-knowledge of Scripture and the creeds to a heart-knowledge of the God revealed therein. The preaching of the utter necessity of rebirth focused attention on religious experience. In the years following the revivals the tendency was to put emphasis upon a person's religious experience rather than his belief.
Experience-conscious evangelicals had little time for creeds. Their emphasis had not originated in a conscious desire for a creedless Christianity but this was its tendency. It was precisely that danger which had opened the door to Deism in the early eighteenth century and had enabled it to gain victories. At the end of the last century Robert Shindler warned evangelicals of the lessons from history,7 and C. H. Spurgeon pleaded for a creed distinctive enough to exclude the rationalists from non-conformist denominations, but failed to get a hearing in the anticipated creedal atmosphere of his day. 'The pietistic quality of the revival put primary emphasis on individual Christian experience and valued correct doctrine only as a means to the creation of such experience. As a result evangelicals would tolerate almost any divergence in doctrine provided the individual concerned was known to have a fervent evangelical experience, and above all if his ministry awakened the same experience in others'. Evangelicals had a 'general lack of interest... in theology'.8
C. H. spurgeon noted the tendency to accept any doctrinal statement as long as the person who made it was, 'a clever man and a good-natured brother'.9
The nineteenth-century evangelicals argued against creeds and for a 'freer' view of Scripture on the grounds of freedom of conscience and the Protestant rule of the right of private interpretation. By rejecting creeds altogether - or accepting only such creeds as were sufficiently vague to mean little - the advocates of the higher-critical view of the Bible ousted the evangelicals from their dominant position in the denominations with hardly a fight.
3. THE REVIVAL EMPHASIS ON UNITY
One of the consequences of the eighteenth-century revivals was to unite evangelicals in a common faith and in a mutual desire to work together in missionary and evangelistic activity as well as in theological education. The desire for unity had not always been able to be realized during the revivals because of the contentions between the evangelists over the doctrines of grace. The eighteenth-century preachers had not been able to resolve this question. The nineteenth-century evangelicals generally gained unity by abandoning or modifying their Calvinism.
A study of the eighteenth-century advance of Deism makes it clear that it made least advance where Calvinism was strongly maintained.10 C. H. Spurgeon stated, 'We believe that Calvinism has in it a conservative force which holds men to vital truth'.11 In reviewing the nineteenth century, the neo-orthodox writer W. B. Glover acknowledged, 'Where Calvinism had been supreme, its decline left a theological vacuum'.12
Not only did the decline of Calvinism with its high view of scriptural authority make the higher critical view more easily accepted, but other doctrines began to be debased also. 'The awful sternness of the Calvinistic God gave place to milder ideas which may be summed up in the popular phrase 'the Fatherhood of God'. The emphasis on God's love and mercy went so far as to call in question the time honoured doctrine of eternal punishment'.13
The friends of higher criticism soon understood the antipathy towards Calvinism amongst many nineteenth-century evangelicals. Consequently when conservative evangelicals attacked the higher critics, they retorted by accusing them of Calvinism, and the general evangelical public accepted the charge. Constantly C. H. Spurgeon had to protest against this diverting ploy. 'The present struggle is not a debate upon the question of Calvinism or Arminianism but of the truth of God versus the inventions of men'.14
It is, however, undoubtedly true that if the Calvinists had maintained their strength within evangelicalism in the nineteenth century the higher critics would have had a more difficult task capturing evangelicalism. As it was, 'the theological uncertainty that accompanied the dissolution of Calvinism made the non-conformists less able and less anxious to defend traditional views from new views'.15
4. THE SUBTLETY OF THE ATTACK
The Christian church has often been able to defend itself much more easily from attacks from outside its ranks than from within its own number. Attacks from apparent friends are always less expected and more difficult both to detect and oppose. We have already noted that many of the leading advocates and friends of higher criticism had a reputation for gospel preaching.
The friends of higher criticism were often very cunning. They described their theology as, 'broad and full'16 rather than 'narrow and limited' like that of the Calvinists. James Dann attacked ministers who were unorthodox in doctrine but stayed in the churches to undermine the faith.17 That this happened is beyond dispute. W. B. Glover approved of this subversion. He wrote of, 'the tendency of some who were in advance of the general movement of opinion to hide their more unorthodox views from the public. This was unquestionably an instance of sound political sense.18 This ethically questionable procedure undoubtedly was successful in fooling the evangelicals in general.
The cunning of the higher critics was also seen in their concentration on the Old Testament. It was far easier to question the historicity and accuracy of Jonah than of our Lord. (Evangelicals still sometimes put the words of Jesus in red and the rest in black!). A full frontal attack on the gospels had to follow the undermining of the Old Testament, not precede it.
The decline of Calvinism also led to the promotion of worldliness. C. H. Spurgeon commented, 'The fact is that many would like to unite church and stage, cards and prayer, dancing and sacraments'.'' In this atmosphere of 'freer' life-style, conservatism in theology was not likely to prosper. Loose living and loose theology were not unconnected. To accept higher criticism was to be in fashion. To maintain the old evangelical doctrine of Scripture was to be an anachronism."
Instalment 3 to follow in a few days. Bear with me, this is all going somewhere.
Sam Drucker
7. Shindler, R. The Sword and Trowel, March 1887, p/) 122-126.
8. Glover op. cit. pp 93-4.
9. Spurgeon, C. H. The Sword and Trowel, August 1887, p 400.
10. Shindler, R. The Sword and Trowel, April 1887, pp 170-171.
11. Spurgeon, C. H. The Sword and Trowel, April 1887, pp 195-196.
12. Glover op. cit .p93.
13. ibid.p92.
14. Spurgeon, C. H. The Sword and Trowel, April 1887, pp 195-196.
15. Glover op. cit. p 205.
16. J. B. Brown cited in Spurgeon, The Early Years, 1962, Banner of Truth, p 494.
17. Dann, J. The Sword and Trowel, April 1887, pp 172-174.
18. Glover op. cit. p 41.
19. Spurgeon, C. H. The Sword and Trowel, August 1887, p 398.
"2. THE REVIVAL EMPHASIS ON EXPERIENCE
One of the effects of the eighteenth-century revivals was to turn men from mere head-knowledge of Scripture and the creeds to a heart-knowledge of the God revealed therein. The preaching of the utter necessity of rebirth focused attention on religious experience. In the years following the revivals the tendency was to put emphasis upon a person's religious experience rather than his belief.
Experience-conscious evangelicals had little time for creeds. Their emphasis had not originated in a conscious desire for a creedless Christianity but this was its tendency. It was precisely that danger which had opened the door to Deism in the early eighteenth century and had enabled it to gain victories. At the end of the last century Robert Shindler warned evangelicals of the lessons from history,7 and C. H. Spurgeon pleaded for a creed distinctive enough to exclude the rationalists from non-conformist denominations, but failed to get a hearing in the anticipated creedal atmosphere of his day. 'The pietistic quality of the revival put primary emphasis on individual Christian experience and valued correct doctrine only as a means to the creation of such experience. As a result evangelicals would tolerate almost any divergence in doctrine provided the individual concerned was known to have a fervent evangelical experience, and above all if his ministry awakened the same experience in others'. Evangelicals had a 'general lack of interest... in theology'.8
C. H. spurgeon noted the tendency to accept any doctrinal statement as long as the person who made it was, 'a clever man and a good-natured brother'.9
The nineteenth-century evangelicals argued against creeds and for a 'freer' view of Scripture on the grounds of freedom of conscience and the Protestant rule of the right of private interpretation. By rejecting creeds altogether - or accepting only such creeds as were sufficiently vague to mean little - the advocates of the higher-critical view of the Bible ousted the evangelicals from their dominant position in the denominations with hardly a fight.
3. THE REVIVAL EMPHASIS ON UNITY
One of the consequences of the eighteenth-century revivals was to unite evangelicals in a common faith and in a mutual desire to work together in missionary and evangelistic activity as well as in theological education. The desire for unity had not always been able to be realized during the revivals because of the contentions between the evangelists over the doctrines of grace. The eighteenth-century preachers had not been able to resolve this question. The nineteenth-century evangelicals generally gained unity by abandoning or modifying their Calvinism.
A study of the eighteenth-century advance of Deism makes it clear that it made least advance where Calvinism was strongly maintained.10 C. H. Spurgeon stated, 'We believe that Calvinism has in it a conservative force which holds men to vital truth'.11 In reviewing the nineteenth century, the neo-orthodox writer W. B. Glover acknowledged, 'Where Calvinism had been supreme, its decline left a theological vacuum'.12
Not only did the decline of Calvinism with its high view of scriptural authority make the higher critical view more easily accepted, but other doctrines began to be debased also. 'The awful sternness of the Calvinistic God gave place to milder ideas which may be summed up in the popular phrase 'the Fatherhood of God'. The emphasis on God's love and mercy went so far as to call in question the time honoured doctrine of eternal punishment'.13
The friends of higher criticism soon understood the antipathy towards Calvinism amongst many nineteenth-century evangelicals. Consequently when conservative evangelicals attacked the higher critics, they retorted by accusing them of Calvinism, and the general evangelical public accepted the charge. Constantly C. H. Spurgeon had to protest against this diverting ploy. 'The present struggle is not a debate upon the question of Calvinism or Arminianism but of the truth of God versus the inventions of men'.14
It is, however, undoubtedly true that if the Calvinists had maintained their strength within evangelicalism in the nineteenth century the higher critics would have had a more difficult task capturing evangelicalism. As it was, 'the theological uncertainty that accompanied the dissolution of Calvinism made the non-conformists less able and less anxious to defend traditional views from new views'.15
4. THE SUBTLETY OF THE ATTACK
The Christian church has often been able to defend itself much more easily from attacks from outside its ranks than from within its own number. Attacks from apparent friends are always less expected and more difficult both to detect and oppose. We have already noted that many of the leading advocates and friends of higher criticism had a reputation for gospel preaching.
The friends of higher criticism were often very cunning. They described their theology as, 'broad and full'16 rather than 'narrow and limited' like that of the Calvinists. James Dann attacked ministers who were unorthodox in doctrine but stayed in the churches to undermine the faith.17 That this happened is beyond dispute. W. B. Glover approved of this subversion. He wrote of, 'the tendency of some who were in advance of the general movement of opinion to hide their more unorthodox views from the public. This was unquestionably an instance of sound political sense.18 This ethically questionable procedure undoubtedly was successful in fooling the evangelicals in general.
The cunning of the higher critics was also seen in their concentration on the Old Testament. It was far easier to question the historicity and accuracy of Jonah than of our Lord. (Evangelicals still sometimes put the words of Jesus in red and the rest in black!). A full frontal attack on the gospels had to follow the undermining of the Old Testament, not precede it.
The decline of Calvinism also led to the promotion of worldliness. C. H. Spurgeon commented, 'The fact is that many would like to unite church and stage, cards and prayer, dancing and sacraments'.'' In this atmosphere of 'freer' life-style, conservatism in theology was not likely to prosper. Loose living and loose theology were not unconnected. To accept higher criticism was to be in fashion. To maintain the old evangelical doctrine of Scripture was to be an anachronism."
Instalment 3 to follow in a few days. Bear with me, this is all going somewhere.
Sam Drucker
7. Shindler, R. The Sword and Trowel, March 1887, p/) 122-126.
8. Glover op. cit. pp 93-4.
9. Spurgeon, C. H. The Sword and Trowel, August 1887, p 400.
10. Shindler, R. The Sword and Trowel, April 1887, pp 170-171.
11. Spurgeon, C. H. The Sword and Trowel, April 1887, pp 195-196.
12. Glover op. cit .p93.
13. ibid.p92.
14. Spurgeon, C. H. The Sword and Trowel, April 1887, pp 195-196.
15. Glover op. cit. p 205.
16. J. B. Brown cited in Spurgeon, The Early Years, 1962, Banner of Truth, p 494.
17. Dann, J. The Sword and Trowel, April 1887, pp 172-174.
18. Glover op. cit. p 41.
19. Spurgeon, C. H. The Sword and Trowel, August 1887, p 398.
Friday, May 9, 2008
Connect 09, 10, 11, 12, 13...
Connect 09, like the 10 year mission, reminds me of the futility of 'management by slogan'.
If that's all the SAD has to offer, I think it should change its mission!
If that's all the SAD has to offer, I think it should change its mission!
Friday, April 11, 2008
Caterwauling
I'll bet the SADists are in full caterwauling mode as they whine about the woman bishop in WA. Pity they strain at gnats and let elephants wander around their catherals of partial belief!
Who would you prefer to debate?
Critias posted this comment. I thought I'd take it to the front of the line, I thought it so good. Hope you don't mind Critias!
I was thinking of the polarities in belief the other day. Here are some contrasts: I went to a talk a few years ago at the Humanist Society. It was on evolution or creation?. The speaker, I think he was from Sydney Uni, spoke long and well, and was congratulated by the president. His talk opposed evolution and supported biblical creation.
Another time I went to a debate in Bankstown; it was at a church. Three speakers for biblical creation, three for materialist evolution. Both sides had book tables, and for we Christians, there were some great warm conversations with unbelievers.
I remember one older man, one of the Rationalists puzzled over the conjunction of God and suffering. He wondered how children could be allowed to suffer. I joined and wondered at the futility of ending life with death: what we all face as we age (he was quite old). His philosophy gave him no help. I talked about the hope I have not only becuase God who is love created, but he whi is love has acted to unite us with him across the divide of alienation and death.
Another time I went to a debate (at Christ Church St Ives) where the topic was biblical creation. The minister, Dr Woodhouse debated with Carl Wieland of Creation Ministries on the Bible's teaching on creation. Woodhouse gave a great display of shifting hermeneutics and strange biblical thinking. He talked about 'multiple creation accounts' (he was refering to biblical references to the single creation account in Genesis 1 and 2). Carl on the other hand, stood in the Reformed tradition, and took the Bible for what it said.
Now, the contrasts: I saw hearty open and honest talks and debates with the Humanist Society and the Rationalists. From SADists I saw equivocation, absurd special pleading and a veiled supercilious truculance.
Woodhouse is now principal of Moore College: I wonder what it will be turning out: more North Shore parish disaster mongers?
I was thinking of the polarities in belief the other day. Here are some contrasts: I went to a talk a few years ago at the Humanist Society. It was on evolution or creation?. The speaker, I think he was from Sydney Uni, spoke long and well, and was congratulated by the president. His talk opposed evolution and supported biblical creation.
Another time I went to a debate in Bankstown; it was at a church. Three speakers for biblical creation, three for materialist evolution. Both sides had book tables, and for we Christians, there were some great warm conversations with unbelievers.
I remember one older man, one of the Rationalists puzzled over the conjunction of God and suffering. He wondered how children could be allowed to suffer. I joined and wondered at the futility of ending life with death: what we all face as we age (he was quite old). His philosophy gave him no help. I talked about the hope I have not only becuase God who is love created, but he whi is love has acted to unite us with him across the divide of alienation and death.
Another time I went to a debate (at Christ Church St Ives) where the topic was biblical creation. The minister, Dr Woodhouse debated with Carl Wieland of Creation Ministries on the Bible's teaching on creation. Woodhouse gave a great display of shifting hermeneutics and strange biblical thinking. He talked about 'multiple creation accounts' (he was refering to biblical references to the single creation account in Genesis 1 and 2). Carl on the other hand, stood in the Reformed tradition, and took the Bible for what it said.
Now, the contrasts: I saw hearty open and honest talks and debates with the Humanist Society and the Rationalists. From SADists I saw equivocation, absurd special pleading and a veiled supercilious truculance.
Woodhouse is now principal of Moore College: I wonder what it will be turning out: more North Shore parish disaster mongers?
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Ahaz and the Connect 09 Connection.
Immediately prior to the reign of King Hezekiah, Judah was under the rule of King Ahaz. While Hezekiah did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, his predecessor did not. Ahaz worshipped other gods even to the point of sacrificing his sons in the fire. Lucky Hezekiah that he didn't suffer the same fate! (actually, I don't believe that luck is a viable concept in the order of life)
So far devoid of faith in the LORD God was Ahaz that the circumstances of life he put down to the activity of other gods. 2 Chronicles 28: 22-23 describes an incident which typifies this situation. It reads: "In his time of trouble King Ahaz became even more unfaithful to the LORD. He offered sacrifices to the gods of Damascus, who had defeated him; for he thought, 'Since the gods of the kings of Aram have helped them, I will sacrifice to them so they will help me.' But they were his downfall and the downfall of all Israel."
Ahaz could not see that his earlier defeat at the hands of Aram was a punishment and even a test from the LORD God. It ought to have brought Ahaz to his knees in earnest repentance for his unfaithfulness to the LORD God. But no, as one of weak faith, Ahaz was impressed by the seeming capacity of the gods of Aram to triumph over the opponents of Aram. He went not to God but to those who were not God. This was to the downfall of Ahaz and to the downfall of all Israel.
