Recently in the comments section of a blog here I mentioned the Lord Jesus Christ's healing of a man who had been lame for 38 years (John 5).
Subsequent to that comment the following article appeared in the Sydney Daily Telegraph on 21 May 2011:
A PARAPLEGIC man has stood up unaided, moved his legs voluntarily and walked, with help, on a treadmill after neurosurgeons implanted electrodes in his lower spine.
The world-first therapy has been hailed as an exciting advance in the quest to overcome crippling spinal cord injuries.
The electrodes then sent electrical signals to mimic those sent down the spine by the brain to begin movement.
Mr Summers can push up with his legs and reach a standing position, and support his own weight for up to four minutes at a time.
'For someone who for four years was unable to move a toe, to have the freedom to stand on my own is the most amazing feeling,' he said.
Compare the situation of the early Judean man and the Sydney Daily Telegraph's reported lame man. We don't know how the former was made lame. Potentially, he suffered a similar spinal cord injury to the latter day man. Notwithstanding the extent of damaged body parts, each man was completely lame.
Improvement came to both but look at the stark contrast in the time frame and the completeness of healing. The gap is huge and, as I indicated earlier, the healing and recreation wrought by the will of our Lord Jesus Christ was beyond all our capacity to comprehend via modern medical science.
There some 2,000 years ago in Judea, moving among the people, was the Creator of the universe who creates and recreates in an instant.
If only degenerate pseudo-evangelicals of today had more faith in Jesus Christ than they do Charles Darwin and Charles Lyell.
Sam Drucker
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Friday, May 27, 2011
Into the Darkness Light Has Shone.
Oh, how they rail! How they retort their defence over and over "Young Earth Creationism is a hindrance to someone coming to Christ." Those Sydney Episcopalians who distort the Word of God exercise their troubled minds to discover a defence for their desire of the world.
Biblical Creationists know the foolishness of their defence for we know that it is the Spirit of God who does the work of conversion through the Word of Truth. We are familiar with testimonies of former Atheists who have sat under the Word of Truth delivered through the clay vessel of a Biblical Creationist and being brought to conversion by the Spirit of God. Something at least along those lines has happened again.
I was not there and I only have the message third hand but that which I have received indicates the Spirit of God was at work at a Sydney Anglican Church in recent weeks.
Two students who were not Christians (one was a Jew) had an assignment to complete as part of their tertiary studies. They thought the topic of Creationism and the controversy surrounding it might be a worthwhile exercise. They searched the Web, found Creation.com and saw that a message was being delivered by a Biblical Creationist at ........ Anglican Church in the next couple of days. That's handy, they said. They devised their questions to test the veracity of the speaker's position in the face of the Darwinist/Long Age argument and off they went to the event.
During the speaker's address it became evident sensible things were being asserted. Just as the Bereans searched the Scriptures to affirm the message of Apostle Paul these two students searched their sensibilities to affirm the veracity of the message. Questions were being answered. During question time and in private discussion with the speaker afterward all questions were answered. The two guests were profoundly affected under conviction of the Word of Truth. They came away from the event far different in thought and so favourably disposed to the Word of God.
Where things lead for these two students is beyond the scope of this writer to say just now. What is clear is that, once again, when the Spirit of God is at work the Word of God does not return void and Biblical Creationists are instruments in the Hand of God for changing the thoughts of man from death to thoughts of life in the Son.
Sam Drucker
Biblical Creationists know the foolishness of their defence for we know that it is the Spirit of God who does the work of conversion through the Word of Truth. We are familiar with testimonies of former Atheists who have sat under the Word of Truth delivered through the clay vessel of a Biblical Creationist and being brought to conversion by the Spirit of God. Something at least along those lines has happened again.
I was not there and I only have the message third hand but that which I have received indicates the Spirit of God was at work at a Sydney Anglican Church in recent weeks.
Two students who were not Christians (one was a Jew) had an assignment to complete as part of their tertiary studies. They thought the topic of Creationism and the controversy surrounding it might be a worthwhile exercise. They searched the Web, found Creation.com and saw that a message was being delivered by a Biblical Creationist at ........ Anglican Church in the next couple of days. That's handy, they said. They devised their questions to test the veracity of the speaker's position in the face of the Darwinist/Long Age argument and off they went to the event.
During the speaker's address it became evident sensible things were being asserted. Just as the Bereans searched the Scriptures to affirm the message of Apostle Paul these two students searched their sensibilities to affirm the veracity of the message. Questions were being answered. During question time and in private discussion with the speaker afterward all questions were answered. The two guests were profoundly affected under conviction of the Word of Truth. They came away from the event far different in thought and so favourably disposed to the Word of God.
Where things lead for these two students is beyond the scope of this writer to say just now. What is clear is that, once again, when the Spirit of God is at work the Word of God does not return void and Biblical Creationists are instruments in the Hand of God for changing the thoughts of man from death to thoughts of life in the Son.
Sam Drucker
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney Wallowing in Toxic Time-Bomb.
Mark Christopher is a church planter in Cape Town, South Africa, and the author of Same-Sex Marriage: Is It Really The Same? (DayOne Publication, 2009). In the 2010 Annual of Evangelical Action Christopher has an article published under the heading The Ecclesiastical Promotion of Homosexuality and the Demise of Biblical Authority. In this article he nails the problem neo-evangelicals have got the church into concerning the practice of homosexuality despite the express prohibition of homosexuality in Scripture.
However, Christopher indirectly exposes the polluted theology of neo-evangelicals of the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney which, while perhaps at present resisting the homosexuality push, has collapsed in the face of assaults of the world on the subject of origins. Sydney Episcopalians, like their fellow neo-evangelical travellers elsewhere of the world dismiss the importance of maintaining biblical authority on origins "because it is not a salvation issue" or "is not of Christ crucified and raised to life again." This, of course, is code for "leave us alone, we are comfortable in the world and we don't want contentious issues in the church."
Mark Christopher identifies and speaks to four "bromides" (corrosive agents) of biblical authority - Higher Critical Method, Naturalistic-Uniformitarian Science, Pluralism and Existentialism/Moral Relativism. He then goes on to discuss their accumulating effect on the church as it addresses the march of homosexuality. I take up extracts of his article here and urge readers to note how the evangelical church has set itself up for toxic death:
The outcome of the four mentioned bromides to biblical authority is fleshed out in our third consideration of this topic — the creed of diminished biblical authority. How do those who subscribe to a watered down variant of biblical authority phrase their skepticism? Well, Francis Schaeffer in his classic on this topic, The Great Evangelical Disaster, gave some good examples of the weasel words that are employed by skeptics. Here is but one example from the 1974 Lausanne Covenant which illustrates the creed of diminished biblical authority:
'We affirm the divine inspiration, truthfulness and authority of both Old and New Testament Scriptures in their entirety as the only written Word of God, without error in all that it affirms, and the only infallible rule of faith and practice.'
The question must be asked, what exactly does the Bible affirm and what doesn't it affirm? In the minds of biblical skeptics and pro-gay interpreters, the Bible only affirms that which is directly related to salvation while Other matters related to history, science, cosmology, and geography are deemed susceptible to errancy. The loophole here is found in the clause 'without error in all it affirms'. This one statement gives many skeptics the latitude they need to justify the latest secular findings without having to suffer the academic embarrassment often associated with maintaining a high view of Scripture.
An example of this creed of diminished biblical authority was advanced by the Rogers and McKim proposal. In 1981 Jack Rogers, a pro-gay interpreter, and Donald McKim published a tome entitled The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible: An Historical Approach. The thesis of the authors was to prove that the historically central tradition of the church emphasized a biblical infallibility that was limited to matters of faith and practice. Restated, biblical infallibility is confined to redemptive issues and not to other areas the Bible mentions in passing like history, science, geography et al. This means the Bible carries little to no authority in matters outside the circle of salvation.
