Stand in the ways and see and ask for the old paths

I had two rather interesting tales passed to me the other day. The concluding remark in one of these, if it weren’t true, might have quite easily served as a joke’s entertaining punchline. It concerned Moore College and its final spiritual and philosophical decrepitude. From without, and put simply, it clearly tips Moore over to the liberal side of the theological divide. More of both these stories later, but first a revisit to ancient Israel.

‘Thus says the LORD:
“Stand in the ways and see,
And ask for the old paths,
where the good way is,
And walk in it;
Then you will find rest for your souls.
But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’

“And they have caused themselves to
stumble in their ways,
From the ancient paths,
To walk in pathways
And not on a highway.” (Jeremiah 6:16;18:15)

From the present’s obvious vantage point of being able to peer backwards to the distant past, I’ve often wondered why Israel found it so difficult to appropriately respond to God. Israel did believe in a “God”, of sorts. They understood that the world was created. The people understood that it wasn’t eternal or that it hadn’t just popped into existence from and because of nothing. That much is clear. But why did Israel, time and time again, take the wrong paths?

“How can you say, ‘We are wise,
And the law of the Lord is with us’?
Look, the false pen of the scribe
Certainly works falsehood.” (Jeremiah 8:8)

The prophets, repeatedly, spelled out the solution. It was clearly a product of leadership and these “God-appointed” men giving the wrong information. This specious knowledge didn’t suddenly appear one day, causeless, whole, a take-it-or-leave-it package, but incrementally worked its way into the general consciousness of the people through, and what was generally regarded as innocuous, alterations in revelation. I can almost hear the priests discussing it to the lay person: “Look, trust us. Aren’t we Kohenim, God’s elect. What’s it matter if you believe this? After all, isn’t the main focus of our nation to be on the fact that Moses rescued us from the yoke of the Egyptians? As long as you believe that God saved us, then the rest is secondary. Be reassured that the writers of sacred Scripture never meant that it should be taken so dogmatically as you suggest it should. A little bit of give between the text and reader is to be expected in our enlightened age. I wouldn’t have spent all those years studying at Jerusalem to be wrong on this.” Yes, I can very well imagine such self-serving justification.

Their fundamental error was to replace God and His revelation with themselves as the epistemological nub of their spirituality:

“For my people have committed two evils:
They have forsaken me,
the fountain of living waters,
And hewn themselves cisterns – broken
cisterns that can hold no water.” (Jeremiah 2:13)

Once you substitute God as foundational for knowledge, anything and everything is up for grabs. We should be entirely faithful to God when His Spirit has spoken and we should intellectually honestly deal with that information. Too often people obstinately ignore God’s revelation and turn to another in order to form their understanding of the world.

“Why then has this people slidden back,
Jerusalem, in a perpetual backsliding?
They hold fast to deceit,
They refuse to return.
I listened and heard,
But they do not speak aright.
No man repented of his wickedness,
Saying, ‘What have I done?’
Everyone turned to his own course,
As the horse rushes into the battle.” (Jeremiah 8:5,6)

The other morning an acquaintance visited a local Anglican church. The minister and he had previously spoken by phone about Disconnect ’09 and conversation had immediately turned to the great miracle of creation. Some time later he had walked into the church to pass on an article about the genre of Genesis 1. The minister wasn’t there but his assistant was. Again, rather quickly, they began discussing Genesis 1. My friend pointed out to the young and recently graduated Moorite that he had misidentified historical prose as ahistorical poetry. The young man believed, among other things, that if a piece of writing contains repetition then necessarily it can’t be historical narrative. It was pointed out that on the contrary there is plenty of well-known ancient “secular” historiography containing this literary device. His reply was perhaps the most astounding my friend, or indeed I, have ever heard from a Moorite: “You are arrogant because you ignore the findings of postmodernism’s critique of modernism.”

There you have it: the words of wisdom from 4 years of what I can only label ‘brainwashing’ from an institution that is supposedly serving as Australia’s theological flagship. That this represents the zenith of critical thinking is hardly reassuring. Apparently, the best they can offer is to argue that my friend should throw away his personal relationship with God, in which he attentively allows God, the author of Scripture, to speak to his mind, and instead substitute his own intellect to be the basis for and interpreter of truth. The postmodern project says that the author is dead, allowing the reader to puts his meaning - or any other sinner’s or fool’s for that matter - into the text because the author can no longer speak.