Israel, into which we have been grafted, has repeated occasions of flagrant backsliding. It takes a special activity of the LORD God to give new life, an invigoration of faith. This occurs after an acknowledgement of debased condition, the prayers of repentance from the faithful remnant and faithful waiting on the LORD. It never comes from the activities of those who go after the ways of the world.
Sadly, we find the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney pursuing the latter course and expecting to "grow the church" through a strategy called Connect 09. The Diocese is 'kicking at the goads" because it has pursued much the same path as King Ahaz of Judah. Confronted by the eloquence and seeming strength of argument for a timescale for the earth contrary to the biblical chronology, ingrafted Israel has capitulated. On a broad scale it has taken on the long age god of the world because it seemed triumphant over the inspired Word of God. Having capitulated at this point it was ready, on many fronts, to bow the knee to Darwinism. This false god is also far removed from the revelation of the LORD God but in an absurd exercise in syncretism many in the Diocese have melded it to make a grotesque representation of the one true God.
Such is the sorry state of Israel as portrayed by the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney today. When its leaders should have stood firm on the Word of God and waited on the LORD God they buckled. Now a degenerate faith is the order of the day. On the basis of its afinity to King Ahaz the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney should be on its knees acknowledging, before the LORD, its sin of syncretism. It should be repenting of this sin. It should be waiting on the LORD to raise up leaders to lead the Diocese in triumph. Without this it goes up to battle in vain.
I think James Mellor Brown (1796? - 1867), Episcopalian Minister in England reasonably foreshadowed the present condition and direction of the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney in his 1838 pamphlet entitled Reflections on Geology. He was dealing with the then novel long age proposition for the age of the earth.
"I am prepared to show that in this sense religion has much to fear from philosophy [i.e., natural philosophy or science], not its facts, but its theories. Whenever those theories invalidate the historical or the physical statements of Scripture; or even when they interfere with our sober and commonly received views of it, they are pernicious. They tend to unsettle men's minds as to the veracity of the Sacred Writings. They shake the confidence with which the simple and unlearned repose upon them. Simple minds feel unable to untwine those threads of error which they are told run throughout the book; and they cannot distinguish that inspired portion which they ought to hold fast from those uninspired statements of science and history which they are assured they may safely let go. Thus doubt and distrust enter their minds, and never again can they rest with that unquestioning reliance upon the Word of God which they once felt.The sacred volume is no longer to them a rock which cannot be shaken. To this it may be added, that these theories, where they are admitted disturb the learned and acute mind still more powefully than the illiterate; for the thinking, reasoning man naturally argues, that if any statement of Scripture has been questioned, so may another, and another; and that if historical or physical facts can be disproved, whatever doctrines or precepts rest upon them must give way likewise. Thus scepticism takes gradual possession of the soul. If natural facts cannot be admitted on the mere warrant of inspiration, by what law of evidence, it may be asked, can we be compelled to believe, on the same authority, those which are supernatural? When science has once begun to tamper with Scripture, it is vain to say that it will restrict itself to physical statements, and abstain from the consideration of miracles. Men will no more stop half-way in an argument because you wish them, than a rolling stone will check itself at your bidding when half way down the hill."
Sam
So far devoid of faith in the LORD God was Ahaz that the circumstances of life he put down to the activity of other gods. 2 Chronicles 28: 22-23 describes an incident which typifies this situation. It reads: "In his time of trouble King Ahaz became even more unfaithful to the LORD. He offered sacrifices to the gods of Damascus, who had defeated him; for he thought, 'Since the gods of the kings of Aram have helped them, I will sacrifice to them so they will help me.' But they were his downfall and the downfall of all Israel."
Ahaz could not see that his earlier defeat at the hands of Aram was a punishment and even a test from the LORD God. It ought to have brought Ahaz to his knees in earnest repentance for his unfaithfulness to the LORD God. But no, as one of weak faith, Ahaz was impressed by the seeming capacity of the gods of Aram to triumph over the opponents of Aram. He went not to God but to those who were not God. This was to the downfall of Ahaz and to the downfall of all Israel.
Israel, into which we have been grafted, has repeated occasions of flagrant backsliding. It takes a special activity of the LORD God to give new life, an invigoration of faith. This occurs after an acknowledgement of debased condition, the prayers of repentance from the faithful remnant and faithful waiting on the LORD. It never comes from the activities of those who go after the ways of the world.
Sadly, we find the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney pursuing the latter course and expecting to "grow the church" through a strategy called Connect 09. The Diocese is 'kicking at the goads" because it has pursued much the same path as King Ahaz of Judah. Confronted by the eloquence and seeming strength of argument for a timescale for the earth contrary to the biblical chronology, ingrafted Israel has capitulated. On a broad scale it has taken on the long age god of the world because it seemed triumphant over the inspired Word of God. Having capitulated at this point it was ready, on many fronts, to bow the knee to Darwinism. This false god is also far removed from the revelation of the LORD God but in an absurd exercise in syncretism many in the Diocese have melded it to make a grotesque representation of the one true God.
Such is the sorry state of Israel as portrayed by the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney today. When its leaders should have stood firm on the Word of God and waited on the LORD God they buckled. Now a degenerate faith is the order of the day. On the basis of its afinity to King Ahaz the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney should be on its knees acknowledging, before the LORD, its sin of syncretism. It should be repenting of this sin. It should be waiting on the LORD to raise up leaders to lead the Diocese in triumph. Without this it goes up to battle in vain.
I think James Mellor Brown (1796? - 1867), Episcopalian Minister in England reasonably foreshadowed the present condition and direction of the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney in his 1838 pamphlet entitled Reflections on Geology. He was dealing with the then novel long age proposition for the age of the earth.
"I am prepared to show that in this sense religion has much to fear from philosophy [i.e., natural philosophy or science], not its facts, but its theories. Whenever those theories invalidate the historical or the physical statements of Scripture; or even when they interfere with our sober and commonly received views of it, they are pernicious. They tend to unsettle men's minds as to the veracity of the Sacred Writings. They shake the confidence with which the simple and unlearned repose upon them. Simple minds feel unable to untwine those threads of error which they are told run throughout the book; and they cannot distinguish that inspired portion which they ought to hold fast from those uninspired statements of science and history which they are assured they may safely let go. Thus doubt and distrust enter their minds, and never again can they rest with that unquestioning reliance upon the Word of God which they once felt.The sacred volume is no longer to them a rock which cannot be shaken. To this it may be added, that these theories, where they are admitted disturb the learned and acute mind still more powefully than the illiterate; for the thinking, reasoning man naturally argues, that if any statement of Scripture has been questioned, so may another, and another; and that if historical or physical facts can be disproved, whatever doctrines or precepts rest upon them must give way likewise. Thus scepticism takes gradual possession of the soul. If natural facts cannot be admitted on the mere warrant of inspiration, by what law of evidence, it may be asked, can we be compelled to believe, on the same authority, those which are supernatural? When science has once begun to tamper with Scripture, it is vain to say that it will restrict itself to physical statements, and abstain from the consideration of miracles. Men will no more stop half-way in an argument because you wish them, than a rolling stone will check itself at your bidding when half way down the hill."
Sam
Monday, February 11, 2008
"Hi, We're the Baals, We're Your New Neighbours." -When the Baals Move In!
Well, if it was as straight-forward as that we would have no trouble setting our defences to guard against idolatry, would we?
But for several generations of old covenant Israel the situation was very much as the title of this blog suggests. Baal worship was right there alongside them when they entered the Promised Land and remained in and about them through the failure of Israel to entirely rid the land of its Baal worshiping inhabitants. As God had foretold, their gods would be a snare to Israel.
The title Baal may be interpreted 'master' or 'husband'. The discovery of the Ras Shamra documents helped ascertain that, among other things, Baal was a nature deity. Yahweh was a 'master' and 'husband' to Israel and this lent to a somewhat innocent error of, at times, referring to Yahweh as 'Baal'. The consequence was a confusion of the worship of Yahweh with Baal. Even people and place names in Israel incorporated the name Baal, eg Esh-baal and Baal-Hazor. But then there were times of unadulterated Baal worship such as in the time of King Ahab of the Northern Kingdom.
There could hardly have been a more glorious and joyful occasion in the life of the nation Israel than the dedication of the temple of the Name of the Lord, the God of Israel, in the time of Solomon. The filling of the temple with the "glory of the Lord" must have been a truly awesome experience for those present. But there was also cause for sober contemplation as God later said to Solomon "But if you turn away and forsake the decrees and commands I have given you and go off to serve other gods and worship them, then I will uproot Israel from my land, which I have given them, and will reject this temple I have consecrated for my Name. I will make it a byword and an object of ridicule among all peoples. And though this temple is now so imposing, all who pass by will be appalled and say, 'Why has the Lord done such a thing to this land and to this temple?' People will answer 'Because they have forsaken the Lord, the God of their fathers, who brought them out of Egypt, and have embraced other gods, worshiping and serving them - that is why he brought all this disaster on them.'" (2 Chron. 7:19-22) As we know, apostasy and later exile came the way of Israel.
However, we are a sophisticated generation of believers. We know the history of Israel and all the trouble it brought on itself. There is no way we would fall into the same trap as Israel of old, is there?
In writing to the Church in Collossae the Apostle Paul made it known that there is more to idolatry than worshiping graven images. Idolatry is giving ourselves over to our old nature which is contrary to the image of God. Paul goes on to say "... you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator." (Col. 3:9b-10).
Now, we all must confess that we have slipped back into our old self sometimes. Gracious is our Lord to forgive those who see and feel their sin, confess and repent of this sin and seek His forgiveness. However, it can and does happen that a person, either through ignorance or being downright slow to be sanctified, maintains an idolatrous way of being.
Our old self trusted self to be wise for living - outside of the Word of God, it trusted the world when self felt lacking in wisdom. Our old self did not (and does not) trust God. As such, the old self is as much vulnerable to the seductions of the Evil One as Israel of the old covenant.
Darwinism has eerie and disturbing similarities to Baal. Both are nature deities. Both have their beginning in the thoughts of man. Both have their beginning in the thoughts of men who were not of Israel (Kingdom of God). Both are contrary to the expressed Word of God. Both have infiltrated the belief of Israel (old and new) leading to synchretism. Both lead to turning away from God - consider Israel (Num. 25:1-5), Ahab (I Kings 16:29-31), Manasseh (2 Kings 21:1-3), and in new covenant times, Charles Templeton, Richard Dawkins, Bishop John Shelby Spong and Howard van Till (the latter two having an unbiblical view of God).
This writer has a yearning for God to pour out His Holy Spirit on this land Australia, giving life and vitality to Israel as it exists as His Church in this land, opening the heart of a multitude of unbelievers to receive Jesus Christ as Creator, Lord and Saviour. This is the recurring prayer of this writer to the Lord our God and Father.
This writer should be excited about the 'great' mission of the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney instituted by the Archbishop of Sydney and his plan of 'Connect 09' to usher in the produce of the mission. This writer cannot be excited but, instead, saddened and fearful. When the Archbishop of Sydney and many other priests around him have gone after something equivalent to Baal and have rejected the clear Word of God concerning His creative works, then I have cause for serious concern.
Indeed, the bizarre circumstance will arise in year 2009, the year of 'Connect 09', that those who are not of Israel will be holding a festival in honour of their god, Darwin. They will celebrate the 200 year anniversary of his birth and 150 year anniversary of his publishing the tenets of his belief. Will not the Archbishop of Sydney and many other priests around him also pay obeisance to the god of those who know not the one true God and their god who keeps so many out of the Kingdom of God?
The Lord our God, slow to anger, not willing for anyone to perish, will nonetheless act when His warnings are ignored. In the passage of time He acted on His warning to Solomon concerning Israel. As with then, He seems now to have acted in the United Kingdom with His Church (Israel). The Church there, for the most part, has forsaken the Lord, the God of their fathers. He appears to have rejected the temple He consecrated for His Name and He has made it a byword and object of ridicule among all peoples.
My great hope for the life and advancement of Israel as expressed in the Episcopal Diocese of Sydney looks forlorn because it pursues the same course as Israel in the United Kingdom. I wish it were otherwise but Connect 09 looks doomed. Why should the Lord our God bless those who do not trust His Word. Why should He bless those who are one with the Evil One in saying "Did God Really Say?" in the beginning?
Oh, I wish it was otherwise. I look at Manasseh of old who worshiped more false gods than just Baal and yet I see that he turned back to the Lord and worshiped Him alone and had urged others to do likewise (2 Chron. 33:12-17). Oh, that it would be as the Lord said "... if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and forgive their sin and will heal their land." (2 Chron. 7:14-15).
Sam
But for several generations of old covenant Israel the situation was very much as the title of this blog suggests. Baal worship was right there alongside them when they entered the Promised Land and remained in and about them through the failure of Israel to entirely rid the land of its Baal worshiping inhabitants. As God had foretold, their gods would be a snare to Israel.
The title Baal may be interpreted 'master' or 'husband'. The discovery of the Ras Shamra documents helped ascertain that, among other things, Baal was a nature deity. Yahweh was a 'master' and 'husband' to Israel and this lent to a somewhat innocent error of, at times, referring to Yahweh as 'Baal'. The consequence was a confusion of the worship of Yahweh with Baal. Even people and place names in Israel incorporated the name Baal, eg Esh-baal and Baal-Hazor. But then there were times of unadulterated Baal worship such as in the time of King Ahab of the Northern Kingdom.
There could hardly have been a more glorious and joyful occasion in the life of the nation Israel than the dedication of the temple of the Name of the Lord, the God of Israel, in the time of Solomon. The filling of the temple with the "glory of the Lord" must have been a truly awesome experience for those present. But there was also cause for sober contemplation as God later said to Solomon "But if you turn away and forsake the decrees and commands I have given you and go off to serve other gods and worship them, then I will uproot Israel from my land, which I have given them, and will reject this temple I have consecrated for my Name. I will make it a byword and an object of ridicule among all peoples. And though this temple is now so imposing, all who pass by will be appalled and say, 'Why has the Lord done such a thing to this land and to this temple?' People will answer 'Because they have forsaken the Lord, the God of their fathers, who brought them out of Egypt, and have embraced other gods, worshiping and serving them - that is why he brought all this disaster on them.'" (2 Chron. 7:19-22) As we know, apostasy and later exile came the way of Israel.
However, we are a sophisticated generation of believers. We know the history of Israel and all the trouble it brought on itself. There is no way we would fall into the same trap as Israel of old, is there?
In writing to the Church in Collossae the Apostle Paul made it known that there is more to idolatry than worshiping graven images. Idolatry is giving ourselves over to our old nature which is contrary to the image of God. Paul goes on to say "... you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator." (Col. 3:9b-10).
Now, we all must confess that we have slipped back into our old self sometimes. Gracious is our Lord to forgive those who see and feel their sin, confess and repent of this sin and seek His forgiveness. However, it can and does happen that a person, either through ignorance or being downright slow to be sanctified, maintains an idolatrous way of being.
Our old self trusted self to be wise for living - outside of the Word of God, it trusted the world when self felt lacking in wisdom. Our old self did not (and does not) trust God. As such, the old self is as much vulnerable to the seductions of the Evil One as Israel of the old covenant.
Darwinism has eerie and disturbing similarities to Baal. Both are nature deities. Both have their beginning in the thoughts of man. Both have their beginning in the thoughts of men who were not of Israel (Kingdom of God). Both are contrary to the expressed Word of God. Both have infiltrated the belief of Israel (old and new) leading to synchretism. Both lead to turning away from God - consider Israel (Num. 25:1-5), Ahab (I Kings 16:29-31), Manasseh (2 Kings 21:1-3), and in new covenant times, Charles Templeton, Richard Dawkins, Bishop John Shelby Spong and Howard van Till (the latter two having an unbiblical view of God).
This writer has a yearning for God to pour out His Holy Spirit on this land Australia, giving life and vitality to Israel as it exists as His Church in this land, opening the heart of a multitude of unbelievers to receive Jesus Christ as Creator, Lord and Saviour. This is the recurring prayer of this writer to the Lord our God and Father.
This writer should be excited about the 'great' mission of the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney instituted by the Archbishop of Sydney and his plan of 'Connect 09' to usher in the produce of the mission. This writer cannot be excited but, instead, saddened and fearful. When the Archbishop of Sydney and many other priests around him have gone after something equivalent to Baal and have rejected the clear Word of God concerning His creative works, then I have cause for serious concern.
Indeed, the bizarre circumstance will arise in year 2009, the year of 'Connect 09', that those who are not of Israel will be holding a festival in honour of their god, Darwin. They will celebrate the 200 year anniversary of his birth and 150 year anniversary of his publishing the tenets of his belief. Will not the Archbishop of Sydney and many other priests around him also pay obeisance to the god of those who know not the one true God and their god who keeps so many out of the Kingdom of God?