In close connection to this new creed on biblical authority, the fourth consideration summarizes the roots of diminished biblical authority by surveying one of the key contributors to this thinking: G.C. Berkouwer, of whom Rogers, above, is a disciple. Berkouwer was bothered by the dual authorship approach (human and divine) to inspiration. He held that human involvement necessitated partial annulment of the divine aspects of inspiration. So instead of talking about a God-breathed word, he substituted the word 'witness' or 'testimony' for the idea of inspiration.' Thus, the Bible is only the word of God by virtue of its witness concerning Christ. Scripture is witness to Christ crucified and risen - one can almost hear the echoes of neo-orthodoxy here. Regarding the cosmology and history of the Bible, Berkouwer would maintain there are unintentional errors. This begs the question of how one can be certain there are no unintentional errors in the realm of salvation. This all leads us to the final consideration which culminates in the fruit of diminished biblical authority. The applications of this skeptical creed of Scriptural authority are multitudinous. Schaeffer rightly notes that '... compromising the full authority of Scripture eventually affects what it means to be a Christian and how we live in the full spectrum of human life.' When the standard of biblical authority is lowered it leads to the general worldview of the world infiltrating the church, to include the approval of ethical issues like homosexuality and its corollary same-sex marriage.
Unquestionably the deconstruction of biblical authority by professing evangelicals has swung the door wide open for the aggressive promotion of homosexuality within the church. In response to this, all confessing evangelicals need to ponder and act on Schaeffer's poignant reminder: 'We must say most lovingly but clearly: evangelicalism is not consistently evangelical unless there is a line drawn between those who take the full view of Scripture and those who do not.' Schaeffer would say this is to include not only the belief, but the accompanying practice (obedience) as well.
In order for concerned evangelicals to begin reclaiming some of the valuable territory lost in the same-sex debate, it is first necessary to unapologetically reassert a high view of Scripture while striving to consistently model the holy demands of Sola Scriptura!
Amen!
Sam Drucker
However, Christopher indirectly exposes the polluted theology of neo-evangelicals of the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney which, while perhaps at present resisting the homosexuality push, has collapsed in the face of assaults of the world on the subject of origins. Sydney Episcopalians, like their fellow neo-evangelical travellers elsewhere of the world dismiss the importance of maintaining biblical authority on origins "because it is not a salvation issue" or "is not of Christ crucified and raised to life again." This, of course, is code for "leave us alone, we are comfortable in the world and we don't want contentious issues in the church."
Mark Christopher identifies and speaks to four "bromides" (corrosive agents) of biblical authority - Higher Critical Method, Naturalistic-Uniformitarian Science, Pluralism and Existentialism/Moral Relativism. He then goes on to discuss their accumulating effect on the church as it addresses the march of homosexuality. I take up extracts of his article here and urge readers to note how the evangelical church has set itself up for toxic death:
The outcome of the four mentioned bromides to biblical authority is fleshed out in our third consideration of this topic — the creed of diminished biblical authority. How do those who subscribe to a watered down variant of biblical authority phrase their skepticism? Well, Francis Schaeffer in his classic on this topic, The Great Evangelical Disaster, gave some good examples of the weasel words that are employed by skeptics. Here is but one example from the 1974 Lausanne Covenant which illustrates the creed of diminished biblical authority:
'We affirm the divine inspiration, truthfulness and authority of both Old and New Testament Scriptures in their entirety as the only written Word of God, without error in all that it affirms, and the only infallible rule of faith and practice.'
The question must be asked, what exactly does the Bible affirm and what doesn't it affirm? In the minds of biblical skeptics and pro-gay interpreters, the Bible only affirms that which is directly related to salvation while Other matters related to history, science, cosmology, and geography are deemed susceptible to errancy. The loophole here is found in the clause 'without error in all it affirms'. This one statement gives many skeptics the latitude they need to justify the latest secular findings without having to suffer the academic embarrassment often associated with maintaining a high view of Scripture.
An example of this creed of diminished biblical authority was advanced by the Rogers and McKim proposal. In 1981 Jack Rogers, a pro-gay interpreter, and Donald McKim published a tome entitled The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible: An Historical Approach. The thesis of the authors was to prove that the historically central tradition of the church emphasized a biblical infallibility that was limited to matters of faith and practice. Restated, biblical infallibility is confined to redemptive issues and not to other areas the Bible mentions in passing like history, science, geography et al. This means the Bible carries little to no authority in matters outside the circle of salvation.
In close connection to this new creed on biblical authority, the fourth consideration summarizes the roots of diminished biblical authority by surveying one of the key contributors to this thinking: G.C. Berkouwer, of whom Rogers, above, is a disciple. Berkouwer was bothered by the dual authorship approach (human and divine) to inspiration. He held that human involvement necessitated partial annulment of the divine aspects of inspiration. So instead of talking about a God-breathed word, he substituted the word 'witness' or 'testimony' for the idea of inspiration.' Thus, the Bible is only the word of God by virtue of its witness concerning Christ. Scripture is witness to Christ crucified and risen - one can almost hear the echoes of neo-orthodoxy here. Regarding the cosmology and history of the Bible, Berkouwer would maintain there are unintentional errors. This begs the question of how one can be certain there are no unintentional errors in the realm of salvation. This all leads us to the final consideration which culminates in the fruit of diminished biblical authority. The applications of this skeptical creed of Scriptural authority are multitudinous. Schaeffer rightly notes that '... compromising the full authority of Scripture eventually affects what it means to be a Christian and how we live in the full spectrum of human life.' When the standard of biblical authority is lowered it leads to the general worldview of the world infiltrating the church, to include the approval of ethical issues like homosexuality and its corollary same-sex marriage.
Unquestionably the deconstruction of biblical authority by professing evangelicals has swung the door wide open for the aggressive promotion of homosexuality within the church. In response to this, all confessing evangelicals need to ponder and act on Schaeffer's poignant reminder: 'We must say most lovingly but clearly: evangelicalism is not consistently evangelical unless there is a line drawn between those who take the full view of Scripture and those who do not.' Schaeffer would say this is to include not only the belief, but the accompanying practice (obedience) as well.
In order for concerned evangelicals to begin reclaiming some of the valuable territory lost in the same-sex debate, it is first necessary to unapologetically reassert a high view of Scripture while striving to consistently model the holy demands of Sola Scriptura!
Amen!
Sam Drucker
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Declension Spreads
My recent blog about The Work of the Word of God was another reminder of the failure of evangelicals to uphold the integrity of the Word of God. For the so-called evangelicals of the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney the failing is clearly demonstrated nowadays in mishandling of Genesis 1. Shall I call them neo-evangelicals?
Neo-evangelicals elsewhere have long abandoned upholding the integrity of the Word of God in Genesis 1. They are well down the slippery slope of declension to death. Just look for a moment at
this
I guess the Presbyterian Church of the USA can only look back and say to the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney "Keep coming brother, you are heading in the right direction and will catch up one day!
Like Cancer, infidelity grows if not excised early.
Sam Drucker
Neo-evangelicals elsewhere have long abandoned upholding the integrity of the Word of God in Genesis 1. They are well down the slippery slope of declension to death. Just look for a moment at
this
I guess the Presbyterian Church of the USA can only look back and say to the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney "Keep coming brother, you are heading in the right direction and will catch up one day!
Like Cancer, infidelity grows if not excised early.
Sam Drucker
Monday, May 16, 2011
Leupold Genesis part 56 verse 26 Image of God
26. And God said: Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the domestic animals and over the whole earth and over every thing that moveth about upon the earth.
A divine counsel precedes the creation of man. By this means the singular dignity of man is very strongly stressed. From every point of view man is seen to be the crown and climax of God's creation.