And this is why these Moore graduates can look you in the face and tell you that 6 days does not mean 6 days because God’s intended meaning, if indeed He ever had one, has a shelf-life that has long expired. God, in as much as He is the author of His Word, is silent. If He is silent, then it follows that it is up to us to “discover” what happened at the very beginning.

“Cursed is the man who trusts in man
And makes flesh his strength,
Whose mind departs from the LORD.” (Jeremiah 17:5)

What in fact is happening is that these people are replacing God at the epistemological centre of the search for truth with an ersatz, with an idol of the mind. These people – and first-hand experience bears this out - are no longer approachable by reason because they have forsaken reason and committed adultery with another nation’s gods. Gods do not have to be a physical representation but are more likely to be, and considerably more harmful if they are, the way we think and whom we intellectually rely on.

“For it is the land of carved images,
And they are insane with their idols.” (Jeremiah 50:38)

The other story occurred at a University of NSW New College function. The speaker, a neo-natal expert from Britain and ostensibly a conservative, presented a lecture on ethics, abortion and biogenetic manipulation. In conversation afterwards he explained how he had complete faith in the scientific project, God’s revelation wasn’t perspicuous and that he was free to hold to a long age view of origins. It was pointed out to him that all of the miracles of the Bible were done in no time and perfectly, yet the biggest miracle, creation, according to his own view, was exceedingly slow and error-ridden. Ignoring all reason that instantaneity and perfection are how our minds recognise God’s miraculous working in nature, he shrugged his shoulders, smiled politely, and excused himself.

Clearly, all his mind’s thoughts had not been made captive to Christ and is a perfect example of a Christian’s outlook being directed by a foreign idol, in this case, the secular Enlightenment project. This philosophical approach splits up the things of faith and the things of science, thereby, in the case of the latter, promoting an independent, God-free epistemology in which the Lord is not all in all.

In August’s Southern Cross Moore College’s principal John Woodhouse makes an extraordinary sales pitch for the college. His first supporting argument is the “godliness” of its teachers. Until I read John’s comments I’d never realised in my nearly 30 years of being Christian that it was another man’s “godliness” that we are to set our sights upon, particularly upon those same men, whom John held up as paradigms of virtue, who would also read John’s article. I’d always thought that “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” and that it was Christ’s holiness that we are to be subject to. Maybe I’ve missed something from these teachers of God’s law.

But even more alarming (is that possible?!) is John’s outrageous hypocrisy. Quite incredibly he delusionally argues that Moore has a “worldwide reputation for teaching how the whole Bible and all of its parts bear witness to Christ.” John’s italics here serve as a comedic self-parody. If John actually believed that, he would understand the Gospel and Christ’s first office of Creator; but he doesn’t. Christ clearly tells us in Exodus 31 that He “made the heavens and the earth in 6 days”, and John just doesn’t believe this. John believes that the world is old, very old, and that, quite obviously, Jesus didn’t really mean this when he said this 3,500 years ago to Moses. No, despite the disciple John’s and the apostle Paul’s unequivocal statements that in Christ “all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that was made”, despite Christ Himself revealing exactly how long he took to bring the earth into existence, the principal of Moore College, on the contrary, believes that this is just not true. John’s training is in geology and I can only guess that that is where he finds his “intellectual” crutch in order to theologically reinterpret Jesus’ own words to Moses.

I shouldn’t be too severe on John. He does manage, however, to take Jesus’ words seriously, somewhat. At the end of his emphatic statement that the whole Bible serves to witness to Christ, he inserts the textual support for this claim. Bizarrely it’s John 5:39, augmented with an even more emphatic exclamation mark. This verse, as you recall, is Jesus’ own supporting argument to His claim He is from God, namely, that the Old Testament does indeed testify to this. But what is conveniently, and ironically, missing from John Woodhouse’s argument is that Jesus goes on to claim that it was Moses who wrote about Him. Furthermore, Jesus claims that if you don’t believe Moses’ words about Jesus, you won’t believe Jesus’ words about Himself. So, Moses said, after speaking with, in all likelihood, the Creator Jesus, that Jesus took 6 days to create the earth. Moore College argues that this is not what Moses meant. It then goes out into the world (weren’t they spotted standing almost inside St Andrew’s the other week trying to “evangelise”?) and argues with non-believers that it doesn’t really matter what you believe about Moses’ meaning here because you should just believe Jesus died for you.