The Lord our God, slow to anger, not willing for anyone to perish, will nonetheless act when His warnings are ignored. In the passage of time He acted on His warning to Solomon concerning Israel. As with then, He seems now to have acted in the United Kingdom with His Church (Israel). The Church there, for the most part, has forsaken the Lord, the God of their fathers. He appears to have rejected the temple He consecrated for His Name and He has made it a byword and object of ridicule among all peoples.
My great hope for the life and advancement of Israel as expressed in the Episcopal Diocese of Sydney looks forlorn because it pursues the same course as Israel in the United Kingdom. I wish it were otherwise but Connect 09 looks doomed. Why should the Lord our God bless those who do not trust His Word. Why should He bless those who are one with the Evil One in saying "Did God Really Say?" in the beginning?
Oh, I wish it was otherwise. I look at Manasseh of old who worshiped more false gods than just Baal and yet I see that he turned back to the Lord and worshiped Him alone and had urged others to do likewise (2 Chron. 33:12-17). Oh, that it would be as the Lord said "... if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and forgive their sin and will heal their land." (2 Chron. 7:14-15).
Sam
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Is there anything wrong with “biting at the heels of men far greater in the Kingdom” than we?
Like Heidegger, who regarded it as “the fundamental question of metaphysics”, the philosopher Robert Nozick concluded that it impossible to answer why there is ‘something rather than nothing’. Both men’s voluminous writings were complex, distanced from the concrete and actual that this “something” primarily referred and, in their own peculiar way, became increasingly attracted to an abstruse mysticism.
Christianity, in its orthodox version, is eminently up to the task of answering this question. Its centerpiece discourse with the world is an historical event in which God, as man, allows himself to be murdered and by this sacrifice of love is able to effect reconciliation of the whole cosmos to himself. Far from being “foolishness” in which rationality departs, the Christian argument is that this act of God freely exposes itself in order to be understood. Unfortunately, one scion of Christianity has been recently performing public sleight-of-hand artifice and replaced comprehension with nonsense. Almost Marcion-like in its approach to Old Testament history, the Sydney Anglicans have deracinated the apotheosis of God’s appearance in the world from its historical backdrop. Now robbed of meaning and significance, these men try to convince their followers that their mystical theology is Christianity’s genuine article while ignoring the voluminous weight of historical testimony and rational argument that stands in opposition to their claims.
I’ve previously referred to Bishop Rob Forsyth’s address to ISCAST on the putative dangers of looking to science to prove God. The problem, Rob says, “is that this attempt to directly derive strong grounds for the existence of God from the existing state of science, usually by postulating a point at which ‘then a miracle occurs’, has some very significant dangers for the Christian faith.” The main “danger” is the god-of-the-gaps-argument which, as knowledge about our physical world increases, leaves less room for God as Creator. Traditionally, so Rob believes, God was regarded as principally transcendent, though of course immanent in that he somehow held everything together. As science developed and causes of the phenomena were given physico-chemical explanation, and naturalism began to be synonymous with the scientific method, Christians in their apologetics had to place God somewhere at the beginning of a line of cause and effect situations. With this increase in knowledge God was pushed farther and farther away as more material causal factors were discovered. Thus, the ‘then there was a miracle’ moment of invoking God became more and more irrelevant. Eventually, as can be appreciated from the scientific enterprise to develop a Grand Unified Theory for everything, God has become but a reminder of our society’s primitive past, a mere invocatory lucky charm for those who are superstitiously religiously inclined.
Rob’s address, it may be demurred, is a doleful harbinger of Christian bad times ahead. On the contrary: he actually hints at a solution. Rob wants us to return to the good old days when God knew his place in the scheme of things and respectfully allowed man to get on with his business of making scientific discovery. It’s horses for courses with Rob: No more God talk in the lab because science is science, and theology, theology. Science has limits and in order to understand God the religious person must down the tools of his trade, take a running jump across some mythical epistemological divide, and only then experience the transcendent. Rob believes that the universe, the world of scientific investigation, is just a “brute fact” and that it does not fall under science’s terms of reference to evince evidence for the things around us being ultimately explicable by God. Fair enough if you’re into a form of mysticism. By stating this, however, Rob’s church sits astride a pagan epistemology and cannot help but tether itself to an equally pagan worldview.
In his paper to the pagans at ISCAST, Rob favourably cites William Placher’s ‘The Domestication of Transcendence’. Placher’s argument is that if Europe had followed Calvin’s and Luther’s respect for God’s sheer otherness and left science to its own business rather than finding a place for God in the creation, atheism wouldn’t have the hold on the Western mind as it now enjoys. Although I may quite speedily be accused of “biting at the heels of men far greater in the kingdom” than I (surely to go down as one of Sydney Anglicans’ humblest self-assessments!), I want to suggest that Placher, Rob, Calvin and Luther are really part of the problem of why there is far too much atheism in the West.
These men’s two-tiered epistemology is a thorough-going Greek view of knowledge and is not the one presented in the Bible. The compartmentalization of reality into separate realms of transcendence and immanence reflects the Aristotelian and Platonic belief structure in which, notwithstanding their idiosyncratic differences, God was irreconcilably distinct from the creation, if creation is indeed even the appropriate descriptor. Both Greek philosophers could never manage to somehow bring everything together. Aristotle, arranging everything in concentric spheres according to the degree of materiality, had “God” outside and omitted any worthwhile explanation how the things of this world began. This world, our world, may have been “created” by God, but Aristotle’s philosophy could not provide true causality because of God’s being ultimately transcendent and other. Plato, on the surface, appears to be saying something far different to Aristotle. However, world of Ideas and Demiurge notwithstanding, the argument and effect were intending nothing different from his pupil: God and the source for creaturely blueprint were taken as a matter of faith to lie across a metaphysical and epistemological divide.
Both Calvin and Luther held a disparaging attitude to any attempt to understand God. For Calvin, God did not speak clearly about himself and what knowledge he did divulge was merely an accommodation to our “slight capacity”. Despite his acceptance of a young world, Calvin held, like the Sydney Anglicans, that the ancient Jews were primitive and did not have a sophisticated mind for understanding higher order truths. As a result, he believed that God did not speak “according to how things are” but lisped for the ordinary people. Faith for Calvin did not involve knowledge and understanding but a mystical tautology of the “mind ha[ving] to go beyond and rise above itself in order to attain [faith]. Even where the mind has attained, it does not comprehend what it feels. But while it is persuaded of what it does not grasp, by the very certainty of its persuasion it understands more than if it perceived anything human by its own capacity.” (Institutes 3.2.14)
Luther, a chap occasionally and favourably quoted on various Anglo-blogs, was less abstruse and cut to the chase by declaring reason a whore. Speculation about God was dangerous because Luther’s was a “hidden God” and “must therefore be left to himself in his own majesty”. (There is a line in Rob’s address to the ISCAST heathen which reflects this Gnostic elitism. Rob primarily lays the blame for the rise of atheism in Europe on “a desire to make all the reasons for the belief in God publicly accessible”. Once more Rob’s sacerdotal mien wants to shut the door, lock it with the key of knowledge, stand guard and keep the unworthy out.)
As is well known, Rob and his followers’ first and only response to atheist attacks on the orthodox understanding of Genesis 1 is to capitulate. The modern (as well as ancient) creationist, in contradistinction, does not fear contemporary views on origins and does not compromise the Bible’s historical accuracy by performing tendentious and unwarranted linguistic gymnastics, as is demonstrated by the Sydney Anglicans’ cowardly retreat of recategorising narrative as poetry or some other figurative form. Rather, creation apologetics encourage the thinking Christian to meet the challenge head-on and speak out with confidence about the plethora of scientific data that support a young, created earth.
In further support for his attack on contemporary creation apologetics the bishop’s address also pusillanimously relied on Michael Buckley’s ‘At the Rise of Modern Atheism’. Rob attempted to demonstrate that when early modern creationists, like Newtown, proposed a natural theology from their scientific discoveries this inevitably led to a viable and convincing atheist backlash. The atheists countered that there was increasingly less role for God to be God in his role as Creator and sustainer because the data could, with equal rationality, be understood through a materialist model. However, the good bishop shortchanged his listeners by overlooking the finer details of what this atheist “backlash” consisted. Two incidents mentioned in the book, and the reaction to them, are significant.
It was reported in 1741 to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris that a Swiss zoologist, Abraham Trembley, had split a hydra in half and watched as both halves grew their missing pieces. Creationists, in opposition to the chance-filled universe of the then Epicurean influenced materialist world-view, had been arguing that life can only arise from seeds which contain the design for their final form. The materialists unwisely and unscientifically viewed Trembley’s work as evincing the wholesale pagan idea that matter had some sort of internal vital force that produced life. By doing this they ignored the much earlier evidence of Francesco Redi and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek who had overturned and replaced the deductive proclamation of Aristotle that life arose from decaying matter with their experimental work that correctly demonstrated life cannot arise from non-life. These two creationists were resolute that science supported the biblical assertion that life can only come from life, God being the ultimate giver of all life. Equally importantly, they challenged, rather than ceding to, the then widespread pseudo-scientific pagan worldview of life having ontological independence. (As an aside, it is clear, too, “from “[Leeuwenhoek’s] stand against non-Christian superstitions such as the doctrine of spontaneous generation, that he held to a Biblical doctrine of creation. He believed it foolish to think his little “animalcules” could have formed by chance, and he worked diligently to prove that all things reproduce after their kind, as the book of Genesis teaches. For example, after working for weeks observing the propagation of insects, Leeuwenhoek stated confidently, “. . . This must appear wonderful, and be a confirmation of the principle, that all living creatures deduce their origin from those which were formed at the Beginning.”” Schierbeek, A., the Editor-in-Chief of the collected letters of Leeuwenhoek, p. 137.)
The other incident centered upon the blind genius Nicholas Saunderson, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. Saunderson vociferously argued for an atheist worldview which substantially centred its attack upon his predecessor Newton and his idea that the mathematical arrangement of the cosmos clearly demonstrated design. Like most atheists who make it a life’s pursuit to loudly deny the existence of a Creator, there frequently lie personal reasons for this career choice. Saunderson, as a baby, had been attacked by the smallpox virus which not only took away his sight but had actually removed his eyes. Saunderson, brilliant as he was, used his deformity and misfortune to bolster his belief that the universe was nothing but the result of eons of blind chance tossing up endless possibilities and permutations of matter that eventually formed life. The key for Saunderson was his own disability. He argued that if a creationist is going to argue design from nature’s exquisite beauty and remarkable intricateness, then he has to find a place for monsters like himself: if God exists, he must have permitted the horror of Saunderson. Saunderson’s argument was but a more pointed version of why there was something rather than nothing. His atheism quite reasonably argued that an evolving universe has to churn out beauties and beasts for no other reason than the interplay of chance, time and matter. Now here is something entirely ironic.
The Sydney Anglicans, represented by men like the bishop Rob Forsyth and his boss Peter Jensen, have declared that God has purposed the principle of evolution as the guiding hand in nature. God is now responsible for Saunderson’s misery and unbelief because, according to their Christian version of evolution, God from the start wanted the mutations and deformity caused by evolution to be a part of his “very good” world. Rather than tackle the validity of evolution being a genuine scientific description of the world, the Anglicans have been seduced by it, accepted it, and then stated that it is “a fatal mistake amongst Christians…to try to attempt to make the Christian faith believable or defensible within the limits imposed by science.” By artificially opening a divide between theology and science, one area of knowledge cannot converse with another. One can talk scientifically, but to talk on matters of God, one has to take off the lab coat, take a running jump across a chasm and land in the theology box, then, and only then, begin a separate discourse. What would have been our good bishop’s best response to Saunderson’s argument if the two had been contemporaries? Not much that would have made a whole lot of sense, I’d imagine.
On other entries I’ve contended that the Anglo-heretics present a quasi-Gnostic view of Scripture and the world. One latest version of this departure from orthodoxy is found over at our old mate Mark Baddeley’s site. Mark writes that, “[t]he point from this is that Creation Science is a natural theology par excellence….Creation Science tries to move to God’s glory by reading it off those things that we find glorious, and explain away those things that offend our notions of good and the like (like suffering).”
One distinguishing outworking of Gnostic thought is a disdain for the creation and Mark’s proposition is nothing more than a veiled version of this. (A less oblique attack on God’s creation, the reader may recall, comes from the Anglican minister Gordon Cheng who found in the koala clear evidence of God’s incompetence. Gordon’s armchair observations discovered that baby koalas have a tendency to fall out of their mommas’ pouches when climbing through the trees because evolution made the koala’s pouch the wrong way around.) Creationists on the other hand, involve themselves in the creation in order to discover the wisdom of the Creator, believing that there will be a plausible direct link between the creation and the Creator (after all, He made it!). Furthermore, creationists have no need to explain the evil in the world away – we actually search for reasons why, knowing that God is not responsible and that there will be indirect scientific argument for evil’s being non-natural (e.g. Haldane’s Dilemma or the clear scientific data which demonstrate the truth of a young world.). It’s actually the theistic evolution heretics who explain it away either falsely and indirectly attribute it to God, or, as is so often the case, present an insipid theodicy by shrugging their shoulders and claiming it’s all one big mystery.
As is the case in their compromising commitment to long ages and evolutionary mechanism, the Anglo-heretics have also joined with the atheists in other matters. One such noteworthy aspect is seen in Baddeley’s subtle distinction in his italicising the ‘we’ in “those [created] things that we find glorious”. What this obscures is the Anglo-heretics’ widespread criticism of the validity of analogous reasoning, part of the logical machinery that drives so much of the philosophy within the creationist and intelligent design. Analogous reasoning is a perfectly reasonable way for the mind to rationally secure a bridge from creature to Creator. Of course, the heretics inevitably end up dismissing this example of rationality as salvation based on our own efforts. Nothing could be further from the truth. Taking our lead from Genesis 1’s “made in the image of God”, creationists hold that logos is one of the components of this “image”. As a result man can rationally adduce from the things that are made, which are obviously not eternal, to the eternity of the Maker of these things. (Analogous reasoning allows us to establish that just as we utilise our wisdom, knowledge and understanding to plan our houses, construct our machines and to, “out of nothing”, bring forth our inventions, God also creates by using the same attributes. When we apply our intellect to our constructive tasks in effect we are following God’s own method of applying his intellect in a three-fold way. The pagan searches for wisdom; the Christian has been given this jewel; yet the Sydney Anglican heretics bury it when they replace God’s creative method with a pagan worldview.)
This raises the other reason why Baddeley stresses the ‘we’. Generated and sustained by his non-biblical belief system is his acceptance that the creation, from the beginning, had the good, the bad and the ugly. As a consequence of routinely ignoring or sophistically reworking the wisdom and knowledge of Genesis 1, Baddeley accuses creationists of only seeing God in the beautiful aspects of the world while explaining away the not-so nice through fanciful aetiologies resulting from the Fall. As someone profoundly influenced by evolutionary thinking this is to be expected; for why else would Baddeley hold that carnivorous animals were what God originally created.
But at this point there is an even more reckless outworking of his pagan theology, his downplaying of the intrinsic evil of suffering. Sure, he does commit to a pain-free world in eternity; but the concern I have is his acceptance of it in the present. He writes, “I still want to claim that our obsession with pain is wrongheaded. We elevate it way too high in the ‘evils’ that exist in our world (and I say that as someone who has an embarrassingly low pain threshold). When Romans 8 looks at the ‘good’ for God’s people, suffering is actually an instrument in accomplishing the good…Pain is not the great evil we make it out to be, even though it is part of the glory of the new creation that there will be no suffering. It’s part of the parochial patheticness of our day and age that our existence is getting increasingly defined by the attempt to avoid deprivation at all costs.”
Well, here we have it on his expert testimony that suffering is jolly well good. Note his astute theological underpinning, as well as the objective disinterest, almost stoic in its acceptance of pain being good for the soul. Do tell us Mark, ol’ chap: Just how many visits to the children’s oncology ward have you recently made? Watched anybody die a lonely, painful death this weekend? Been on the receiving end of any beatings lately for giving a testimony for Christ? Been in jail for Christ? Death threats? Spied on? Had your house burned down lately? Or what about your family executed in front of you? I guess not, eh? (Let me help you out. How about you bend over son and I’ll give 6 of the best, you take it like a man, and then I’ll consider you better equipped to write further theologically profound comments on your blog.)
But I digress. Let me conclude with the following.