The hortative "Let us make" (na'aseh), is particularly striking because it is plural. Though almost all commentators of our day reject the view that this is to be explained in connection with the truth of the Holy Trinity and treat this so-called trinitarian view as a very negligible quantity, yet, rightly considered, this is the only view that can satisfy. Koenig (K. C.) may brush it aside with the very briefest remark to the effect that "the number three cannot be expressed by the plural," yet he like many others labours under a misunderstanding of the trinitarian view. Those that hold that a reference to the Trinity is involved do not mean to say that the truth of the Holy Trinity is here fully and plainly revealed. But they do hold that God speaks out of the fulness of His powers and His attributes in a fashion which man could never employ. Behind such speaking lies the truth of the Holy Trinity which, as it grows increasingly clear in revelation, is in the light of later clear revelation discovered as contained in this pural in a kind of obscure adumbration. The truth of the Trinity explains this passage. It would not occur to us to call this an express and unmistakable, clear presentation of the full trinitarian truth. So also, in substance, Keil. So practically also Luther, after he has valiantly championed the trinitarian view even beyond what we might deem the legitimate statement of the case, goes on to remark: "Therefore what is first presented more or less dark, difficult and obscure, Christ has all made manifest and clearly commanded to preach. Nevertheless, the holy fathers held this knowledge through the Holy Spirit, yet by no means as clear as we now have it."
Some have seen the solution of the difficulty to lie in calling this the majestic plural, such as sovereigns are wont to employ in edicts. This type of plural, however, cannot be demonstrated as used in the Scriptures. Luther's somewhat ironical remark should also be considered here: "The Holy Spirit is not wont to employ the courtesies employed for royalty" (kanzleiische Hoeflichkeit). Rightly speaking, a kind of potential plural is involved (K. S. 260 a-e), as the fullness of the potentialities that lie in God is expressed by the plural of 'elohim, which may even be used with a plural form of its predicate adjective (Judg. 24:19; Ps. 58:12), but abstract plurals like these are not yet quite the same thing as a verb used in the first person plural, hortatory, as Strack tries to persuade himself to believe.
The common explanation, perhaps the most popular at present, that God is addressing the angels has been shown up in its deficiencies by Koenig (K. C.). It cannot be denied that on occasion God addressed the angelic host before His throne; (Isa 6:8; 1Ki 22:19-22). Angels are found standing in His presence (Job 1; 38:7; Da 4:14; 7:10). But never once does God actually counsel with them. The distance between God and angels is seen to be a very pronounced one. Even in (Isa 6:8) this important difference stands out: "Whom shall I send?" God acts independently without angelic counsel. Besides, it must be considered that neither here nor by the time 3:22 is reached has anything been revealed about the creation of angels. And lastly, man is not considered in the Scriptures to have been made in the image of angels. If this remark included angels, man would be made in an image which blurred the divine and the angelic into one. The Old Testament does not muddle such important concepts.
A divine counsel precedes the creation of man. By this means the singular dignity of man is very strongly stressed. From every point of view man is seen to be the crown and climax of God's creation.
The hortative "Let us make" (na'aseh), is particularly striking because it is plural. Though almost all commentators of our day reject the view that this is to be explained in connection with the truth of the Holy Trinity and treat this so-called trinitarian view as a very negligible quantity, yet, rightly considered, this is the only view that can satisfy. Koenig (K. C.) may brush it aside with the very briefest remark to the effect that "the number three cannot be expressed by the plural," yet he like many others labours under a misunderstanding of the trinitarian view. Those that hold that a reference to the Trinity is involved do not mean to say that the truth of the Holy Trinity is here fully and plainly revealed. But they do hold that God speaks out of the fulness of His powers and His attributes in a fashion which man could never employ. Behind such speaking lies the truth of the Holy Trinity which, as it grows increasingly clear in revelation, is in the light of later clear revelation discovered as contained in this pural in a kind of obscure adumbration. The truth of the Trinity explains this passage. It would not occur to us to call this an express and unmistakable, clear presentation of the full trinitarian truth. So also, in substance, Keil. So practically also Luther, after he has valiantly championed the trinitarian view even beyond what we might deem the legitimate statement of the case, goes on to remark: "Therefore what is first presented more or less dark, difficult and obscure, Christ has all made manifest and clearly commanded to preach. Nevertheless, the holy fathers held this knowledge through the Holy Spirit, yet by no means as clear as we now have it."
Some have seen the solution of the difficulty to lie in calling this the majestic plural, such as sovereigns are wont to employ in edicts. This type of plural, however, cannot be demonstrated as used in the Scriptures. Luther's somewhat ironical remark should also be considered here: "The Holy Spirit is not wont to employ the courtesies employed for royalty" (kanzleiische Hoeflichkeit). Rightly speaking, a kind of potential plural is involved (K. S. 260 a-e), as the fullness of the potentialities that lie in God is expressed by the plural of 'elohim, which may even be used with a plural form of its predicate adjective (Judg. 24:19; Ps. 58:12), but abstract plurals like these are not yet quite the same thing as a verb used in the first person plural, hortatory, as Strack tries to persuade himself to believe.
The common explanation, perhaps the most popular at present, that God is addressing the angels has been shown up in its deficiencies by Koenig (K. C.). It cannot be denied that on occasion God addressed the angelic host before His throne; (Isa 6:8; 1Ki 22:19-22). Angels are found standing in His presence (Job 1; 38:7; Da 4:14; 7:10). But never once does God actually counsel with them. The distance between God and angels is seen to be a very pronounced one. Even in (Isa 6:8) this important difference stands out: "Whom shall I send?" God acts independently without angelic counsel. Besides, it must be considered that neither here nor by the time 3:22 is reached has anything been revealed about the creation of angels. And lastly, man is not considered in the Scriptures to have been made in the image of angels. If this remark included angels, man would be made in an image which blurred the divine and the angelic into one. The Old Testament does not muddle such important concepts.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Is Romans 5:12 a Defence Against Adam's Sin Having Brought Death to All Creation?
It disappoints time and again when so-called evangelicals today resort to saying Romans 5:12 deals only with death of man consequent to Adam's sin and that the rest of Creation is excluded. This is a vain attempt to keep alive their precious evolutionary view of origins. It is an abuse of the Reformation principle of letting Scripture interpret Scripture, let alone an abuse of the revelation of God in Being and Will.
If these so-called evangelicals were principled enough, if they loved the Word of God more than the world, they would interpret Romans 5:12 in the light of what Apostle Paul says only a little later in his Epistle to the Romans. At Romans 8:18-22, Paul provides clear revelation that Adam's sin and God's subsequent judgement affected the entire Creation. This has been a traditional view of the Church but has been corrupted in recent years as so-called evangelicals deepen their love for the world.
I have chosen two respected writers to reaffirm the traditional interpretation of the effect of Adam's sin. I recently quoted Joseph Alleine in a blog and do so again here. Joseph Alleine was a Puritan writer and his classic work "Alarm to the Unconverted" has been a help to many for approximately 400 years. And more recently, Graeme Goldsworthy has been lecturer at Moore Theological College, Sydney, a writer of books - one of which is "Gospel & Kingdom" and also has been a help to Christians in current times.
First to Joseph Alleine. Alleine, while not speaking to Romans 5:12 directly, does present a view of the created order and the plight of fallen man who continues in an unconverted state. You could not read Alleine's argument and be unconvinced he believed Romans 5:12 applied to the whole Creation suffering frustration and death as a consequence of Adam's sin.
On Page 54 of the 1967 Banner of Truth Trust edition Alleine says:
2: Not only man, but the whole visible creation is in vain without conversion. God has made all the visible creatures in heaven and earth for the service of man, and man only is the spokesman for all the rest. Man is, in the world, like the tongue to the body, which speaks for all the members. The other creatures cannot praise their Maker, except by dumb signs and hints to man that he should speak for them. Man is, as it were, the high priest of God's creation, to offer the sacrifice of praise for all his fellow-creatures. The Lord God expects a tribute of praise from all His works. Now, all the rest do bring in their tribute to man, and pay it by his hand. So then, if a man is false, and faithless, and selfish, God is robbed of all, and has no active glory from His works.