It’s a very simple formula Jesus put forward: If you don’t believe Moses, you’ll find it incredibly difficult to believe that Jesus said, and meant, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Teach people a pagan, atheistic philosophy that God incomprehensibly used chance, death and time to create, and then expect them to believe that out of His complete love for us, He died for us, they’ll think you’re fools. And rightly so!

God’s judgement is now upon the Sydney Anglican Diocese. Not only has its leaders committed adultery, but it even has allowed itself to follow the vilest principles of secularism by borrowing money to play the stock exchange. It has lost millions. But it doesn’t end there. Taking its lead from the cold brutality of the corporate business world, it sacks people while its clergy continue on the same salary. Yet it expects to “Connect” with the lost!

“This says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: ‘Behold, I will bring on this city and on all her towns all the doom that I have pronounced against it, because they have stiffened their necks that they might not hear my words.” (Jeremiah 19:15)

For the slow learners

It's come up at least once before on this blog: various SADs, have not wanted to repeat the church's mistake made when it rejected Galileo's work and so reject the truth content of Genesis 1, but here we go again, just for the slow learners in St. Andrew's House, Moore College and the rest.

In trying to avoid the church's mistake back then they are doing precisely what the Roman church did; repeating the mistake (thus 'slow learners'). They are adopting the current popular philosophical view and rejecting observational science!! They are absorbing the speculation and rejecting what refutes it.

Hop over to the ABC Morning Interview (big file) where Throsby adulates (as she does) Dr Peter Slezak of UNSW, a lecturer in the phil. of science.

The interview celebrates the restaging of the trial of Galileo. Slezak chats on about this and other things.

He tells us about the role of dissidents in advancing science, that Galileo ran up against the Aristoteleans (not the church) who wanted to stick with their 'common sense' view of the world (common sense then, but not regarded as common sense now, only going to show how even the ordinary person is influenced by the ideas of the day); and importantly makes this remark, paraphrased:

"it wasn't the church that was resistant, as is the popular view, but the philosophers who refused to take seriously his observations".

The problem was, the church had read the philosphers' presumptions back into the Bible, just like theistic evolutionists do, in their philosophical juvenescence. Just like the SAD does, reading the Bible and making their theology on the basis of a world view in basic conflict with that of the Bible.

The story is more complex, of course, but I'll leave that research to you, dear reader.

Good one!

Dawkins Does Dumb

Re-reading some old articles the other day I renewed my acquaintance with Dallas Willard's review of Dawkin's Blind Watchmaker (BTW, I recommend all his articles: of course I don't agree with them all, but Willard is reliably thought provoking).

Dawkins takes up the argument from personal incredulity: that is people who just 'can't imagine' evolutionary sequences occuring. Willard states it: "to the effect that current or similar species could not possibly have originated from vastly simpler life forms, and he discusses certain mistakes and alleged limitations of imagination that may prevent us from appreciating the possibility of biological evolution along Darwinian lines."

Now, instead of presenting an array of experimental evidence, or showing the microbiological pathways whereby the alleged 'descent' occured, what does Dawkins do? He counters with an alternative imaginative construct. And that's all! He doesn't have any evidence! All he's got is puffery, hope and inuendo. So if its just a battle of imaginative constructs, and all he can do is criticise an alleged imaginative poverty on the part of creationists (I use the term of all who eschew neo-Darwinist fantasies), and bring his own imagination against it, then he has nothing but a house of cards.

All Dawkin's attack amounts to is this: you can't imagine what I can imagine. Donnez moi un break Dick!

Philosopher speaks

Caught an interesting essay by Peter Williams at the Evangelical Philosophical Society site. Worth a read, but I will take up one of his points in another post later.

Just do the set reading for now, and we'll discuss.

The review is here.