Of course, such a god of the Sydney Anglicans was completely unknown to the Apostle Paul. In opposition to the Bishop of South Sydney and his supporters, Paul declared that from a deep knowledge of the creation and its components one can reason to some fairly dependable and accurate information about the Creator. Indeed, Paul argues that our minds are sufficiently perspicacious to comprehend something about the dunamis, or miraculous element, in creation and God’s deity and nature. (Paul quite astutely had also observed that some men attempt to foolishly argue away these facts but the truth is inescapable because it is the truth and God’s creation makes it quite plain to them.) The Sydney Anglicans have long ago swapped their inheritance of gold and pearls for atheistic dross and in the process emptied the scientific world of God. They have accomplished this by bringing into the Church a belief that the world is ancient and that God used an unscientific and ungodly method of creating called evolution.
Christianity, in its orthodox version, is eminently up to the task of answering this question. Its centerpiece discourse with the world is an historical event in which God, as man, allows himself to be murdered and by this sacrifice of love is able to effect reconciliation of the whole cosmos to himself. Far from being “foolishness” in which rationality departs, the Christian argument is that this act of God freely exposes itself in order to be understood. Unfortunately, one scion of Christianity has been recently performing public sleight-of-hand artifice and replaced comprehension with nonsense. Almost Marcion-like in its approach to Old Testament history, the Sydney Anglicans have deracinated the apotheosis of God’s appearance in the world from its historical backdrop. Now robbed of meaning and significance, these men try to convince their followers that their mystical theology is Christianity’s genuine article while ignoring the voluminous weight of historical testimony and rational argument that stands in opposition to their claims.
I’ve previously referred to Bishop Rob Forsyth’s address to ISCAST on the putative dangers of looking to science to prove God. The problem, Rob says, “is that this attempt to directly derive strong grounds for the existence of God from the existing state of science, usually by postulating a point at which ‘then a miracle occurs’, has some very significant dangers for the Christian faith.” The main “danger” is the god-of-the-gaps-argument which, as knowledge about our physical world increases, leaves less room for God as Creator. Traditionally, so Rob believes, God was regarded as principally transcendent, though of course immanent in that he somehow held everything together. As science developed and causes of the phenomena were given physico-chemical explanation, and naturalism began to be synonymous with the scientific method, Christians in their apologetics had to place God somewhere at the beginning of a line of cause and effect situations. With this increase in knowledge God was pushed farther and farther away as more material causal factors were discovered. Thus, the ‘then there was a miracle’ moment of invoking God became more and more irrelevant. Eventually, as can be appreciated from the scientific enterprise to develop a Grand Unified Theory for everything, God has become but a reminder of our society’s primitive past, a mere invocatory lucky charm for those who are superstitiously religiously inclined.
Rob’s address, it may be demurred, is a doleful harbinger of Christian bad times ahead. On the contrary: he actually hints at a solution. Rob wants us to return to the good old days when God knew his place in the scheme of things and respectfully allowed man to get on with his business of making scientific discovery. It’s horses for courses with Rob: No more God talk in the lab because science is science, and theology, theology. Science has limits and in order to understand God the religious person must down the tools of his trade, take a running jump across some mythical epistemological divide, and only then experience the transcendent. Rob believes that the universe, the world of scientific investigation, is just a “brute fact” and that it does not fall under science’s terms of reference to evince evidence for the things around us being ultimately explicable by God. Fair enough if you’re into a form of mysticism. By stating this, however, Rob’s church sits astride a pagan epistemology and cannot help but tether itself to an equally pagan worldview.
In his paper to the pagans at ISCAST, Rob favourably cites William Placher’s ‘The Domestication of Transcendence’. Placher’s argument is that if Europe had followed Calvin’s and Luther’s respect for God’s sheer otherness and left science to its own business rather than finding a place for God in the creation, atheism wouldn’t have the hold on the Western mind as it now enjoys. Although I may quite speedily be accused of “biting at the heels of men far greater in the kingdom” than I (surely to go down as one of Sydney Anglicans’ humblest self-assessments!), I want to suggest that Placher, Rob, Calvin and Luther are really part of the problem of why there is far too much atheism in the West.
These men’s two-tiered epistemology is a thorough-going Greek view of knowledge and is not the one presented in the Bible. The compartmentalization of reality into separate realms of transcendence and immanence reflects the Aristotelian and Platonic belief structure in which, notwithstanding their idiosyncratic differences, God was irreconcilably distinct from the creation, if creation is indeed even the appropriate descriptor. Both Greek philosophers could never manage to somehow bring everything together. Aristotle, arranging everything in concentric spheres according to the degree of materiality, had “God” outside and omitted any worthwhile explanation how the things of this world began. This world, our world, may have been “created” by God, but Aristotle’s philosophy could not provide true causality because of God’s being ultimately transcendent and other. Plato, on the surface, appears to be saying something far different to Aristotle. However, world of Ideas and Demiurge notwithstanding, the argument and effect were intending nothing different from his pupil: God and the source for creaturely blueprint were taken as a matter of faith to lie across a metaphysical and epistemological divide.
Both Calvin and Luther held a disparaging attitude to any attempt to understand God. For Calvin, God did not speak clearly about himself and what knowledge he did divulge was merely an accommodation to our “slight capacity”. Despite his acceptance of a young world, Calvin held, like the Sydney Anglicans, that the ancient Jews were primitive and did not have a sophisticated mind for understanding higher order truths. As a result, he believed that God did not speak “according to how things are” but lisped for the ordinary people. Faith for Calvin did not involve knowledge and understanding but a mystical tautology of the “mind ha[ving] to go beyond and rise above itself in order to attain [faith]. Even where the mind has attained, it does not comprehend what it feels. But while it is persuaded of what it does not grasp, by the very certainty of its persuasion it understands more than if it perceived anything human by its own capacity.” (Institutes 3.2.14)
Luther, a chap occasionally and favourably quoted on various Anglo-blogs, was less abstruse and cut to the chase by declaring reason a whore. Speculation about God was dangerous because Luther’s was a “hidden God” and “must therefore be left to himself in his own majesty”. (There is a line in Rob’s address to the ISCAST heathen which reflects this Gnostic elitism. Rob primarily lays the blame for the rise of atheism in Europe on “a desire to make all the reasons for the belief in God publicly accessible”. Once more Rob’s sacerdotal mien wants to shut the door, lock it with the key of knowledge, stand guard and keep the unworthy out.)
As is well known, Rob and his followers’ first and only response to atheist attacks on the orthodox understanding of Genesis 1 is to capitulate. The modern (as well as ancient) creationist, in contradistinction, does not fear contemporary views on origins and does not compromise the Bible’s historical accuracy by performing tendentious and unwarranted linguistic gymnastics, as is demonstrated by the Sydney Anglicans’ cowardly retreat of recategorising narrative as poetry or some other figurative form. Rather, creation apologetics encourage the thinking Christian to meet the challenge head-on and speak out with confidence about the plethora of scientific data that support a young, created earth.
In further support for his attack on contemporary creation apologetics the bishop’s address also pusillanimously relied on Michael Buckley’s ‘At the Rise of Modern Atheism’. Rob attempted to demonstrate that when early modern creationists, like Newtown, proposed a natural theology from their scientific discoveries this inevitably led to a viable and convincing atheist backlash. The atheists countered that there was increasingly less role for God to be God in his role as Creator and sustainer because the data could, with equal rationality, be understood through a materialist model. However, the good bishop shortchanged his listeners by overlooking the finer details of what this atheist “backlash” consisted. Two incidents mentioned in the book, and the reaction to them, are significant.
It was reported in 1741 to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris that a Swiss zoologist, Abraham Trembley, had split a hydra in half and watched as both halves grew their missing pieces. Creationists, in opposition to the chance-filled universe of the then Epicurean influenced materialist world-view, had been arguing that life can only arise from seeds which contain the design for their final form. The materialists unwisely and unscientifically viewed Trembley’s work as evincing the wholesale pagan idea that matter had some sort of internal vital force that produced life. By doing this they ignored the much earlier evidence of Francesco Redi and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek who had overturned and replaced the deductive proclamation of Aristotle that life arose from decaying matter with their experimental work that correctly demonstrated life cannot arise from non-life. These two creationists were resolute that science supported the biblical assertion that life can only come from life, God being the ultimate giver of all life. Equally importantly, they challenged, rather than ceding to, the then widespread pseudo-scientific pagan worldview of life having ontological independence. (As an aside, it is clear, too, “from “[Leeuwenhoek’s] stand against non-Christian superstitions such as the doctrine of spontaneous generation, that he held to a Biblical doctrine of creation. He believed it foolish to think his little “animalcules” could have formed by chance, and he worked diligently to prove that all things reproduce after their kind, as the book of Genesis teaches. For example, after working for weeks observing the propagation of insects, Leeuwenhoek stated confidently, “. . . This must appear wonderful, and be a confirmation of the principle, that all living creatures deduce their origin from those which were formed at the Beginning.”” Schierbeek, A., the Editor-in-Chief of the collected letters of Leeuwenhoek, p. 137.)
The other incident centered upon the blind genius Nicholas Saunderson, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. Saunderson vociferously argued for an atheist worldview which substantially centred its attack upon his predecessor Newton and his idea that the mathematical arrangement of the cosmos clearly demonstrated design. Like most atheists who make it a life’s pursuit to loudly deny the existence of a Creator, there frequently lie personal reasons for this career choice. Saunderson, as a baby, had been attacked by the smallpox virus which not only took away his sight but had actually removed his eyes. Saunderson, brilliant as he was, used his deformity and misfortune to bolster his belief that the universe was nothing but the result of eons of blind chance tossing up endless possibilities and permutations of matter that eventually formed life. The key for Saunderson was his own disability. He argued that if a creationist is going to argue design from nature’s exquisite beauty and remarkable intricateness, then he has to find a place for monsters like himself: if God exists, he must have permitted the horror of Saunderson. Saunderson’s argument was but a more pointed version of why there was something rather than nothing. His atheism quite reasonably argued that an evolving universe has to churn out beauties and beasts for no other reason than the interplay of chance, time and matter. Now here is something entirely ironic.
The Sydney Anglicans, represented by men like the bishop Rob Forsyth and his boss Peter Jensen, have declared that God has purposed the principle of evolution as the guiding hand in nature. God is now responsible for Saunderson’s misery and unbelief because, according to their Christian version of evolution, God from the start wanted the mutations and deformity caused by evolution to be a part of his “very good” world. Rather than tackle the validity of evolution being a genuine scientific description of the world, the Anglicans have been seduced by it, accepted it, and then stated that it is “a fatal mistake amongst Christians…to try to attempt to make the Christian faith believable or defensible within the limits imposed by science.” By artificially opening a divide between theology and science, one area of knowledge cannot converse with another. One can talk scientifically, but to talk on matters of God, one has to take off the lab coat, take a running jump across a chasm and land in the theology box, then, and only then, begin a separate discourse. What would have been our good bishop’s best response to Saunderson’s argument if the two had been contemporaries? Not much that would have made a whole lot of sense, I’d imagine.
On other entries I’ve contended that the Anglo-heretics present a quasi-Gnostic view of Scripture and the world. One latest version of this departure from orthodoxy is found over at our old mate Mark Baddeley’s site. Mark writes that, “[t]he point from this is that Creation Science is a natural theology par excellence….Creation Science tries to move to God’s glory by reading it off those things that we find glorious, and explain away those things that offend our notions of good and the like (like suffering).”
One distinguishing outworking of Gnostic thought is a disdain for the creation and Mark’s proposition is nothing more than a veiled version of this. (A less oblique attack on God’s creation, the reader may recall, comes from the Anglican minister Gordon Cheng who found in the koala clear evidence of God’s incompetence. Gordon’s armchair observations discovered that baby koalas have a tendency to fall out of their mommas’ pouches when climbing through the trees because evolution made the koala’s pouch the wrong way around.) Creationists on the other hand, involve themselves in the creation in order to discover the wisdom of the Creator, believing that there will be a plausible direct link between the creation and the Creator (after all, He made it!). Furthermore, creationists have no need to explain the evil in the world away – we actually search for reasons why, knowing that God is not responsible and that there will be indirect scientific argument for evil’s being non-natural (e.g. Haldane’s Dilemma or the clear scientific data which demonstrate the truth of a young world.). It’s actually the theistic evolution heretics who explain it away either falsely and indirectly attribute it to God, or, as is so often the case, present an insipid theodicy by shrugging their shoulders and claiming it’s all one big mystery.
As is the case in their compromising commitment to long ages and evolutionary mechanism, the Anglo-heretics have also joined with the atheists in other matters. One such noteworthy aspect is seen in Baddeley’s subtle distinction in his italicising the ‘we’ in “those [created] things that we find glorious”. What this obscures is the Anglo-heretics’ widespread criticism of the validity of analogous reasoning, part of the logical machinery that drives so much of the philosophy within the creationist and intelligent design. Analogous reasoning is a perfectly reasonable way for the mind to rationally secure a bridge from creature to Creator. Of course, the heretics inevitably end up dismissing this example of rationality as salvation based on our own efforts. Nothing could be further from the truth. Taking our lead from Genesis 1’s “made in the image of God”, creationists hold that logos is one of the components of this “image”. As a result man can rationally adduce from the things that are made, which are obviously not eternal, to the eternity of the Maker of these things. (Analogous reasoning allows us to establish that just as we utilise our wisdom, knowledge and understanding to plan our houses, construct our machines and to, “out of nothing”, bring forth our inventions, God also creates by using the same attributes. When we apply our intellect to our constructive tasks in effect we are following God’s own method of applying his intellect in a three-fold way. The pagan searches for wisdom; the Christian has been given this jewel; yet the Sydney Anglican heretics bury it when they replace God’s creative method with a pagan worldview.)
This raises the other reason why Baddeley stresses the ‘we’. Generated and sustained by his non-biblical belief system is his acceptance that the creation, from the beginning, had the good, the bad and the ugly. As a consequence of routinely ignoring or sophistically reworking the wisdom and knowledge of Genesis 1, Baddeley accuses creationists of only seeing God in the beautiful aspects of the world while explaining away the not-so nice through fanciful aetiologies resulting from the Fall. As someone profoundly influenced by evolutionary thinking this is to be expected; for why else would Baddeley hold that carnivorous animals were what God originally created.
But at this point there is an even more reckless outworking of his pagan theology, his downplaying of the intrinsic evil of suffering. Sure, he does commit to a pain-free world in eternity; but the concern I have is his acceptance of it in the present. He writes, “I still want to claim that our obsession with pain is wrongheaded. We elevate it way too high in the ‘evils’ that exist in our world (and I say that as someone who has an embarrassingly low pain threshold). When Romans 8 looks at the ‘good’ for God’s people, suffering is actually an instrument in accomplishing the good…Pain is not the great evil we make it out to be, even though it is part of the glory of the new creation that there will be no suffering. It’s part of the parochial patheticness of our day and age that our existence is getting increasingly defined by the attempt to avoid deprivation at all costs.”
Well, here we have it on his expert testimony that suffering is jolly well good. Note his astute theological underpinning, as well as the objective disinterest, almost stoic in its acceptance of pain being good for the soul. Do tell us Mark, ol’ chap: Just how many visits to the children’s oncology ward have you recently made? Watched anybody die a lonely, painful death this weekend? Been on the receiving end of any beatings lately for giving a testimony for Christ? Been in jail for Christ? Death threats? Spied on? Had your house burned down lately? Or what about your family executed in front of you? I guess not, eh? (Let me help you out. How about you bend over son and I’ll give 6 of the best, you take it like a man, and then I’ll consider you better equipped to write further theologically profound comments on your blog.)
But I digress. Let me conclude with the following.
Of course, such a god of the Sydney Anglicans was completely unknown to the Apostle Paul. In opposition to the Bishop of South Sydney and his supporters, Paul declared that from a deep knowledge of the creation and its components one can reason to some fairly dependable and accurate information about the Creator. Indeed, Paul argues that our minds are sufficiently perspicacious to comprehend something about the dunamis, or miraculous element, in creation and God’s deity and nature. (Paul quite astutely had also observed that some men attempt to foolishly argue away these facts but the truth is inescapable because it is the truth and God’s creation makes it quite plain to them.) The Sydney Anglicans have long ago swapped their inheritance of gold and pearls for atheistic dross and in the process emptied the scientific world of God. They have accomplished this by bringing into the Church a belief that the world is ancient and that God used an unscientific and ungodly method of creating called evolution.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
ABANDON SHIP!!! ... Episcopalians First, The Rest Can Make Their Own Arrangements!
In the comments section of a recent blog I asked a person named Geoff to indicate where in the Bible he got support for a long age view of the world. His short reply was "Nowhere."
This blog attempts to outline how the Church in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries came to overthrow the Scriptural chronologies which support an earth commencement date measuring something in the thousands of years. Space prevents all players being mentioned but sufficient are included to fairly represent the course of events. Remember, I take up events from the late eighteenth century because prior to that contrary views to a young earth (under 10,000 years) were not influential.