O dreadful thought! that God should build such a world as this, and lay out such infinite power, and wisdom, and goodness thereupon, and all in vain; and that man should be guilty, at last, of robbing and spoiling Him of the glory of all! O think of this. While you are unconverted, all the offices of the creatures are in vain to you. Your food nourishes you in vain. The sun holds forth its light to you in vain. Your clothes warm you in vain. Your beast carries you in vain. In a word, the unwearied labour and continued travail of the whole creation, as to you, are in vain. The service of all the creatures that drudge for you, and yield forth their strength unto you, with which you should serve their Maker, is all but lost labour. Hence, 'the whole creation groaneth' (Rom viii 22) under the abuse of unsanctified men who pervert all things to the service of their lusts, quite contrary to the very end of their being.
On Page 65 he says:
What king would take rebels in open hostility into his court? What were this but to betray life, kingdom, government, and all together? If Christ is a King, He must have honour, homage, subjection. Now, to save men while in their natural enmity, were to obscure His dignity, lose His authority, bring contempt on His government, and sell His dear-bought rights for naught.
Likewise, how would a Holy God continually walk in the garden in the cool of the day if that garden and its inhabitants were forever corrupt and the antithesis of his very Being? No, the Word of God makes it clear that all changed after man rebelled. Aside from providing a metaphor of the failure of Israel's leaders, our Lord Jesus Christ, when cursing the fig tree (Matt 21:18-22), demonstrates that the creation is not worthy of continuance if its life sustaining purpose is not realised in the presence of the Son of God i.e. sinless Adam and/or sinless Incarnate God. A frustrated (mutated or faulty) Creation did not exist before Adam sinned.
On Pages 89 & 90 Alleine says this about the state of fallen and unconverted man:
2: The whole creation of God is against you. 'The whole creation', says Paul, 'groaneth and travaileth in pain' (Rom viii 22). But what is it that the creation groans under? The fearful abuse it is subject to in serving the lusts of unsanctified men. And what is it that the creation groans for? For freedom and liberty from this abuse; for the 'creature is not willingly made subject to this bondage (Rom viii 20-21). If the irrational and inanimate creatures had speech and reason, they would cry out under it, as a bondage insufferable, to be abused by the ungodly, contrary to their natures and the ends that the great Creator made them for. It is a saying of an eminent divine, 'The liquor that the drunkard drinks, if it had reason, like a man, to know how shamefully it is abused, would groan in the barrel against him, it would groan in the cup against him, groan in his throat, in his stomach against him; it would fly in his face, if it could speak. And if God should open the mouths of His creatures, as He did the mouth of Balaam's ass, the proud man's garment on his back would groan against him. There is not a creature, if it had reason to know how it is abused till a man be converted, but would groan against him. The land would groan to bear him, the air would groan to give him breath, their houses would groan to dislodge them, their beds would groan to ease them, their food to nourish them, their clothes to cover them, and the creature would groan to give them any help and comfort, so long as they live in sin against God.'
I think this should be a terror to an unconverted soul, to think he is a burden to the creation. 'Cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?' (Lk xiii 7). If inanimate creatures could but speak, your food would say, 'Lord, must I nourish such a wretch as this, and yield forth my strength for him, to dishonour Thee? No, I will choke him rather, if Thou wilt give commission.' The very air would say, 'Lord, must I give this man breath, to set his tongue against heaven, and scorn Thy people, and vent his pride and wrath, and filthy talk, and belch out oaths and blasphemy against Thee? No, if Thou wilt but say the word, he shall be breathless for me.' His poor beast would say, 'Lord, must I carry him upon his wicked designs ? No, I will break his bones I will end his days rather, if I may have but leave from Thee.' A wicked man; the earth groans under him, and hell groans for him, till death satisfies both. While the Lord of hosts is against you, be sure the host of the Lord is against you, and all the creatures as it were up in arms till, upon a man's conversion, the controversy being settled between God and him. He makes a covenant of peace with the creature for him (Job v 22-24; Hosea ii 18-20).
The Job and Hosea citations speak of a restored Creation after sin has been dealt with once and for all. Restored to a pre-Fall condition.
As if to confirm all the foregoing, Graeme Goldsworthy in "Gospel & Kingdom" says on page 55 : The universe, in order to remain under man's dominion, and despite its ongoing challenge to man's dominion, is made to fall with man. The world outside the garden is fallen, for man cannot survive in an unfallen world. 'The creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope' (Romans 8:20)". [emphasis in bold mine]
On page 53 Goldsworthy says:
"It is impossible for God to be true to himself and at the same time tolerate his own dethronement by the creature.
It follows that God would hardly tolerate a corrupted Creation for an alleged millions or billions of years before emergence of Man and it is then Man's corruption which prompts judgement from God. Additionally, our Lord Jesus Christ says at Luke 12:48 "For whom much is given, of him shall be much required". Why should Man, to whom so much of the nature of God has be given and to whom responsibility over Creation is delegated, be subjected to only thousands of years (thus far) of frustrated existence while the lesser of Creation has been frustrated for allegedly millions or billions of years longer?
Finally, Goldsworthy says on Page 45: "Man is not the end of a chain of evolution for he is qualitatively distinct from the animals".
Compromising evangelicals do great harm to the integrity of the Word of God. They cast seeds of desolation into the Church. As with any adulterer they misuse the words of their first love. This is no more evident than in their handling of the Word of God in Apostle Paul's Epistle to the Romans.
Sam Drucker
If these so-called evangelicals were principled enough, if they loved the Word of God more than the world, they would interpret Romans 5:12 in the light of what Apostle Paul says only a little later in his Epistle to the Romans. At Romans 8:18-22, Paul provides clear revelation that Adam's sin and God's subsequent judgement affected the entire Creation. This has been a traditional view of the Church but has been corrupted in recent years as so-called evangelicals deepen their love for the world.
I have chosen two respected writers to reaffirm the traditional interpretation of the effect of Adam's sin. I recently quoted Joseph Alleine in a blog and do so again here. Joseph Alleine was a Puritan writer and his classic work "Alarm to the Unconverted" has been a help to many for approximately 400 years. And more recently, Graeme Goldsworthy has been lecturer at Moore Theological College, Sydney, a writer of books - one of which is "Gospel & Kingdom" and also has been a help to Christians in current times.
First to Joseph Alleine. Alleine, while not speaking to Romans 5:12 directly, does present a view of the created order and the plight of fallen man who continues in an unconverted state. You could not read Alleine's argument and be unconvinced he believed Romans 5:12 applied to the whole Creation suffering frustration and death as a consequence of Adam's sin.
On Page 54 of the 1967 Banner of Truth Trust edition Alleine says:
2: Not only man, but the whole visible creation is in vain without conversion. God has made all the visible creatures in heaven and earth for the service of man, and man only is the spokesman for all the rest. Man is, in the world, like the tongue to the body, which speaks for all the members. The other creatures cannot praise their Maker, except by dumb signs and hints to man that he should speak for them. Man is, as it were, the high priest of God's creation, to offer the sacrifice of praise for all his fellow-creatures. The Lord God expects a tribute of praise from all His works. Now, all the rest do bring in their tribute to man, and pay it by his hand. So then, if a man is false, and faithless, and selfish, God is robbed of all, and has no active glory from His works.
O dreadful thought! that God should build such a world as this, and lay out such infinite power, and wisdom, and goodness thereupon, and all in vain; and that man should be guilty, at last, of robbing and spoiling Him of the glory of all! O think of this. While you are unconverted, all the offices of the creatures are in vain to you. Your food nourishes you in vain. The sun holds forth its light to you in vain. Your clothes warm you in vain. Your beast carries you in vain. In a word, the unwearied labour and continued travail of the whole creation, as to you, are in vain. The service of all the creatures that drudge for you, and yield forth their strength unto you, with which you should serve their Maker, is all but lost labour. Hence, 'the whole creation groaneth' (Rom viii 22) under the abuse of unsanctified men who pervert all things to the service of their lusts, quite contrary to the very end of their being.
On Page 65 he says:
What king would take rebels in open hostility into his court? What were this but to betray life, kingdom, government, and all together? If Christ is a King, He must have honour, homage, subjection. Now, to save men while in their natural enmity, were to obscure His dignity, lose His authority, bring contempt on His government, and sell His dear-bought rights for naught.