William Whiston (1667-1752) was Isaac Newton's successor in Mathematics at Cambridge University. He argued for a global Flood but added 6 years to Archbishop Ussher's earth commencement date of 4004BC because he held that each day of creation week was of one year's duration. His interpretation of Creation week was later used by those who supported a day-age theory for Genesis 1.
Alexander Catcott (1725-79) used geological arguments to defend the Genesis account of a recent creation and global Flood which produced the geological record. However, John Whitehurst (1713-88) argued that the earth was much older than humans and that, although the Noachian flood was a global event it was not responsible for most of the geological record. Certain geologists on the continent denied the global Flood and argued for a much older earth. Comte de Buffon (1708-88), Pierre Laplace (1749-1827) and Jean Lamarck (1744-1829) developed philosophically naturalistic explanations for earth history, each accommodating a long age for the earth.
The faith of Christians in a straight-forward reading of the biblical narratives concerning Creation and the Flood was under attack. Deists worked with atheists to shake the confidence of Christians in the Genesis cosmology.
In the years 1790-1820 geology became a separate field of scientific study. Also at this time the Neptunist-Vulcanist debate emerged . Neptunists believed water was the principal cause for geological change whereas Vulcanists held to internal heat of the earth being the major factor. Abraham Werner (1749-1817) of Germany and James Hutton (1726-97) of Scotland were the respective founders of the two positions. Each mostly studied the rocks in their own locality and developed their 'world view' of geology from this. Hutton's work remains most influential because of its uniformitarian proposition ie everything in the rock record can be explained by present day processes such as erosion, sedimentation, volcanoes and earthquakes. Hutton was a deist. His work allowed for a very long, virtually limitless, age of the earth.
In 1807 the Geological Society of London was established. The 13 founding members were wealthy, cultured gentlemen, who lacked geological knowledge but made up for it by their enthusiasm to learn. From the outset the Society was dominated by men who held to a long-age view of the earth. This then introduced the stage when dismantling of Christian faith in the Scriptural chronology of earth history really accelerated.
In the early 1800s George Cuvier (1768-1832), working from the study of fossils in the Paris basin, developed a theory which sought to reconcile science with religion but only from a post Flood history. He regarded the fossils to be the remains of creatures created then subsequently destroyed by catastrophic events prior to the Flood. By necessity he believed the earth had a long antiquity prior to the Flood. William Buckland (1784-1856) was a clergyman of the Church of England. He was also a leading geologist as well as lecturer in mineralogy and geology at Oxford University. He spread the catastrophist message initiated by Cuvier. Two of his students, Charles Lyell and Roderick Murchison went on to be leading geologists and destroyers of faith in the Genesis record.
Initially, Rev Buckland held that geology was consistent with Genesis and that there was a global Flood. However, his position was weakened by accommodation of 'day-age' but preference for the 'gap theory' of origins. Later, after criticism, he abandoned his initial weak attempt to reconcile Scripture and his observation of the world. His position now became that of relying on geological 'evidence' over textual evidence (Biblical) because, as he disclosed in personal correspondence, the latter was susceptible to deception or error.
Rev Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873) was Buckland's counterpart at Cambridge University. He too was a strong advocate for old-earth catastrophism. They were supported by Rev William Conybeare but catastrophists were 'knocked for six' in the period 1830 to 1833 when Charles Lyell published his three volume Principles of Geology which was strongly uniformitarian in its approach to geology. Lyell had a supporter in Presbyterian Minister Rev John Fleming. It is Lyell's (and Hutton's) uniformitarian view which prevails in most circles although the Church still has those we would call catastrophists, particularly those who are gap theorists.
Perhaps few in the Church who support Lyell's uniformitarian view are aware of his disclosure in correspondence 11 Aug 1829 to his ally Roderick Murchison "I trust I shall make my sketch of the progress of geology popular. Old [Rev John] Fleming is frightened and thinks the age will not stand my anti-Mosaical conclusions and at least the subject will for a time become unpopular and awkward for the clergy, but I am not afraid. I shall out with the whole but in as conciliatory a manner as possible."¹ and to fellow uniformitarian George Scrope on 14 June 1830 he said "... If we don't irritate, which I fear we may (though mere history), we shall carry all with us. If you don't triumph over them, but compliment the liberality and candour of the present age, the bishops and enlightened saints will join us in despising both the ancient and modern physico-theologians. It is just the time to strike, so rejoice that, sinner as you are, the Q[uarterly] R[eview] is open to you."²
The Church was not without clergy and laymen who defended the Scriptural chronology of earth history. Some were both theologically as well as geological trained and experienced. However, they lacked support and the 'day' was carried by the long agers. The 'ship of faith' in the word of God had been dealt a serious blow. Significantly, it was clergy of the Church of England (call it Anglican, call it Episcopalian) such as Rev William Buckland, Rev Adam Sedgwick, Rev William Conybeare, Rev George Stanley Faber, Bishop John Bird Sumner and E.B. Pusey who aided and abetted, who abandoned ship. The sorry state continues today with Moore Theological College, Sydney, Australia churning out old earth believers. They are aided and abetted by an Archbishop and Bishops who think likewise. As occurred in the past, they are quick to run with deists and atheists to reject theologians and scientists who point to Scripture and geology demonstrating an earth only thousands of years old.
I close this blog with some insightful words of Rev Granville Penn (1761-1844), grandson of William Penn of Pennsylvania fame. Rev Penn was an upholder of the Scriptural chronology. For those who profess to have a reasonable theology of God and yet propose an old earth chronology he said "The vast length of time, which this sinistrous choice is necessarily obliged to call in for its own defense, could only be requisite to the Creator for overcoming difficulties obstructing the perfecting process; it therefore chooses to suppose, that He created obstructions in matter, to resist and retard the perfecting of the work which He designed; whilst at the same time he might have perfected it without any resistance at all, by his own Creative act ... To suppose then, a priori, and without the slightest motive prompted by reason, that His wisdom willed, at the same time, both the formation of a perfect work, and a series of resistances to obstruct and delay that perfect work, argues a gross defect of intelligence somewhere, either in the Creator or in the supposer; and I leave it to this science, to determine the alternative.³"
References
1. The Geologic Column - John K. Reed and Michael J. Oard, Creation Society Books, 2006, p17
2. Ibid, p18.
3. Comparative Estimate - Granville Penn (1825) Vol. 1, p124-127
Sam Drucker
This blog attempts to outline how the Church in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries came to overthrow the Scriptural chronologies which support an earth commencement date measuring something in the thousands of years. Space prevents all players being mentioned but sufficient are included to fairly represent the course of events. Remember, I take up events from the late eighteenth century because prior to that contrary views to a young earth (under 10,000 years) were not influential.
William Whiston (1667-1752) was Isaac Newton's successor in Mathematics at Cambridge University. He argued for a global Flood but added 6 years to Archbishop Ussher's earth commencement date of 4004BC because he held that each day of creation week was of one year's duration. His interpretation of Creation week was later used by those who supported a day-age theory for Genesis 1.
Alexander Catcott (1725-79) used geological arguments to defend the Genesis account of a recent creation and global Flood which produced the geological record. However, John Whitehurst (1713-88) argued that the earth was much older than humans and that, although the Noachian flood was a global event it was not responsible for most of the geological record. Certain geologists on the continent denied the global Flood and argued for a much older earth. Comte de Buffon (1708-88), Pierre Laplace (1749-1827) and Jean Lamarck (1744-1829) developed philosophically naturalistic explanations for earth history, each accommodating a long age for the earth.
The faith of Christians in a straight-forward reading of the biblical narratives concerning Creation and the Flood was under attack. Deists worked with atheists to shake the confidence of Christians in the Genesis cosmology.
In the years 1790-1820 geology became a separate field of scientific study. Also at this time the Neptunist-Vulcanist debate emerged . Neptunists believed water was the principal cause for geological change whereas Vulcanists held to internal heat of the earth being the major factor. Abraham Werner (1749-1817) of Germany and James Hutton (1726-97) of Scotland were the respective founders of the two positions. Each mostly studied the rocks in their own locality and developed their 'world view' of geology from this. Hutton's work remains most influential because of its uniformitarian proposition ie everything in the rock record can be explained by present day processes such as erosion, sedimentation, volcanoes and earthquakes. Hutton was a deist. His work allowed for a very long, virtually limitless, age of the earth.
In 1807 the Geological Society of London was established. The 13 founding members were wealthy, cultured gentlemen, who lacked geological knowledge but made up for it by their enthusiasm to learn. From the outset the Society was dominated by men who held to a long-age view of the earth. This then introduced the stage when dismantling of Christian faith in the Scriptural chronology of earth history really accelerated.
In the early 1800s George Cuvier (1768-1832), working from the study of fossils in the Paris basin, developed a theory which sought to reconcile science with religion but only from a post Flood history. He regarded the fossils to be the remains of creatures created then subsequently destroyed by catastrophic events prior to the Flood. By necessity he believed the earth had a long antiquity prior to the Flood. William Buckland (1784-1856) was a clergyman of the Church of England. He was also a leading geologist as well as lecturer in mineralogy and geology at Oxford University. He spread the catastrophist message initiated by Cuvier. Two of his students, Charles Lyell and Roderick Murchison went on to be leading geologists and destroyers of faith in the Genesis record.
Initially, Rev Buckland held that geology was consistent with Genesis and that there was a global Flood. However, his position was weakened by accommodation of 'day-age' but preference for the 'gap theory' of origins. Later, after criticism, he abandoned his initial weak attempt to reconcile Scripture and his observation of the world. His position now became that of relying on geological 'evidence' over textual evidence (Biblical) because, as he disclosed in personal correspondence, the latter was susceptible to deception or error.
Rev Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873) was Buckland's counterpart at Cambridge University. He too was a strong advocate for old-earth catastrophism. They were supported by Rev William Conybeare but catastrophists were 'knocked for six' in the period 1830 to 1833 when Charles Lyell published his three volume Principles of Geology which was strongly uniformitarian in its approach to geology. Lyell had a supporter in Presbyterian Minister Rev John Fleming. It is Lyell's (and Hutton's) uniformitarian view which prevails in most circles although the Church still has those we would call catastrophists, particularly those who are gap theorists.
Perhaps few in the Church who support Lyell's uniformitarian view are aware of his disclosure in correspondence 11 Aug 1829 to his ally Roderick Murchison "I trust I shall make my sketch of the progress of geology popular. Old [Rev John] Fleming is frightened and thinks the age will not stand my anti-Mosaical conclusions and at least the subject will for a time become unpopular and awkward for the clergy, but I am not afraid. I shall out with the whole but in as conciliatory a manner as possible."¹ and to fellow uniformitarian George Scrope on 14 June 1830 he said "... If we don't irritate, which I fear we may (though mere history), we shall carry all with us. If you don't triumph over them, but compliment the liberality and candour of the present age, the bishops and enlightened saints will join us in despising both the ancient and modern physico-theologians. It is just the time to strike, so rejoice that, sinner as you are, the Q[uarterly] R[eview] is open to you."²
The Church was not without clergy and laymen who defended the Scriptural chronology of earth history. Some were both theologically as well as geological trained and experienced. However, they lacked support and the 'day' was carried by the long agers. The 'ship of faith' in the word of God had been dealt a serious blow. Significantly, it was clergy of the Church of England (call it Anglican, call it Episcopalian) such as Rev William Buckland, Rev Adam Sedgwick, Rev William Conybeare, Rev George Stanley Faber, Bishop John Bird Sumner and E.B. Pusey who aided and abetted, who abandoned ship. The sorry state continues today with Moore Theological College, Sydney, Australia churning out old earth believers. They are aided and abetted by an Archbishop and Bishops who think likewise. As occurred in the past, they are quick to run with deists and atheists to reject theologians and scientists who point to Scripture and geology demonstrating an earth only thousands of years old.
I close this blog with some insightful words of Rev Granville Penn (1761-1844), grandson of William Penn of Pennsylvania fame. Rev Penn was an upholder of the Scriptural chronology. For those who profess to have a reasonable theology of God and yet propose an old earth chronology he said "The vast length of time, which this sinistrous choice is necessarily obliged to call in for its own defense, could only be requisite to the Creator for overcoming difficulties obstructing the perfecting process; it therefore chooses to suppose, that He created obstructions in matter, to resist and retard the perfecting of the work which He designed; whilst at the same time he might have perfected it without any resistance at all, by his own Creative act ... To suppose then, a priori, and without the slightest motive prompted by reason, that His wisdom willed, at the same time, both the formation of a perfect work, and a series of resistances to obstruct and delay that perfect work, argues a gross defect of intelligence somewhere, either in the Creator or in the supposer; and I leave it to this science, to determine the alternative.³"
References
1. The Geologic Column - John K. Reed and Michael J. Oard, Creation Society Books, 2006, p17
2. Ibid, p18.
3. Comparative Estimate - Granville Penn (1825) Vol. 1, p124-127
Sam Drucker
Monday, December 10, 2007
More Bad News For Moore Theological College
In recent blogs at his site (in exile,) Mark Baddeley continues his muddying of the waters on Scriptural interpretation to enable lovers of the world to keep a foot in both camps viz the Kingdom of God and the world. The Moore Theological College of today might be proud of him but those true to the Word of God past and present would rebuke him.
Again he selectively uses Martin Luther to mount an argument against Luther's position on the interpretation of Genesis 1. Just quickly, to dismiss some irrelevant arguments made by Mark Baddeley against a straightforward reading of Genesis 1, I cite him and respond hereunder. Mark Baddeley says:
"1. The deep waters of verse 2 existing before God says anything in verse 3.
2. The fact that in verse 2 ‘darkness’ exists before God says anything in verse 3 to create anything which could be dark. (After all, you can’t have darkness without space, and space—physical dimensions—is one of those things that is created in verses 3 and following).
3. The firmament separating the waters above from the waters below in verses 6, which is an expanse in which floodgates are opened in 7:11 to bring about the Flood.
4. The fact that all celestial objects only exist to give light and regulate human time in verses 14-18.
5. The fact that the seventh day doesn’t end. It’s quite noticeable, if you have your eyes open. Every day has the same refrain:
And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.
And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.
And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
And there was evening and there was morning, the seventh day.
No wait. My mistake. Scratch the last one. The refrain is not repeated on the seventh day, the day when God rests from his labours of creating. It is repeated six times and then missed out on the seventh day."
In response, I say:
1. So what! There is no problem here unless you are mischievously trying to invent one. If you can accept that verse 1 is a summary statement (as Bill Dumbrell, a once favoured lecturer at Moore College allows) and verse 2 identifies a stage of the creation as God begins to fill the earth then verse 3 and following is the account of God speaking to fill the earth and make it a habitation for man and creature.
2. Same again! As a sign of Mark Baddeley's inattentiveness he makes no mention that in verse 2 the earth, water and hovering of the Spirit of God suggest space as well.
Nothing in my aforesaid two points should be seen to deny (and certainly Scripture does not deny it) that verse 2 identifies a circumstance occurring on the first day of creation week. Hebrews 11:3 and 2 Peter 3:5 are certainly not against it.
3. Not an issue. Biblical Creationists have differing views as to whether verses 6-8 refer to a water canopy within or beyond earth atmosphere or whether the verses refer to cloud cover or whatever. Little is known about the physicality of the present universe let alone being precise about the universe at the end of creation week. Does much hang on this?
4. Like other issues raised, this is making a mountain out of molehill. There is no reason why the seasonal and time functions of the celestial bodies couldn't be principal functions with other intended functions not identified in verses 14-18. On the other hand we are, today, experiencing a world somewhat different to that which was first created and later altered due to the Fall and subsequently destroyed in the time of Noah. Proponents of the canopy theory might argue that the warming effect of the sun's rays would have been less demonstrable on earth prior to the Flood.
5. Another instance of majoring on the minor or making a mountain out of a molehill. As if the description of events on the seventh day deny the unity and veracity of events described on the previous SIX days? Biblical Creationists have only ever argued (from Scripture) that God created the heavens, the earth and the sea and all that is in them in six days - not seven days. Extrapolating Mark Baddeley's (and others) argument, is it contended that there was no eighth or ninth day after God commenced creating? Are we, today, in no point of time since God created the world?
Greater Hebrew scholars (both evangelical and liberal) than Mark Baddeley have no problem believing the author of Genesis intended the reader to understand God created in six days as we experience the duration of a day eg Luther, Calvin, Archer, Waltke, Sailhamer, Hamilton, Barr, Leupold, Wenham, Kidner, Arnold, Speiser, Young and Davis. The scientist Sir Isaac Newton, regarded roundly as the greatest scientist to have ever lived, had no problem believing the world was created in six days as we experience them.
People such as Mark Baddeley really tie themselves into knots when they try to reinterpret Scripture to 'run with the hounds' ie to suck up to the world. He makes the claim "First and foremost we need to grasp that the word of God is self-interpreting." However, he denies this principle time and time again. Exodus 20:8-11 and 31:15-18 give unequivocal endorsement to Genesis 1. How foolish one can make oneself out to be when they setting oneself up against God and those God has used to give life and vigour to the church such as Luther and Calvin.
He has his devotees, however, those who love this world. They go on his blogspot urging him on and in this they act like Saul of Tarsus holding the cloaks of those who would put down those holding to the truth. Their own capacity to see the truth is blinded by their hatred of us. We are not of this world as they are. They hate us for this and they hate us for speaking out strongly against them. Some of them forget that the Sydney Anglican Heretics blogspot only arose after they insulted and derided gentle Biblical Creationists on the Sydney Anglican Forum - 'Peace With Evolution'. This site then is only a product of their making. With some petulance they criticise commentators here for getting tough with their deceptive ways. Yet one of them, Gordon Cheng, said on one of their own supporter's blogspot that there must be some scope for Christians to go so far as Apostle Paul and say such strong words as "I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves." Strong words indeed. Okay for Apostle Paul, something of the like okay for Gordon Cheng but lesser words by commentators here deemed vile. Hypocrites!
They hate better than they love.
Sam
Again he selectively uses Martin Luther to mount an argument against Luther's position on the interpretation of Genesis 1. Just quickly, to dismiss some irrelevant arguments made by Mark Baddeley against a straightforward reading of Genesis 1, I cite him and respond hereunder. Mark Baddeley says:
"1. The deep waters of verse 2 existing before God says anything in verse 3.
2. The fact that in verse 2 ‘darkness’ exists before God says anything in verse 3 to create anything which could be dark. (After all, you can’t have darkness without space, and space—physical dimensions—is one of those things that is created in verses 3 and following).
3. The firmament separating the waters above from the waters below in verses 6, which is an expanse in which floodgates are opened in 7:11 to bring about the Flood.
4. The fact that all celestial objects only exist to give light and regulate human time in verses 14-18.
5. The fact that the seventh day doesn’t end. It’s quite noticeable, if you have your eyes open. Every day has the same refrain:
And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.
And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.
And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
And there was evening and there was morning, the seventh day.
No wait. My mistake. Scratch the last one. The refrain is not repeated on the seventh day, the day when God rests from his labours of creating. It is repeated six times and then missed out on the seventh day."
In response, I say:
1. So what! There is no problem here unless you are mischievously trying to invent one. If you can accept that verse 1 is a summary statement (as Bill Dumbrell, a once favoured lecturer at Moore College allows) and verse 2 identifies a stage of the creation as God begins to fill the earth then verse 3 and following is the account of God speaking to fill the earth and make it a habitation for man and creature.
2. Same again! As a sign of Mark Baddeley's inattentiveness he makes no mention that in verse 2 the earth, water and hovering of the Spirit of God suggest space as well.
Nothing in my aforesaid two points should be seen to deny (and certainly Scripture does not deny it) that verse 2 identifies a circumstance occurring on the first day of creation week. Hebrews 11:3 and 2 Peter 3:5 are certainly not against it.
3. Not an issue. Biblical Creationists have differing views as to whether verses 6-8 refer to a water canopy within or beyond earth atmosphere or whether the verses refer to cloud cover or whatever. Little is known about the physicality of the present universe let alone being precise about the universe at the end of creation week. Does much hang on this?
4. Like other issues raised, this is making a mountain out of molehill. There is no reason why the seasonal and time functions of the celestial bodies couldn't be principal functions with other intended functions not identified in verses 14-18. On the other hand we are, today, experiencing a world somewhat different to that which was first created and later altered due to the Fall and subsequently destroyed in the time of Noah. Proponents of the canopy theory might argue that the warming effect of the sun's rays would have been less demonstrable on earth prior to the Flood.
5. Another instance of majoring on the minor or making a mountain out of a molehill. As if the description of events on the seventh day deny the unity and veracity of events described on the previous SIX days? Biblical Creationists have only ever argued (from Scripture) that God created the heavens, the earth and the sea and all that is in them in six days - not seven days. Extrapolating Mark Baddeley's (and others) argument, is it contended that there was no eighth or ninth day after God commenced creating? Are we, today, in no point of time since God created the world?
Greater Hebrew scholars (both evangelical and liberal) than Mark Baddeley have no problem believing the author of Genesis intended the reader to understand God created in six days as we experience the duration of a day eg Luther, Calvin, Archer, Waltke, Sailhamer, Hamilton, Barr, Leupold, Wenham, Kidner, Arnold, Speiser, Young and Davis. The scientist Sir Isaac Newton, regarded roundly as the greatest scientist to have ever lived, had no problem believing the world was created in six days as we experience them.
People such as Mark Baddeley really tie themselves into knots when they try to reinterpret Scripture to 'run with the hounds' ie to suck up to the world. He makes the claim "First and foremost we need to grasp that the word of God is self-interpreting." However, he denies this principle time and time again. Exodus 20:8-11 and 31:15-18 give unequivocal endorsement to Genesis 1. How foolish one can make oneself out to be when they setting oneself up against God and those God has used to give life and vigour to the church such as Luther and Calvin.
He has his devotees, however, those who love this world. They go on his blogspot urging him on and in this they act like Saul of Tarsus holding the cloaks of those who would put down those holding to the truth. Their own capacity to see the truth is blinded by their hatred of us. We are not of this world as they are. They hate us for this and they hate us for speaking out strongly against them. Some of them forget that the Sydney Anglican Heretics blogspot only arose after they insulted and derided gentle Biblical Creationists on the Sydney Anglican Forum - 'Peace With Evolution'. This site then is only a product of their making. With some petulance they criticise commentators here for getting tough with their deceptive ways. Yet one of them, Gordon Cheng, said on one of their own supporter's blogspot that there must be some scope for Christians to go so far as Apostle Paul and say such strong words as "I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves." Strong words indeed. Okay for Apostle Paul, something of the like okay for Gordon Cheng but lesser words by commentators here deemed vile. Hypocrites!
They hate better than they love.
Sam
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Sydney Episcopalians Fall Moore
Mark Baddeley, on staff at Moore Theological College in Sydney, Australia, demonstrates a low standard of theological scholarship required these days at that institution. Episcopalians around the world should note what damage awaits if they are entertaining thoughts of their son or daughter enrolling at Moore College.
Neil Moore in a recent blog identified one characteristic of a cult as being that of taking bible texts out of context. Mark Baddeley grossly commits that offence in a blog at http://reflectionsinexile.blogspot.com/ when quoting Romans 8:28-30 and 35-37as making the case for suffering being part of God's creation prior to the Fall.
The Apostle Paul's letter to the church in Rome is almost entirely about the i) corrupted creation after the Fall of Adam, ii) God's gracious reconciliation through Jesus Christ and iii) life thereafter for those receiving Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. Only Romans 1:20 makes any direct reference to a pre-Fall situation (note this also has application post-Fall). The suffering referred to by Paul in Romans 8 is therefore within the context of the fallen world not the pre-fallen world. As shown throughout the bible and therefore in earth history God works out his plan of salvation using consequences of the Fall eg suffering and death.
Hebrews 2:5-18 further explains well enough that consequences of the fallen state of man viz lost place, suffering and death are reversed by Jesus Christ in his office as Saviour. Pre-fallen creation was not in need of a Saviour because there was no sin, no suffering, no death. Adam, the son of God and the rest of creation were in their odered place (Hebrews 2:8a,b). Only after the Fall did the circumstance of Hebrews 2:8c arise.
A potential world-wide audience is not the place for Mark Baddeley to air his ignorance and expose Moore Theological College to criticism.
Sam
Neil Moore in a recent blog identified one characteristic of a cult as being that of taking bible texts out of context. Mark Baddeley grossly commits that offence in a blog at http://reflectionsinexile.blogspot.com/ when quoting Romans 8:28-30 and 35-37as making the case for suffering being part of God's creation prior to the Fall.
The Apostle Paul's letter to the church in Rome is almost entirely about the i) corrupted creation after the Fall of Adam, ii) God's gracious reconciliation through Jesus Christ and iii) life thereafter for those receiving Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. Only Romans 1:20 makes any direct reference to a pre-Fall situation (note this also has application post-Fall). The suffering referred to by Paul in Romans 8 is therefore within the context of the fallen world not the pre-fallen world. As shown throughout the bible and therefore in earth history God works out his plan of salvation using consequences of the Fall eg suffering and death.
Hebrews 2:5-18 further explains well enough that consequences of the fallen state of man viz lost place, suffering and death are reversed by Jesus Christ in his office as Saviour. Pre-fallen creation was not in need of a Saviour because there was no sin, no suffering, no death. Adam, the son of God and the rest of creation were in their odered place (Hebrews 2:8a,b). Only after the Fall did the circumstance of Hebrews 2:8c arise.
A potential world-wide audience is not the place for Mark Baddeley to air his ignorance and expose Moore Theological College to criticism.
Sam
Sunday, December 2, 2007
The Making of a Cult
Cults are exclusive. Cults using the Bible as their authority selectively use Scripture for their end. Cults tend to almost, if not completely, deify their earthly leader.
In my view there is something cultish about on Mark Baddeley's http://reflectionsinexile.blogspot.com/
Only allowing certain commentators to comment on his blogs. Selective use of Scripture to the exclusion of that which undermines his point. His almost worship of the present Archbishop of Sydney.
He extends himself to protect the Diocese and its Archbishop from criticism. He will not have mention of sydneyanglicanheretics.blogspot.com/ on his blogspot. You will note I have no difficulty mentioning his blogspot. We have no fear of people going and seeing what he writes. Our case will always stand on its merits. It is not really a case we can claim of our own. It is the case of Luther and Calvin and other faithful Christians of the past.
For many years the Diocese has been cautious of anyone not trained at Moore Theological College. This can be a sign of a problem within the Diocese if it thinks that all truth resides in the Diocese.
Mark Baddeley's attempts to theologise against Creation Scientists will I suspect be dealt with here in coming weeks. Funny how he calls us Creation Scientists. I am not a scientist nor are one or two others I know who contribute to sydneyanglicanheretics blogspot. Mr Baddeley falters at the very beginning by applying an incorrect label to those he criticises.
What is more disturbing is Mr Baddeley's elevation of the man, Peter Jensen over other men. It is almost cultish!
A lesson from history is needed here to help the reader understand what is going on in the Sydney Anglican Diocese.
Some, perhaps only a few, who read this will have encountered a man in Sydney called Mark Kay. He seems to be everywhere, especially around universities in Sydney. I have seen him at the University of Sydney. I got into a conversation with him one day. He informed me of an incident once when he was in conversation with two young women who were members of Evangelical Union (an Anglican inspired outreach on campus). Mark Kay told me the topic got onto the belief of Peter Jensen in a Theistic Evolution. As is reasonable, Mark Kay was critical of Peter Jensen on this matter. The reaction of these young women to any notion of criticism of Peter Jensen was astounding. There were no raised voices but criticism of Peter Jensen reduced one young woman to tears - to tears! There is something very wrong here. It was almost as if Mark Kay was destroying her Christian faith by pointing out a doctrinal fault held by Peter Jensen. I may be wrong on the following point but, as I recall the story, I think following the incident another Evangelical Union person tried to have Mark Kay banned from the University of Sydney even though he was a registered student there.
This is worrying but it sheds light on something working itself out within the Diocese and thus the motivation driving Mark Baddeley's baseless interpretation of Scripture to defend a) the position of his Archbishop on origins and b) the (proud) name of Anglican Diocese of Sydney.
It is almost cultish.
Just a quick word about one of Mark Baddeley's blogs, the one about 'death and suffering as a good' (part ii) in his musings.
One must remind oneself that the multitude of words contained therein are the thoughts of Mark Baddeley laid over the word of God. Also, I say "The multitude of words smothers wisdom."
Let a few words of Scripture suffice as reply - "When Jesus saw their weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. 'Where have you laid him?' he asked. 'Come and see, Lord.' they replied. Jesus wept." John 11:33-35.
Neil Moore
In my view there is something cultish about on Mark Baddeley's http://reflectionsinexile.blogspot.com/
Only allowing certain commentators to comment on his blogs. Selective use of Scripture to the exclusion of that which undermines his point. His almost worship of the present Archbishop of Sydney.
He extends himself to protect the Diocese and its Archbishop from criticism. He will not have mention of sydneyanglicanheretics.blogspot.com/ on his blogspot. You will note I have no difficulty mentioning his blogspot. We have no fear of people going and seeing what he writes. Our case will always stand on its merits. It is not really a case we can claim of our own. It is the case of Luther and Calvin and other faithful Christians of the past.
For many years the Diocese has been cautious of anyone not trained at Moore Theological College. This can be a sign of a problem within the Diocese if it thinks that all truth resides in the Diocese.
Mark Baddeley's attempts to theologise against Creation Scientists will I suspect be dealt with here in coming weeks. Funny how he calls us Creation Scientists. I am not a scientist nor are one or two others I know who contribute to sydneyanglicanheretics blogspot. Mr Baddeley falters at the very beginning by applying an incorrect label to those he criticises.
What is more disturbing is Mr Baddeley's elevation of the man, Peter Jensen over other men. It is almost cultish!
A lesson from history is needed here to help the reader understand what is going on in the Sydney Anglican Diocese.
Some, perhaps only a few, who read this will have encountered a man in Sydney called Mark Kay. He seems to be everywhere, especially around universities in Sydney. I have seen him at the University of Sydney. I got into a conversation with him one day. He informed me of an incident once when he was in conversation with two young women who were members of Evangelical Union (an Anglican inspired outreach on campus). Mark Kay told me the topic got onto the belief of Peter Jensen in a Theistic Evolution. As is reasonable, Mark Kay was critical of Peter Jensen on this matter. The reaction of these young women to any notion of criticism of Peter Jensen was astounding. There were no raised voices but criticism of Peter Jensen reduced one young woman to tears - to tears! There is something very wrong here. It was almost as if Mark Kay was destroying her Christian faith by pointing out a doctrinal fault held by Peter Jensen. I may be wrong on the following point but, as I recall the story, I think following the incident another Evangelical Union person tried to have Mark Kay banned from the University of Sydney even though he was a registered student there.
This is worrying but it sheds light on something working itself out within the Diocese and thus the motivation driving Mark Baddeley's baseless interpretation of Scripture to defend a) the position of his Archbishop on origins and b) the (proud) name of Anglican Diocese of Sydney.
It is almost cultish.
Just a quick word about one of Mark Baddeley's blogs, the one about 'death and suffering as a good' (part ii) in his musings.
One must remind oneself that the multitude of words contained therein are the thoughts of Mark Baddeley laid over the word of God. Also, I say "The multitude of words smothers wisdom."
Let a few words of Scripture suffice as reply - "When Jesus saw their weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. 'Where have you laid him?' he asked. 'Come and see, Lord.' they replied. Jesus wept." John 11:33-35.
Neil Moore
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Sydney Episcopalians and the Harlot
In the book "The Chronology of the Old Testament" by Dr Floyd Nolen Jones, published by Master Books in 2005 reference is made to the work "The Two Babylons" by Alexander Hislop, published by Loizeaux Bros in 1916, Dr Jones gives background to the decision of church fathers in AD 440 to settle upon December 25 as the day to celebrate the birth of the infant Christ. The day was selected to coincide with the Roman heathen festival of Saturnalia which was held annually in honour of the birth of the son of Semiramis, the Babylonian "queen of heaven" (see Jeremiah 7:18, 44:15-30).
Dr Jones goes on to say "The origin of this can be traced back to Babylon at the time of the Tower of Babel. The Tower was under the direction of the founder of the world's first kingdom, Nimrod-bar-Cush, the son of Cush ("the black one") and grandson of Ham ("the dark or sunburned one"). Secular records state that Nimrod (Orion, or Kronos [a corona or crown] "the horned one") married the infamous Semiramis 1. She is reputed to be foundress of the Babylon "Mysteries" and the first high priestess of idolatry. Tradition also ascribes the invention of the use of the cross as an instrument of death to this woman.
Apparently when Nimrod (a black) died, Semiramis became pregnant out of wedlock. The child, like its father, was white. Semiramis acting to save the moment declared that Nimrod's spirit had become one with the sun (incarnated with the sun) and that he had come to her in the night so that she had miraculously conceived a god-son. As the first mortal to be deified, Nimrod thus became the actual "father of the gods." Semiramis presented the infant to the people and hailed him as the promised "seed of the woman" - the deliverer. Thus was introduced the "mystery' of the mother and child, a form of idolatry that is older than any other known to man. ... The whole system of the secret Mysteries of Babylon was intended to glorify a dead man while Semiramis gained glory for her dead husband's "deification." The people did not want to retain God in their knowledge, but preferred some visible object of worship. Wherever the Negro aspect of Nimrod became an obstacle to his worship it was taught that Nimrod had reappeared in the person of his fair-complected, supernaturally conceived son (Hislop p 69: Chaldeans believed in transmigration and reincarnation): thus the father and son were one. It was Satan's attempt to delude mankind with a counterfeit imitation that was so much like the truth that man would not know the real Seed of the woman when He came in the fullness of time.