Likewise, how would a Holy God continually walk in the garden in the cool of the day if that garden and its inhabitants were forever corrupt and the antithesis of his very Being? No, the Word of God makes it clear that all changed after man rebelled. Aside from providing a metaphor of the failure of Israel's leaders, our Lord Jesus Christ, when cursing the fig tree (Matt 21:18-22), demonstrates that the creation is not worthy of continuance if its life sustaining purpose is not realised in the presence of the Son of God i.e. sinless Adam and/or sinless Incarnate God. A frustrated (mutated or faulty) Creation did not exist before Adam sinned.
On Pages 89 & 90 Alleine says this about the state of fallen and unconverted man:
2: The whole creation of God is against you. 'The whole creation', says Paul, 'groaneth and travaileth in pain' (Rom viii 22). But what is it that the creation groans under? The fearful abuse it is subject to in serving the lusts of unsanctified men. And what is it that the creation groans for? For freedom and liberty from this abuse; for the 'creature is not willingly made subject to this bondage (Rom viii 20-21). If the irrational and inanimate creatures had speech and reason, they would cry out under it, as a bondage insufferable, to be abused by the ungodly, contrary to their natures and the ends that the great Creator made them for. It is a saying of an eminent divine, 'The liquor that the drunkard drinks, if it had reason, like a man, to know how shamefully it is abused, would groan in the barrel against him, it would groan in the cup against him, groan in his throat, in his stomach against him; it would fly in his face, if it could speak. And if God should open the mouths of His creatures, as He did the mouth of Balaam's ass, the proud man's garment on his back would groan against him. There is not a creature, if it had reason to know how it is abused till a man be converted, but would groan against him. The land would groan to bear him, the air would groan to give him breath, their houses would groan to dislodge them, their beds would groan to ease them, their food to nourish them, their clothes to cover them, and the creature would groan to give them any help and comfort, so long as they live in sin against God.'
I think this should be a terror to an unconverted soul, to think he is a burden to the creation. 'Cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?' (Lk xiii 7). If inanimate creatures could but speak, your food would say, 'Lord, must I nourish such a wretch as this, and yield forth my strength for him, to dishonour Thee? No, I will choke him rather, if Thou wilt give commission.' The very air would say, 'Lord, must I give this man breath, to set his tongue against heaven, and scorn Thy people, and vent his pride and wrath, and filthy talk, and belch out oaths and blasphemy against Thee? No, if Thou wilt but say the word, he shall be breathless for me.' His poor beast would say, 'Lord, must I carry him upon his wicked designs ? No, I will break his bones I will end his days rather, if I may have but leave from Thee.' A wicked man; the earth groans under him, and hell groans for him, till death satisfies both. While the Lord of hosts is against you, be sure the host of the Lord is against you, and all the creatures as it were up in arms till, upon a man's conversion, the controversy being settled between God and him. He makes a covenant of peace with the creature for him (Job v 22-24; Hosea ii 18-20).
The Job and Hosea citations speak of a restored Creation after sin has been dealt with once and for all. Restored to a pre-Fall condition.
As if to confirm all the foregoing, Graeme Goldsworthy in "Gospel & Kingdom" says on page 55 : The universe, in order to remain under man's dominion, and despite its ongoing challenge to man's dominion, is made to fall with man. The world outside the garden is fallen, for man cannot survive in an unfallen world. 'The creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope' (Romans 8:20)". [emphasis in bold mine]
On page 53 Goldsworthy says:
"It is impossible for God to be true to himself and at the same time tolerate his own dethronement by the creature.
It follows that God would hardly tolerate a corrupted Creation for an alleged millions or billions of years before emergence of Man and it is then Man's corruption which prompts judgement from God. Additionally, our Lord Jesus Christ says at Luke 12:48 "For whom much is given, of him shall be much required". Why should Man, to whom so much of the nature of God has be given and to whom responsibility over Creation is delegated, be subjected to only thousands of years (thus far) of frustrated existence while the lesser of Creation has been frustrated for allegedly millions or billions of years longer?
Finally, Goldsworthy says on Page 45: "Man is not the end of a chain of evolution for he is qualitatively distinct from the animals".
Compromising evangelicals do great harm to the integrity of the Word of God. They cast seeds of desolation into the Church. As with any adulterer they misuse the words of their first love. This is no more evident than in their handling of the Word of God in Apostle Paul's Epistle to the Romans.
Sam Drucker
Sunday, May 8, 2011
The Work of the Word of God
The Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney falsely boasts adherence to the Word of God. The so-called evangelical of the Diocese is a far more degenerate kind than the evangelicals of the Reformation, Puritans and the great instruments in Revival of the Eighteenth Century. This is demonstrated in latter day evangelicals' abuse of the Word of God in the Creation account in Genesis. They have inflicted a wound to the integrity of the Word of God that will later open all the more to the detriment of potential Christian inquirers.
This is a far cry from the regard held for the integrity of the Word of God by Puritan writer Joseph Alleine in his classic work Alarm to the Unconverted. Discussing the personal and real instruments of conversion, Alleine has the following instruction on the Word of God:
The real instrument is the Word. We are begotten by the word of truth. It is this that enlightens the eye, that converts the soul (Ps xix 7, 8), that makes us wise to salvation (2 Tim iii 15). This is the incorruptible seed by which we are born again (1 Pet i 23). If we are washed, it is by the Word (Eph v 26). If we are sanctified, it is through the truth (Jn xvii 17). This generates faith, and regenerates us (Rom x 17; Jas i 18).
O ye saints, how you should love the Word, for by this you have been converted! You that have felt its renewing power, make much of it while you live; be ever thankful for it. Tie it about your neck, write it upon your hand, lay it in your bosom. When you go let it lead you, when you sleep let it keep you, when you wake let it talk with you (Prov vi 21-22). Say with the Psalmist, I will never forget thy precepts, for by them thou hast quickened me {Ps cxix 93). You that are unconverted, read the Word with diligence; flock to where it is powerfully preached.
If only the so-called evangelicals of the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney would desist from embracing the world and hold firm to the Word of God in Genesis 1. Then will the death of the Diocese be averted and the Kingdom of God advance in this place.
For the benefit of the lazy I provide hereunder the Authorized Version of the passages of the Word of God cited by Joseph Alleine as well as Psalm 119:160 cited later by Alleine.
Ps 19:7-8 The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes.
2 Tim 3:15 And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
1 Pet 1:23 Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.
Eph 5:26 That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,
Jn 17:17 Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.
Rom 10:17 So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
Jas 1:18 Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
Prov 6:21-22 My son, keep thy father’s commandment, and forsake not the law of thy mother: Bind them continually upon thine heart, and tie them about thy neck. When thou goest, it shall lead thee; when thou sleepest, it shall keep thee; and when thou awakest, it shall talk with thee.
Ps 119:93 I will never forget thy precepts: for with them thou hast quickened me.
Ps 119:160 Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever. [emphasis mine]
Sam Drucker
This is a far cry from the regard held for the integrity of the Word of God by Puritan writer Joseph Alleine in his classic work Alarm to the Unconverted. Discussing the personal and real instruments of conversion, Alleine has the following instruction on the Word of God:
The real instrument is the Word. We are begotten by the word of truth. It is this that enlightens the eye, that converts the soul (Ps xix 7, 8), that makes us wise to salvation (2 Tim iii 15). This is the incorruptible seed by which we are born again (1 Pet i 23). If we are washed, it is by the Word (Eph v 26). If we are sanctified, it is through the truth (Jn xvii 17). This generates faith, and regenerates us (Rom x 17; Jas i 18).
O ye saints, how you should love the Word, for by this you have been converted! You that have felt its renewing power, make much of it while you live; be ever thankful for it. Tie it about your neck, write it upon your hand, lay it in your bosom. When you go let it lead you, when you sleep let it keep you, when you wake let it talk with you (Prov vi 21-22). Say with the Psalmist, I will never forget thy precepts, for by them thou hast quickened me {Ps cxix 93). You that are unconverted, read the Word with diligence; flock to where it is powerfully preached.