Eventually this mystery religion spread from Babylon to all the surrounding nations. Everywhere the symbols were the same. It became the mystery religion of the seafaring Phoenicians and they carried it to the ends of the earth. It was known as Baal (Nimrod, the sun-god) in Phoenicia where the mother was known as Astoreth and the child as Tammuz (Tammuz Adonis). In Egypt the cult was known as that of Osiris, Isis and Horus. The mother and child were worshipped as Aphrodite and Eros in Greece, Venus and Cupid in Italy (in Rome the child was formerly known as Jupiter). The Chinese called the mother goddess Shingmoo or the "Holy Mother." ... Among the Druids, the "Virgo-Paritura" was worshipped as the "Mother of God." In India she was known as Indrani. In and near India, the mother and child were known as Devaki and Krishna; in Asia they were Cybele and Deoius.
The mystery religion of Babylon, which had begun under Nimrod's direction until its dispersal at the Tower of Babel (Gen. 10 and 11; Isa. 47), continued over the centuries to flourish in the "land of Shinar." When Babylon fell in 539BC, the high priest fled with a group of initiates and their sacred vessels and images to Pergamos (Rev. 2:12-17; see J.D Pentecost, p 365-267, where he cites H.A. Ironside). There, the symbol of the serpent was set up as the emblem of the hidden wisdom. From there, many of them crossed the sea and settled in the Poe Valley of northeast Italy where the Etruscans lived. When Rome conquered the Etruscans, the Etruscans brought their Babylonian cult religion to Rome where the child was known as Mithras (the mediator). Thus, when Christianity came to Rome, the whorish cult, the counterfeit, was waiting to join in an unholy union with it.
Well, Dr Jones provides a helpful insight into the title written on the forehead of the woman referred to in Revelation 17:5:
MYSTERY
BABYLON THE GREAT
THE MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES
AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH
JC Ryle, Bishop of Liverpool, England in the 19th Century, gave caution in his work "Warnings to the Church." He rightly said heresies start out with a seeming small departure from Scripture or doctrine.
What seems a reasonable and harmless absorption of a tradition of the world soon turns to poison. For the Church of Rome it seemed harmless, even beneficial to absorb the mother and child pagan legend - after all, it had so many elements of truth as pertaining to the blessing bestowed upon Mary by the angel and the subsequent birth of the Son of God. Neverthless, it is a corruption of the Will and Word of God. As in the Garden of Eden, it was a slight distortion of the Word of God, it was seeing that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also for gaining wisdom. Sad for the partaker, it is a breach of trust in the Lord God - it is a destroyer!
The Church of Rome has lain with the harlot.
But surely the Episcopal Diocese of Sydney has, with the Reformers, rejected the mother and child heresy initiated by Semiramis and later absorbed into Romanism? Yes, this is true. But what does the Evil One, the Father of Lies do to lure the Diocese to become one with the harlot?
Again, the seduction comes via the world. Those who knew not God proposed a theory on the origins of life contrary to the Word and Nature of God. The proposition spread throughout the world, so prevalent that it has become a tradition. One is ridiculed for not adopting the tradition. One will not be accepted by the world if one does not absorb it, if one does not lay with it! What to do? Well, just a minute - the tradition does look good for gaining wisdom, it does seem to conform well to the world as it appears today and absorbing it will sustain us well in the world. After all it is only a slight revision of the Word of God isn't it?
Yes, I, the high priest of the Episcopal Diocese of Sydney, shall take and eat. Others will follow.
And so, if the high priest of Sydney has not lain with THE MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH he has been intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries.
There is nothing new under the sun.
Sam Drucker
Dr Jones goes on to say "The origin of this can be traced back to Babylon at the time of the Tower of Babel. The Tower was under the direction of the founder of the world's first kingdom, Nimrod-bar-Cush, the son of Cush ("the black one") and grandson of Ham ("the dark or sunburned one"). Secular records state that Nimrod (Orion, or Kronos [a corona or crown] "the horned one") married the infamous Semiramis 1. She is reputed to be foundress of the Babylon "Mysteries" and the first high priestess of idolatry. Tradition also ascribes the invention of the use of the cross as an instrument of death to this woman.
Apparently when Nimrod (a black) died, Semiramis became pregnant out of wedlock. The child, like its father, was white. Semiramis acting to save the moment declared that Nimrod's spirit had become one with the sun (incarnated with the sun) and that he had come to her in the night so that she had miraculously conceived a god-son. As the first mortal to be deified, Nimrod thus became the actual "father of the gods." Semiramis presented the infant to the people and hailed him as the promised "seed of the woman" - the deliverer. Thus was introduced the "mystery' of the mother and child, a form of idolatry that is older than any other known to man. ... The whole system of the secret Mysteries of Babylon was intended to glorify a dead man while Semiramis gained glory for her dead husband's "deification." The people did not want to retain God in their knowledge, but preferred some visible object of worship. Wherever the Negro aspect of Nimrod became an obstacle to his worship it was taught that Nimrod had reappeared in the person of his fair-complected, supernaturally conceived son (Hislop p 69: Chaldeans believed in transmigration and reincarnation): thus the father and son were one. It was Satan's attempt to delude mankind with a counterfeit imitation that was so much like the truth that man would not know the real Seed of the woman when He came in the fullness of time.
Eventually this mystery religion spread from Babylon to all the surrounding nations. Everywhere the symbols were the same. It became the mystery religion of the seafaring Phoenicians and they carried it to the ends of the earth. It was known as Baal (Nimrod, the sun-god) in Phoenicia where the mother was known as Astoreth and the child as Tammuz (Tammuz Adonis). In Egypt the cult was known as that of Osiris, Isis and Horus. The mother and child were worshipped as Aphrodite and Eros in Greece, Venus and Cupid in Italy (in Rome the child was formerly known as Jupiter). The Chinese called the mother goddess Shingmoo or the "Holy Mother." ... Among the Druids, the "Virgo-Paritura" was worshipped as the "Mother of God." In India she was known as Indrani. In and near India, the mother and child were known as Devaki and Krishna; in Asia they were Cybele and Deoius.
The mystery religion of Babylon, which had begun under Nimrod's direction until its dispersal at the Tower of Babel (Gen. 10 and 11; Isa. 47), continued over the centuries to flourish in the "land of Shinar." When Babylon fell in 539BC, the high priest fled with a group of initiates and their sacred vessels and images to Pergamos (Rev. 2:12-17; see J.D Pentecost, p 365-267, where he cites H.A. Ironside). There, the symbol of the serpent was set up as the emblem of the hidden wisdom. From there, many of them crossed the sea and settled in the Poe Valley of northeast Italy where the Etruscans lived. When Rome conquered the Etruscans, the Etruscans brought their Babylonian cult religion to Rome where the child was known as Mithras (the mediator). Thus, when Christianity came to Rome, the whorish cult, the counterfeit, was waiting to join in an unholy union with it.
Well, Dr Jones provides a helpful insight into the title written on the forehead of the woman referred to in Revelation 17:5:
MYSTERY
BABYLON THE GREAT
THE MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES
AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH
JC Ryle, Bishop of Liverpool, England in the 19th Century, gave caution in his work "Warnings to the Church." He rightly said heresies start out with a seeming small departure from Scripture or doctrine.
What seems a reasonable and harmless absorption of a tradition of the world soon turns to poison. For the Church of Rome it seemed harmless, even beneficial to absorb the mother and child pagan legend - after all, it had so many elements of truth as pertaining to the blessing bestowed upon Mary by the angel and the subsequent birth of the Son of God. Neverthless, it is a corruption of the Will and Word of God. As in the Garden of Eden, it was a slight distortion of the Word of God, it was seeing that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also for gaining wisdom. Sad for the partaker, it is a breach of trust in the Lord God - it is a destroyer!
The Church of Rome has lain with the harlot.
But surely the Episcopal Diocese of Sydney has, with the Reformers, rejected the mother and child heresy initiated by Semiramis and later absorbed into Romanism? Yes, this is true. But what does the Evil One, the Father of Lies do to lure the Diocese to become one with the harlot?
Again, the seduction comes via the world. Those who knew not God proposed a theory on the origins of life contrary to the Word and Nature of God. The proposition spread throughout the world, so prevalent that it has become a tradition. One is ridiculed for not adopting the tradition. One will not be accepted by the world if one does not absorb it, if one does not lay with it! What to do? Well, just a minute - the tradition does look good for gaining wisdom, it does seem to conform well to the world as it appears today and absorbing it will sustain us well in the world. After all it is only a slight revision of the Word of God isn't it?
Yes, I, the high priest of the Episcopal Diocese of Sydney, shall take and eat. Others will follow.
And so, if the high priest of Sydney has not lain with THE MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH he has been intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries.
There is nothing new under the sun.
Sam Drucker
Sunday, October 7, 2007
09 As A Derivitive of 10%
Don't just stand there ... do something! Anything! Even if its the same old thing.
Leaders of Sydney Anglicans are whipping themselves and their flock to achieve their 10% growth by the ten year target date. 'Connect 09' is the jingoistic slogan adopted to inspire pew sitters to get out there and get results.
Having abandoned trust in God's Word written from the very first pages of the Bible, leaders are bereft of new ideas that will work. As such they must resort to things tried previously in the wistful hope it will work.
Oh, that they would take God at his Word rather than insulting him by saying that he doesn't mean what he says. Why should the Lord God accede to those who reject his very utterances? Why should he answer their prayer requests for success in this venture? They are only after an empire built on their devices - not on trust in the Word of God.
So they shall be confused to employ strategies which are a mix of that which has not worked in the past. Remember the bicentenary (1988) evangelistic enterprise whereby New Testaments were printed and purchased by the churches to hand out in door-knocking encounters? It's on again for Sydney Anglicans with the jingoistic 'Connect 09'. Remember the 'funnel' analogy of making contact, relate and feed into evangelistic events? It's on again in the jingoistic 'Connect 09'.
Oh, that they would remember the words of the Lord God uttered to Solomon (1 Kings 9:6-7) "But if you or your sons turn away from me and do not observe the commands and decrees I have given you and go off to serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut off Israel from the land I have given them and will reject this temple I have consecrated for my Name. Israel will become a byword and an object of ridicule among all peoples."
Sydney Anglicans have made up a god who is not the God who has spoken in his Word written. They therefore render themselves objects of the same judgment spoken of by the Lord God to Solomon.
Sydney Anglicans may well put prayer central to their endeavour but if they are not prepared to listen to him why should he listen to them? Indeed, just who or what are they praying to anyway?
Neil Moore
Leaders of Sydney Anglicans are whipping themselves and their flock to achieve their 10% growth by the ten year target date. 'Connect 09' is the jingoistic slogan adopted to inspire pew sitters to get out there and get results.
Having abandoned trust in God's Word written from the very first pages of the Bible, leaders are bereft of new ideas that will work. As such they must resort to things tried previously in the wistful hope it will work.
Oh, that they would take God at his Word rather than insulting him by saying that he doesn't mean what he says. Why should the Lord God accede to those who reject his very utterances? Why should he answer their prayer requests for success in this venture? They are only after an empire built on their devices - not on trust in the Word of God.
So they shall be confused to employ strategies which are a mix of that which has not worked in the past. Remember the bicentenary (1988) evangelistic enterprise whereby New Testaments were printed and purchased by the churches to hand out in door-knocking encounters? It's on again for Sydney Anglicans with the jingoistic 'Connect 09'. Remember the 'funnel' analogy of making contact, relate and feed into evangelistic events? It's on again in the jingoistic 'Connect 09'.
Oh, that they would remember the words of the Lord God uttered to Solomon (1 Kings 9:6-7) "But if you or your sons turn away from me and do not observe the commands and decrees I have given you and go off to serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut off Israel from the land I have given them and will reject this temple I have consecrated for my Name. Israel will become a byword and an object of ridicule among all peoples."
Sydney Anglicans have made up a god who is not the God who has spoken in his Word written. They therefore render themselves objects of the same judgment spoken of by the Lord God to Solomon.
Sydney Anglicans may well put prayer central to their endeavour but if they are not prepared to listen to him why should he listen to them? Indeed, just who or what are they praying to anyway?
Neil Moore
Friday, September 21, 2007
Always be prepared to mystify and stupify
A chapter from a seminar booklet: “Always be prepared to give an Answer” St James Seminar (which St James, is unknown).
If this is how Anglican Christians are equipped for discussion with people in the world, then no wonder the 10 year plan of Peter Jensen is, at year 5, less than half baked (an article in a recent Sydney Morning Herald revealed that in the five years Anglican numbers had risen by 5,500 against a 10 year goal of 10% of Sydney in ‘bible believing [and there, I take it, not Anglican] churches. Now, let it be said. Any increase in Christian numbers is welcome. I just wonder how many more could be in that number if the Sydney Anglicans were attentive to all the scriptures, rather than seemingly disdainful of parts of them?).
I say this because, as you will find below, we have in the chapter quoted a mix of half-truths, distortions, illogicality, and misunderstanding, dressed up as ‘the fact’s, ma’am, nothing but the facts’. Selling facts and delivering wind is the predictable result.
The chapter is quoted below. Following are comments against selected sections.
THE CHAPTER
5. Hasn’t Science Disproved Christianity?
Notes: Key issue for readers of Dawkins, The God Delusion
Well answered by A. McGrath, The Dawkins Delusion
Recommended book: K. Birkett, Unnatural Enemies
Key idea: no necessary conflict between science and Christianity.
Science attempts to explain the “How?” but cannot explain the Why? or Who?
As you begin, acknowledge that in the past Christians have created an unnecessary divorce between science and Christianity, often based on a misreading of the Scriptures – e.g. Nicholas Copernicus (16th century) proposed a heliocentric solar system – rejected because of misreading of Ps 19:6.
This approach is perpetuated by some Christians – e.g. Creation Science movement – Nowhere in the bible does it say that Noah’s flood is the explanation for geological strata
“Two Books approach” – Galileo (citing Cardinal Baronius, 1598) “The Bible was written to show us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.”
The earliest scientists were believers in God. The whole scientific endeavour got off the ground because people believed that God had made an ordered world, which operated according to his laws.
Science rests on the empirical method – developing and testing theories against observable results. It assumes a uniformity of cause and effect – every time I throw an apple up, it will come back down.
The limits of science
Epistemological
cannot answer ‘why?’ questions
cannot speak about ‘singularities’
Distinguish between science-as-method and science-as-philosophy. As a method, science relies on the predictability of natural laws and forces in the world. Science-as-philosophy turns this into a ‘closed system’. Everything that happens in the universe can (and must) be explained in terms of natural events.
Science cannot ‘disprove’ or ‘prove’ Christianity, because it cannot speak about non-observed, non-repeatable events. (e.g. the first supernova…). For example, focus on the resurrection of Jesus. The results of science tell us that people don’t rise from the dead … But if Jesus resurrection was a singularity . . .
THE COMMENTS
“Recommended book: K. Birkett, Unnatural Enemies”
1. This book is good as far as it goes, but it just doesn’t go far enough. It fails as a critique of naturalism, it fails as a history of science (the author, who is a PhD in the history of science, doesn’t mention either Milne-Edwards or Edward Blyth (see "The Darwin Papers", "Darwin and the search for an evolutionary mechanism", by Noel Weeks, "Variation and Natural Selection" or "Darwin's illegitimate brainchild" and Blyth’s papers themselves are available here. Note, I don’t vouch for these sites, necessarily, just that they have content on Blyth) who were important pre-cursors of Darwin’s ideas).
2. Birkett also fails to deal with the Godless source of Darwin’s ideas and the religious tendentiousness of his whole project.
3. As the Chaser would say (ABC-TV satire): Book road test: FAIL
“Key idea: no necessary conflict between science and Christianity.
Science attempts to explain the “How?” but cannot explain the Why? or Who?”
4. No, no, no. There is absolutely no conflict between science and Christianity; just like there is no conflict between bicycle repair and Christianity. This answer starts to give the farm away right at the start! The first distinction that must be drawn is between science and scientific discourse stolen by religious naturalism. Now, that’s where the conflict is; and it is a religious conflict: between naturalism and Christianity, just like between Christianity and Islam, Hinduism and Voodoo. Check out "Philosophical Naturalism and the Age of the Earth" and Norman Geisler's article in JETS "Beware of Philosophy: A warning to biblical scholars"
5. It is meaningless to mention that science cannot explain the ‘who’ because the premise of naturalism (which is what the question is really about) is that there is no ‘who’ Perhaps they don’t teach this at Moore College!
6. In fact, science (natural science as we know it today) sets out to understand how the physical world works. It is done following the instruction of Genesis 1 for us to ‘subdue’ the earth: to know, understand and manage/master/care for it. The genesian source of the impulse to question is ironic as it is indeed the explanation as to why people investigate to understand the world answering the ‘why?’ along the causal system.
“As you begin, acknowledge that in the past Christians have created an unnecessary divorce between science and Christianity, often based on a misreading of the Scriptures – e.g. Nicholas Copernicus (16th century) proposed a heliocentric solar system – rejected because of misreading of Ps 19:6.”
7. The problems in the past between science and Christianity have been because the ‘science’ was pagan. The debate between the Roman curia and early astronomers rested not primarily on the Bible, but on the acceptance of Aristotelianism. Pagan philosophy wanted a ‘perfect’ world that they explained as a geocentric solar system with all the heavenly bodies in circular orbits on the faces of so many spheres. This of course was not workable, so they kept adding circles to get to the elliptical orbits seen.
8. A similar thing was a problem in zoology. The later Aristotelians thought that ‘species’ were unchanging and then they blended that with God’s created “kinds”. So we had the silly dogma that species (a human idea) were unchanging (a pagan idea) and so the Bible got tossed when it was noticed that species do change! Today the church repeats its mistakes, accepting pagan views of the world and retrofitting them into the Bible (I refer to the attempt to meld the naturalism of evolution with Genesis 1)
“This approach is perpetuated by some Christians – e.g. Creation Science movement – Nowhere in the bible does it say that Noah’s flood is the explanation for geological strata”
9. Well, naturally this is a highly contestable, and I would suggest, ignorant, statement. The ‘creation science’ movement starts from the premise that God has spoken truth, meaningful in our world whenever he has spoken (Meaningful in a total manner; if only some of his statements are meaningful in our world, we set out on a journey of ‘pick and choose’, a journey that is fraught with disaster and is more likely to lead away from God than to him. It is the separation of ‘meaningfulnesses’ that marks the fork in the road between the ‘biblical realist’ and the neo-Platonist in biblical interpretation). The naturalist bent in science starts from the premise that “if there is a God, he has not spoken, but there is probably no God anyway, so let’s forget about such a being”.
10. So here we go, agreeing with the naturalist premise to try to argue against the logical conclusion of that premise: that’s on a highway to hell, my friend!
11. The end of the silliness is the dismissal of the logical conclusion of the geological history of earth in a biblical framework because the bible (sic) doesn’t say that Noah’s flood explains geological strata. It doesn’t need to, just like it doesn’t need to explain the physiology of Christ’s resurrection to establish its credibility!
12. A quick read of the description of Noah’s flood would show that it was accompanied by tremendous geological catastrophe. And then, it doesn’t take much to figure that if a flood drops sediment all over the world, then sedimentary strata all over the world, full of fossils of dead things (noting that fossils do not form in the normal course of events, dead things decay and disperse) is consistent with Noah’s flood. The statement is juvenescent smugness making an obvious straw man that falls over its own naivety.
“ “Two Books approach” – Galileo (citing Cardinal Baronius, 1598) “The Bible was written to show us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.” “
13. Danger upon danger! So there are two books are there? To adapt the previous paragraph. “Nowhere in the bible does it say that” there are two books which we are to use to understand the revelation of God”. It is very clear that God’s creation (not a book, note) points to God. (Ro 1:20: For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.). But this does not make the creation a second revelation by which we are able to interpret the propositional revelation in the scripture.
14. The very notion of two books fails at every point. And it fails because the ideas that are derived from the ‘book of nature’ are not the facts of creation, itself, but ideas about those facts, ideas conveyed within the context of religious naturalism. How can that form an interpretive grid for Holy Writ? Again the Anglicans teach and promote heresy.
15. God’s word is truth, and Paul reminds us of its value in teaching. We are never told to glance at the ‘creation’ to pick up ideas about God’s revelation.
“The earliest scientists were believers in God. The whole scientific endeavour got off the ground because people believed that God had made an ordered world, which operated according to his laws.”
16. A silly statement. Better to say that modern (natural) science flowered in the community of scholars who were convinced that God created in 6 days about 6000 years ago. The link between early modern science and belief in quick recent creation has been well documented by Peter Harrison in “The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science”.
17. One reason one could apply to this connection is that their belief provided a robust epistemology and ontology that enabled their curiosity to break away from the pagan bounds they had inherited from Classical Greece.
“Science rests on the empirical method – developing and testing theories against observable results. It assumes a uniformity of cause and effect – every time I throw an apple up, it will come back down.”
18. Wrong. Science rests on testing guesses made because of the failure of previous guesses to explain things. There is no ‘scientific’ method, per se, at the macro level. It is a micro method of observing, repeating and then drawing conclusions against the hypothesis being tested. If the test points to failure, then another guess emerges. Of course, the length one can go in guessing is constrained by one’s religious commitment: either to naturalism (and that punches against evidence when the evidence points away from it) or to (Christian) theism.
“The limits of science
Epistemological
cannot answer ‘why?’ questions
cannot speak about ‘singularities’
Distinguish between science-as-method and science-as-philosophy. As a method, science relies on the predictability of natural laws and forces in the world. Science-as-philosophy turns this into a ‘closed system’. Everything that happens in the universe can (and must) be explained in terms of natural events.”
19. At last, some real help. But it’s not ‘science-as-philosophy’; its naturalism-as-religion. That should be singled out.
“Science cannot ‘disprove’ or ‘prove’ Christianity, because it cannot speak about non-observed, non-repeatable events. (e.g. the first supernova…). For example, focus on the resurrection of Jesus. The results of science tell us that people don’t rise from the dead … But if Jesus resurrection was a singularity . . .”
20. And, finally, the comedy. If the resurrection, a singularity, is outside the purview of science, then so is creation, anther ‘singularity’; or unique and unrepeatable event.
TAILPIECE
Where does this all ‘hit the road’ so to speak? The same booklet from which the above quote is taken has a chapter on the subject of suffering. Of course that chapter says that the world is not as God created it; but on the basis of the quote above; how would they know? They deny the facticity of the only part of the Bible that would tell them that the creation (whatever that is, in their concept) was once ‘very good’ and is now fallen! So where the Bible touches the real world, they must have it that the endless suffering of evolution and/or a long age earth was part of God’s very good. The fossil record tells us that if this is very good, it is identical with the very bad (the last enemy) which God vanquishes in Christ!
If this is how Anglican Christians are equipped for discussion with people in the world, then no wonder the 10 year plan of Peter Jensen is, at year 5, less than half baked (an article in a recent Sydney Morning Herald revealed that in the five years Anglican numbers had risen by 5,500 against a 10 year goal of 10% of Sydney in ‘bible believing [and there, I take it, not Anglican] churches. Now, let it be said. Any increase in Christian numbers is welcome. I just wonder how many more could be in that number if the Sydney Anglicans were attentive to all the scriptures, rather than seemingly disdainful of parts of them?).
I say this because, as you will find below, we have in the chapter quoted a mix of half-truths, distortions, illogicality, and misunderstanding, dressed up as ‘the fact’s, ma’am, nothing but the facts’. Selling facts and delivering wind is the predictable result.
The chapter is quoted below. Following are comments against selected sections.
THE CHAPTER
5. Hasn’t Science Disproved Christianity?
Notes: Key issue for readers of Dawkins, The God Delusion
Well answered by A. McGrath, The Dawkins Delusion
Recommended book: K. Birkett, Unnatural Enemies
Key idea: no necessary conflict between science and Christianity.
Science attempts to explain the “How?” but cannot explain the Why? or Who?
As you begin, acknowledge that in the past Christians have created an unnecessary divorce between science and Christianity, often based on a misreading of the Scriptures – e.g. Nicholas Copernicus (16th century) proposed a heliocentric solar system – rejected because of misreading of Ps 19:6.
This approach is perpetuated by some Christians – e.g. Creation Science movement – Nowhere in the bible does it say that Noah’s flood is the explanation for geological strata
“Two Books approach” – Galileo (citing Cardinal Baronius, 1598) “The Bible was written to show us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.”
The earliest scientists were believers in God. The whole scientific endeavour got off the ground because people believed that God had made an ordered world, which operated according to his laws.
Science rests on the empirical method – developing and testing theories against observable results. It assumes a uniformity of cause and effect – every time I throw an apple up, it will come back down.
The limits of science
Epistemological
cannot answer ‘why?’ questions
cannot speak about ‘singularities’
Distinguish between science-as-method and science-as-philosophy. As a method, science relies on the predictability of natural laws and forces in the world. Science-as-philosophy turns this into a ‘closed system’. Everything that happens in the universe can (and must) be explained in terms of natural events.
Science cannot ‘disprove’ or ‘prove’ Christianity, because it cannot speak about non-observed, non-repeatable events. (e.g. the first supernova…). For example, focus on the resurrection of Jesus. The results of science tell us that people don’t rise from the dead … But if Jesus resurrection was a singularity . . .
THE COMMENTS
“Recommended book: K. Birkett, Unnatural Enemies”
1. This book is good as far as it goes, but it just doesn’t go far enough. It fails as a critique of naturalism, it fails as a history of science (the author, who is a PhD in the history of science, doesn’t mention either Milne-Edwards or Edward Blyth (see "The Darwin Papers", "Darwin and the search for an evolutionary mechanism", by Noel Weeks, "Variation and Natural Selection" or "Darwin's illegitimate brainchild" and Blyth’s papers themselves are available here. Note, I don’t vouch for these sites, necessarily, just that they have content on Blyth) who were important pre-cursors of Darwin’s ideas).
2. Birkett also fails to deal with the Godless source of Darwin’s ideas and the religious tendentiousness of his whole project.
3. As the Chaser would say (ABC-TV satire): Book road test: FAIL
“Key idea: no necessary conflict between science and Christianity.
Science attempts to explain the “How?” but cannot explain the Why? or Who?”
4. No, no, no. There is absolutely no conflict between science and Christianity; just like there is no conflict between bicycle repair and Christianity. This answer starts to give the farm away right at the start! The first distinction that must be drawn is between science and scientific discourse stolen by religious naturalism. Now, that’s where the conflict is; and it is a religious conflict: between naturalism and Christianity, just like between Christianity and Islam, Hinduism and Voodoo. Check out "Philosophical Naturalism and the Age of the Earth" and Norman Geisler's article in JETS "Beware of Philosophy: A warning to biblical scholars"
5. It is meaningless to mention that science cannot explain the ‘who’ because the premise of naturalism (which is what the question is really about) is that there is no ‘who’ Perhaps they don’t teach this at Moore College!
6. In fact, science (natural science as we know it today) sets out to understand how the physical world works. It is done following the instruction of Genesis 1 for us to ‘subdue’ the earth: to know, understand and manage/master/care for it. The genesian source of the impulse to question is ironic as it is indeed the explanation as to why people investigate to understand the world answering the ‘why?’ along the causal system.
“As you begin, acknowledge that in the past Christians have created an unnecessary divorce between science and Christianity, often based on a misreading of the Scriptures – e.g. Nicholas Copernicus (16th century) proposed a heliocentric solar system – rejected because of misreading of Ps 19:6.”
7. The problems in the past between science and Christianity have been because the ‘science’ was pagan. The debate between the Roman curia and early astronomers rested not primarily on the Bible, but on the acceptance of Aristotelianism. Pagan philosophy wanted a ‘perfect’ world that they explained as a geocentric solar system with all the heavenly bodies in circular orbits on the faces of so many spheres. This of course was not workable, so they kept adding circles to get to the elliptical orbits seen.
8. A similar thing was a problem in zoology. The later Aristotelians thought that ‘species’ were unchanging and then they blended that with God’s created “kinds”. So we had the silly dogma that species (a human idea) were unchanging (a pagan idea) and so the Bible got tossed when it was noticed that species do change! Today the church repeats its mistakes, accepting pagan views of the world and retrofitting them into the Bible (I refer to the attempt to meld the naturalism of evolution with Genesis 1)
“This approach is perpetuated by some Christians – e.g. Creation Science movement – Nowhere in the bible does it say that Noah’s flood is the explanation for geological strata”
9. Well, naturally this is a highly contestable, and I would suggest, ignorant, statement. The ‘creation science’ movement starts from the premise that God has spoken truth, meaningful in our world whenever he has spoken (Meaningful in a total manner; if only some of his statements are meaningful in our world, we set out on a journey of ‘pick and choose’, a journey that is fraught with disaster and is more likely to lead away from God than to him. It is the separation of ‘meaningfulnesses’ that marks the fork in the road between the ‘biblical realist’ and the neo-Platonist in biblical interpretation). The naturalist bent in science starts from the premise that “if there is a God, he has not spoken, but there is probably no God anyway, so let’s forget about such a being”.
10. So here we go, agreeing with the naturalist premise to try to argue against the logical conclusion of that premise: that’s on a highway to hell, my friend!
11. The end of the silliness is the dismissal of the logical conclusion of the geological history of earth in a biblical framework because the bible (sic) doesn’t say that Noah’s flood explains geological strata. It doesn’t need to, just like it doesn’t need to explain the physiology of Christ’s resurrection to establish its credibility!
12. A quick read of the description of Noah’s flood would show that it was accompanied by tremendous geological catastrophe. And then, it doesn’t take much to figure that if a flood drops sediment all over the world, then sedimentary strata all over the world, full of fossils of dead things (noting that fossils do not form in the normal course of events, dead things decay and disperse) is consistent with Noah’s flood. The statement is juvenescent smugness making an obvious straw man that falls over its own naivety.
“ “Two Books approach” – Galileo (citing Cardinal Baronius, 1598) “The Bible was written to show us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.” “
13. Danger upon danger! So there are two books are there? To adapt the previous paragraph. “Nowhere in the bible does it say that” there are two books which we are to use to understand the revelation of God”. It is very clear that God’s creation (not a book, note) points to God. (Ro 1:20: For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.). But this does not make the creation a second revelation by which we are able to interpret the propositional revelation in the scripture.
14. The very notion of two books fails at every point. And it fails because the ideas that are derived from the ‘book of nature’ are not the facts of creation, itself, but ideas about those facts, ideas conveyed within the context of religious naturalism. How can that form an interpretive grid for Holy Writ? Again the Anglicans teach and promote heresy.
15. God’s word is truth, and Paul reminds us of its value in teaching. We are never told to glance at the ‘creation’ to pick up ideas about God’s revelation.
“The earliest scientists were believers in God. The whole scientific endeavour got off the ground because people believed that God had made an ordered world, which operated according to his laws.”
16. A silly statement. Better to say that modern (natural) science flowered in the community of scholars who were convinced that God created in 6 days about 6000 years ago. The link between early modern science and belief in quick recent creation has been well documented by Peter Harrison in “The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science”.
17. One reason one could apply to this connection is that their belief provided a robust epistemology and ontology that enabled their curiosity to break away from the pagan bounds they had inherited from Classical Greece.
“Science rests on the empirical method – developing and testing theories against observable results. It assumes a uniformity of cause and effect – every time I throw an apple up, it will come back down.”
18. Wrong. Science rests on testing guesses made because of the failure of previous guesses to explain things. There is no ‘scientific’ method, per se, at the macro level. It is a micro method of observing, repeating and then drawing conclusions against the hypothesis being tested. If the test points to failure, then another guess emerges. Of course, the length one can go in guessing is constrained by one’s religious commitment: either to naturalism (and that punches against evidence when the evidence points away from it) or to (Christian) theism.
“The limits of science
Epistemological
cannot answer ‘why?’ questions
cannot speak about ‘singularities’
Distinguish between science-as-method and science-as-philosophy. As a method, science relies on the predictability of natural laws and forces in the world. Science-as-philosophy turns this into a ‘closed system’. Everything that happens in the universe can (and must) be explained in terms of natural events.”
19. At last, some real help. But it’s not ‘science-as-philosophy’; its naturalism-as-religion. That should be singled out.
“Science cannot ‘disprove’ or ‘prove’ Christianity, because it cannot speak about non-observed, non-repeatable events. (e.g. the first supernova…). For example, focus on the resurrection of Jesus. The results of science tell us that people don’t rise from the dead … But if Jesus resurrection was a singularity . . .”
20. And, finally, the comedy. If the resurrection, a singularity, is outside the purview of science, then so is creation, anther ‘singularity’; or unique and unrepeatable event.
TAILPIECE
Where does this all ‘hit the road’ so to speak? The same booklet from which the above quote is taken has a chapter on the subject of suffering. Of course that chapter says that the world is not as God created it; but on the basis of the quote above; how would they know? They deny the facticity of the only part of the Bible that would tell them that the creation (whatever that is, in their concept) was once ‘very good’ and is now fallen! So where the Bible touches the real world, they must have it that the endless suffering of evolution and/or a long age earth was part of God’s very good. The fossil record tells us that if this is very good, it is identical with the very bad (the last enemy) which God vanquishes in Christ!
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