If only the so-called evangelicals of the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney would desist from embracing the world and hold firm to the Word of God in Genesis 1. Then will the death of the Diocese be averted and the Kingdom of God advance in this place.
For the benefit of the lazy I provide hereunder the Authorized Version of the passages of the Word of God cited by Joseph Alleine as well as Psalm 119:160 cited later by Alleine.
Ps 19:7-8 The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes.
2 Tim 3:15 And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
1 Pet 1:23 Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.
Eph 5:26 That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,
Jn 17:17 Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.
Rom 10:17 So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
Jas 1:18 Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
Prov 6:21-22 My son, keep thy father’s commandment, and forsake not the law of thy mother: Bind them continually upon thine heart, and tie them about thy neck. When thou goest, it shall lead thee; when thou sleepest, it shall keep thee; and when thou awakest, it shall talk with thee.
Ps 119:93 I will never forget thy precepts: for with them thou hast quickened me.
Ps 119:160 Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever. [emphasis mine]
Sam Drucker
Thursday, May 5, 2011
The obvious slips right by
John in your comment on the Forked Tongue post the other day, you mentioned that giant of theological insight Gordon Cheng.
A post on the Anglican blog reminded me of another giant: John Dixon. He who looks deeply into Genesis 1 and finds hidden clues to its not being direct revelation of events that make sense in this world.
Dixon looks past the obvious structure of Genesis 1: the sequence of days, the 'five-fold formula' and the order of events, to say that the resoundingly obvious intent of the author is not to be found in what he has clearly written, but in is in some structure below the surface...something the church has missed for millenia...I don't think so!
But the great irony in Dixon's and similar appraoches that think the sub-surface of the text carries its main message is that their sub-surface 'code' fails to address the lexical-grammatical content of the text and says nothing about the direct content which the 'code' ultimately sets to one side! It doesn't help us with reading the text because it doesn't really explain why the author wrote 'A' to communicate 'B'. The text turns to dust in the hands of such exegetes.
A post on the Anglican blog reminded me of another giant: John Dixon. He who looks deeply into Genesis 1 and finds hidden clues to its not being direct revelation of events that make sense in this world.
Dixon looks past the obvious structure of Genesis 1: the sequence of days, the 'five-fold formula' and the order of events, to say that the resoundingly obvious intent of the author is not to be found in what he has clearly written, but in is in some structure below the surface...something the church has missed for millenia...I don't think so!
But the great irony in Dixon's and similar appraoches that think the sub-surface of the text carries its main message is that their sub-surface 'code' fails to address the lexical-grammatical content of the text and says nothing about the direct content which the 'code' ultimately sets to one side! It doesn't help us with reading the text because it doesn't really explain why the author wrote 'A' to communicate 'B'. The text turns to dust in the hands of such exegetes.
Monday, May 2, 2011
2 books: forked tongue
A while ago in Southern Cross, the SAD monthly rag, there was a letter on when dinosaurs were created: the letter pointed out the logic that they must have been there at the time of Eden, because they were animals; thus, created on day 6.
In response, a local genius, one Stenning, pointed out, as though no one had ever heard of it, that there were 'two books' that God used to communicate: the book of revelation and the book of nature. And anyway, this giant of scholarship pontificated, Genesis 1 was poetry.
Well I think we've can join most Hebraists and disagree that it is NOT poetry (and setting aside the well begged question that poetry cannot be factual), and also put paid to the logic of the two books model, attributed to Francis Bacon.
The basic thrust of the recourse to 2 books is that it can be used to avoid the implications of what we read in Genesis 1.
This approach attempts to equate a real book (the Bible) and a metaphorical book ('nature') only set in words by people’s ideas; not God's revelation. As we know, people are prone to error, bias and philosophical pre-conceptions.
A couple of these pre-conceptions are: firstly, that an enquiry about matters important in the Bible can start outside the Bible, framed independently of God; and, secondly, that the Bible cannot make meaningful reference to origins. Is it strange that the Bible would have an interest in the continuity of time and space and matter, which construct the only world we know?
To claim that the Bible cannot inform us about creation in its own terms implies that God is not directly our creator, or author of the real world in which Genesis sets redemptive history. This claim means that the only information we have about his creation is denied to directly refer to the world created. Other terms than God’s are substituted whose effect is to obscure God's connection with the world. The theological risk of using human ideas to critique the Scripture, instead of the other way around, is that we will end up with a god of our own imagining!
In response, a local genius, one Stenning, pointed out, as though no one had ever heard of it, that there were 'two books' that God used to communicate: the book of revelation and the book of nature. And anyway, this giant of scholarship pontificated, Genesis 1 was poetry.
Well I think we've can join most Hebraists and disagree that it is NOT poetry (and setting aside the well begged question that poetry cannot be factual), and also put paid to the logic of the two books model, attributed to Francis Bacon.
The basic thrust of the recourse to 2 books is that it can be used to avoid the implications of what we read in Genesis 1.
This approach attempts to equate a real book (the Bible) and a metaphorical book ('nature') only set in words by people’s ideas; not God's revelation. As we know, people are prone to error, bias and philosophical pre-conceptions.
A couple of these pre-conceptions are: firstly, that an enquiry about matters important in the Bible can start outside the Bible, framed independently of God; and, secondly, that the Bible cannot make meaningful reference to origins. Is it strange that the Bible would have an interest in the continuity of time and space and matter, which construct the only world we know?
To claim that the Bible cannot inform us about creation in its own terms implies that God is not directly our creator, or author of the real world in which Genesis sets redemptive history. This claim means that the only information we have about his creation is denied to directly refer to the world created. Other terms than God’s are substituted whose effect is to obscure God's connection with the world. The theological risk of using human ideas to critique the Scripture, instead of the other way around, is that we will end up with a god of our own imagining!
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Leupold Genesis part 55 verse 25
25. And God made the wild beasts of the earth after their kind and the domestic animals after their kind, and the reptiles of the ground after their kind; and God saw that it was good.
The report as to how God proceeded to carry out the thing He ordains in v. 24, in v. 25 inverts the order of the classes--a merely chiastic inversion--and provides a comment upon "reptiles" by calling them "reptiles of the ground." Strictly speaking, the inverted order of names changes from 1, 2, 3 to 3, 1, 2. Then the expression "after their kind" is separately added to each class. The word for "ground," 'adhamah, used with "reptiles" (for reptiles creep on the ground) most likely is to be associated with the root 'adhom, meaning a "reddish-brown," a term descriptive of the covering of topsoil found wherever "ground" covers the rock layers. Lest anyone suppose that perhaps portions of the animal world may originally have been characterized by some defect, we find that all: meets with divine approval: "God saw that it was excellent" (cf. v. 4). No blessing is specifically mentioned as in v. 22, apparently because the writer is hurrying to the climax.
The report as to how God proceeded to carry out the thing He ordains in v. 24, in v. 25 inverts the order of the classes--a merely chiastic inversion--and provides a comment upon "reptiles" by calling them "reptiles of the ground." Strictly speaking, the inverted order of names changes from 1, 2, 3 to 3, 1, 2. Then the expression "after their kind" is separately added to each class. The word for "ground," 'adhamah, used with "reptiles" (for reptiles creep on the ground) most likely is to be associated with the root 'adhom, meaning a "reddish-brown," a term descriptive of the covering of topsoil found wherever "ground" covers the rock layers. Lest anyone suppose that perhaps portions of the animal world may originally have been characterized by some defect, we find that all: meets with divine approval: "God saw that it was excellent" (cf. v. 4). No blessing is specifically mentioned as in v. 22, apparently because the writer is hurrying to the climax.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Christian Darwinism
No need for any comment: just hop over to this blog on Christian Dawinism. Just as oxymoronic as 'theistic evolution'.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Anglicanism: Just another word for paganism
Paul's background offers up insight into the reasons why God chose him to bring the Good News to the Gentiles. While studying under the rabbi Gamaliel provided Paul with a strong grounding in Jewish law and theology, it was his coming from Tarsus, an important university town renowned for its Stoic philosophy, that gave him a first-class education into the pagan mindset. Acts 17 records an incident in which Paul called upon this training.
While preaching and reasoning to the passers-by in an Athenian market-place a group of Stoics and Epicureans took him to task over Jesus and the resurrection. Luke only records a fraction of the debate, and despite his freely quoting Aratus, Epimenides and, quite possibly, Cleanthes, Paul nevertheless saw their philosophies as standing in distinct opposition to the Creator God of the Bible. Few Christians ever investigate precisely what these philosophies stood for, so some quotes from these ancient world-views would be of considerable aid to comprehend why Paul so unequivocally took issue with them.
The Epicurean belief was distinctly evolutionary. While gods may have indeed existed, they did not truly interact with the world. Equally certain was the Epicurean belief entertained no Creator God who used His wisdom, demonstrated by rapid and accurate completion of task, to bring nature and life into existence. Rather, large amounts of time, unfolding an uncountable number of material permutations upon permutations, eventually brought forth the world as we know it. Time and accident were the factors drawn upon to transform God into a superfluous hypothesis.
Lucretius, in his De rerum natura, states “When bodies are being born by their own weight straight down through the void, at quite uncertain times and places they veer a little from their course, just enough to be called a change of motion. If they did not have this tendency to swerve, everything would be falling downward like raindrops through the depths of the void, and collisions and impacts among the primary bodies would not have arisen, with the result that nature would never have created anything.”
Epicurus, in his Letter to Herodotus, lays out his belief in the eternity of matter, the epistemological prerequisite for materialism: “The atoms move continuously for ever...There is no beginning to this, because atoms and void are eternal.”
Central to any materialist account of origins is that life on earth is merely an outcome of probability. Lucretius states, “For so many primary particles have for an infinity of time past been propelled in manifold ways by impacts and by their own weight, and have habitually travelled, combined in all possible ways, and tried out everything that their union could create, that it is not surprising if they have also fallen into arrangements, and arrives at patterns of motions, like those repeatedly enacted by this present world.”
The Stoics, despite being materialists, held that there was one principle which permeated all of reality, Reason, which gave rise to everything else. If 'God' were mentioned it was rarely, if unambiguously ever, referring to a personal deity, let alone a Creator of the magnitude unveiled in the Bible.
Aetius, reporting on Stoic belief, states that they “made god out to be intelligent, a designing fire which methodically proceeds towards creation of the world, and encompasses all the seminal principles according to which everything comes about according to fate.”
Cicero relates how Chrysippus held that “divine power resides in reason and in the mind and intellect of universal nature..the world's own commanding-faculty...it is the common nature of things..the force of fate and necessity.”
Both of these ersatz explanations remove God's presence as much as possible. By this I mean that theological considerations are weakened to the extent that a fully-blown materialism is the final result. While Epicureanism relied on chance as the universe's creative metaphysic, Stoicism embedded an ordering principle within nature that tamed chaos and directed it to complexity.
Luke's specific mention of these pagan philosophies and Paul's counter to them contains an important lesson for us today. These two counterfeits are perhaps the most logical replacements for the Christian Creator Jesus and both have resurfaced, not without, but within the Church. Leading theologians have stripped the pagan philosophies of their inherent atheism but taken on-board their ultimate reliance on chance, deterministic law and matter. According to their quasi-scientism, God, when he is presented, has brought together this faux trinity and allowed the universe to itself unravel from the Big Bang to the present.
John Polkinghorne, a greatly admired and quoted Anglican priest and physicist, has stated that "[n]ecessity is the regular ground of possibility, expressed in scientific law. Chance, in this context, is the means for the exploration and realization of inherent possibility, through continually changing (and therefore at any time contingent) individual circumstances. It is important to realize that chance is being used in this `tame' sense, meaning the shuffling operations by which what is potential is made actual. It is not a synonym for chaotic randomness, nor does it signify just a lucky fluke.... I am still deeply impressed by the anthropic potentiality of the laws of nature which enable the small-step explorations of tamed chance to result in systems of such wonderful complexity as ourselves."
He also argues that “[a]t the heart of evolution is the interplay between “chance” (the contingent detail of what actually happens) and “necessity” (the lawfully regular environment in which events occur). It takes place “at the edge of chaos,” where order and openness interlace. If things are too orderly, they are too rigid for anything really new to emerge. If they are too haphazard, nothing that emerged could persist.”
The evolutionary palaeontologist Simon Conway Morris, also a Christian, writes that “[f]or all this exuberance and flair [in evolution] there are constraints[but] there is also a patent trend of increased complexity.” He also states “[t]he complexity and beauty of ‘Life’s Solution’ can never cease to astound. None of it presupposes, let along proves, the existence of God, but all is congruent. For some it will remain as the pointless activity of the Blind Watchmaker, but others may prefer to remove their dark glasses. The choice, of course, is yours.”
As an aside, Morris is regarded, by some, as an expert on the Burgess Shale, despite admitting its fossil remains being so pristinely preserved “by as yet largely unknown mechanisms”. He writes that “the processes of rotting and decay have been largely held in abeyance so that the true richness of ancient life is revealed: not only are there animals such as trilobites and molluscs with tough, durable skeletons, but completely soft-bodied animals are also preserved. These remarkable fossils reveal not only their outlines but sometimes even internal organs such as the intestine or muscles.” Any chance the early chapters of Genesis provide an explanation, say, a worldwide flood destroying practically all life on the earth?
The perspicuous absence of any mention of Christ's role in the creation by these Christians makes their explanation no better than a pagan one. Particularly counter-productive, with respect to a truly Christian world-view, is the preponderate dependence of their explanation for the creation's existence on the creation itself. What principles are supposedly made manifest in the world are made to substantiate the world itself. That is, the marriage of chance and law, evolution, is entirely able to account for the world's and its occupants' being here.
No where to be seen is the direct link Paul and John make between the world and Christ the Creator. Both make it plain that the creation cannot be explained without Christ's visible input. If nothing that exists can be made without him, then nothing that does actually exist can have their ultimate existence put down to principles operating within the creation. If chance and necessity are sufficient, then Christ can be struck out with an Ockham resolve.
More worryingly is the attitude that the creation cannot directly point us to the Creator. No longer is it “in Christ all things consist” and that we can “attain to all riches of the full assurance of understanding”, but rather it comes down to a preference because nothing can, as Morris believes, prove the creation's ultimate dependence on Christ.
Whenever men subscribe to a metaphysical belief that it is principles upholding the creation, and not Christ, then Paul's daily reasoning in the marketplace against the pagans appears a futile exercise. It now seems that Stoic and Epicurean ideas have well and truly taken hold of Christian men's minds. If these non-Christian philosophies are representative of the church – and I believe they are – then the paganisation of the Church is almost complete.
While preaching and reasoning to the passers-by in an Athenian market-place a group of Stoics and Epicureans took him to task over Jesus and the resurrection. Luke only records a fraction of the debate, and despite his freely quoting Aratus, Epimenides and, quite possibly, Cleanthes, Paul nevertheless saw their philosophies as standing in distinct opposition to the Creator God of the Bible. Few Christians ever investigate precisely what these philosophies stood for, so some quotes from these ancient world-views would be of considerable aid to comprehend why Paul so unequivocally took issue with them.
The Epicurean belief was distinctly evolutionary. While gods may have indeed existed, they did not truly interact with the world. Equally certain was the Epicurean belief entertained no Creator God who used His wisdom, demonstrated by rapid and accurate completion of task, to bring nature and life into existence. Rather, large amounts of time, unfolding an uncountable number of material permutations upon permutations, eventually brought forth the world as we know it. Time and accident were the factors drawn upon to transform God into a superfluous hypothesis.
Lucretius, in his De rerum natura, states “When bodies are being born by their own weight straight down through the void, at quite uncertain times and places they veer a little from their course, just enough to be called a change of motion. If they did not have this tendency to swerve, everything would be falling downward like raindrops through the depths of the void, and collisions and impacts among the primary bodies would not have arisen, with the result that nature would never have created anything.”
Epicurus, in his Letter to Herodotus, lays out his belief in the eternity of matter, the epistemological prerequisite for materialism: “The atoms move continuously for ever...There is no beginning to this, because atoms and void are eternal.”
Central to any materialist account of origins is that life on earth is merely an outcome of probability. Lucretius states, “For so many primary particles have for an infinity of time past been propelled in manifold ways by impacts and by their own weight, and have habitually travelled, combined in all possible ways, and tried out everything that their union could create, that it is not surprising if they have also fallen into arrangements, and arrives at patterns of motions, like those repeatedly enacted by this present world.”
The Stoics, despite being materialists, held that there was one principle which permeated all of reality, Reason, which gave rise to everything else. If 'God' were mentioned it was rarely, if unambiguously ever, referring to a personal deity, let alone a Creator of the magnitude unveiled in the Bible.
Aetius, reporting on Stoic belief, states that they “made god out to be intelligent, a designing fire which methodically proceeds towards creation of the world, and encompasses all the seminal principles according to which everything comes about according to fate.”
Cicero relates how Chrysippus held that “divine power resides in reason and in the mind and intellect of universal nature..the world's own commanding-faculty...it is the common nature of things..the force of fate and necessity.”
Both of these ersatz explanations remove God's presence as much as possible. By this I mean that theological considerations are weakened to the extent that a fully-blown materialism is the final result. While Epicureanism relied on chance as the universe's creative metaphysic, Stoicism embedded an ordering principle within nature that tamed chaos and directed it to complexity.
Luke's specific mention of these pagan philosophies and Paul's counter to them contains an important lesson for us today. These two counterfeits are perhaps the most logical replacements for the Christian Creator Jesus and both have resurfaced, not without, but within the Church. Leading theologians have stripped the pagan philosophies of their inherent atheism but taken on-board their ultimate reliance on chance, deterministic law and matter. According to their quasi-scientism, God, when he is presented, has brought together this faux trinity and allowed the universe to itself unravel from the Big Bang to the present.
John Polkinghorne, a greatly admired and quoted Anglican priest and physicist, has stated that "[n]ecessity is the regular ground of possibility, expressed in scientific law. Chance, in this context, is the means for the exploration and realization of inherent possibility, through continually changing (and therefore at any time contingent) individual circumstances. It is important to realize that chance is being used in this `tame' sense, meaning the shuffling operations by which what is potential is made actual. It is not a synonym for chaotic randomness, nor does it signify just a lucky fluke.... I am still deeply impressed by the anthropic potentiality of the laws of nature which enable the small-step explorations of tamed chance to result in systems of such wonderful complexity as ourselves."
He also argues that “[a]t the heart of evolution is the interplay between “chance” (the contingent detail of what actually happens) and “necessity” (the lawfully regular environment in which events occur). It takes place “at the edge of chaos,” where order and openness interlace. If things are too orderly, they are too rigid for anything really new to emerge. If they are too haphazard, nothing that emerged could persist.”
The evolutionary palaeontologist Simon Conway Morris, also a Christian, writes that “[f]or all this exuberance and flair [in evolution] there are constraints[but] there is also a patent trend of increased complexity.” He also states “[t]he complexity and beauty of ‘Life’s Solution’ can never cease to astound. None of it presupposes, let along proves, the existence of God, but all is congruent. For some it will remain as the pointless activity of the Blind Watchmaker, but others may prefer to remove their dark glasses. The choice, of course, is yours.”
As an aside, Morris is regarded, by some, as an expert on the Burgess Shale, despite admitting its fossil remains being so pristinely preserved “by as yet largely unknown mechanisms”. He writes that “the processes of rotting and decay have been largely held in abeyance so that the true richness of ancient life is revealed: not only are there animals such as trilobites and molluscs with tough, durable skeletons, but completely soft-bodied animals are also preserved. These remarkable fossils reveal not only their outlines but sometimes even internal organs such as the intestine or muscles.” Any chance the early chapters of Genesis provide an explanation, say, a worldwide flood destroying practically all life on the earth?
The perspicuous absence of any mention of Christ's role in the creation by these Christians makes their explanation no better than a pagan one. Particularly counter-productive, with respect to a truly Christian world-view, is the preponderate dependence of their explanation for the creation's existence on the creation itself. What principles are supposedly made manifest in the world are made to substantiate the world itself. That is, the marriage of chance and law, evolution, is entirely able to account for the world's and its occupants' being here.
No where to be seen is the direct link Paul and John make between the world and Christ the Creator. Both make it plain that the creation cannot be explained without Christ's visible input. If nothing that exists can be made without him, then nothing that does actually exist can have their ultimate existence put down to principles operating within the creation. If chance and necessity are sufficient, then Christ can be struck out with an Ockham resolve.
More worryingly is the attitude that the creation cannot directly point us to the Creator. No longer is it “in Christ all things consist” and that we can “attain to all riches of the full assurance of understanding”, but rather it comes down to a preference because nothing can, as Morris believes, prove the creation's ultimate dependence on Christ.
Whenever men subscribe to a metaphysical belief that it is principles upholding the creation, and not Christ, then Paul's daily reasoning in the marketplace against the pagans appears a futile exercise. It now seems that Stoic and Epicurean ideas have well and truly taken hold of Christian men's minds. If these non-Christian philosophies are representative of the church – and I believe they are – then the paganisation of the Church is almost complete.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
A Clarion Call From Scotland to the Episcopalian Church of Sydney (Part 2)
This is Part 2 of a blog based upon an article written by R. A. Finlayson in the September 1976 issue of The Banner of Truth Journal. The article was titled: HOW LIBERAL THEOLOGY INFECTED SCOTLAND.
Finlayson completes his article here following and I will make a closing comment:
THE INFECTION SPREADS
The disease spread rapidly through the ministry of the Free Church, as could be expected with A. B. Bruce in the Glasgow College, A. B. Davidson in the Hebrew Chair and Marcus Dods in the New Testament Chair in the New College, Edinburgh, and Robertson Smith's successors in Aberdeen. The present Century opened with the blare of trumpets sounding the victory of Liberalism, and the complete rout of 'Traditionalism'. Prof George Adam Smith, in Glasgow, himself in the front rank of destructive critics, declared confidently that the battle was over and there remained but the fixing of the indemnity. The Rationalism that had entered so stealthily into the Colleges had by 1900 captured most of the pulpits of the Disruption Free Church, and not a few in the State Church and the United Presbyterian Church, and when the Union of the Free Church and the United Presbyterian Church was consummated in 1900 on a basis of theological indifferentism, a remnant of the Free Church - 27 in number - decided to abide by the evangelical traditions of the Free Church at its inception, and on that foundation it exists to this day.
HESITANT SUPPORTERS
True, there were lone voices in the unbroken Free Church that, for some years, pled for sanity and for the retention of the foundation truths of Christianity. But even they were heavily committed to the new order, and for the most part they had a foot in both camps. Their case is sad indeed to relate, and it can be done only to sound a note of warning to the present day. Dr James Denney, who was at heart an evangelical, came, as B. B. Warfield observes, 'under the narrowing and clogging influence of the Apologetic School which Dr Bruce unfortunately founded in Glasgow', so much so that when his valuable work on The Death of Christ came to be reissued by The Tyndale Press, it had to be edited in considerable part and some of its statements excised. Of some others in the forefront of the movement, it can only be said that there was a breakdown in character as well as in faith, over which the veil of charity must be drawn. As sad a case as any was, perhaps, that of A. B. Bruce, because of the early promise of his work on the teaching of Christ; and yet at the end of the day one of his closest friends commented sorrowfully: 'Sandy Bruce died without a single Christian conviction.' It is true that some of the Higher Critics adopted a plan of spiritual survival by developing a dual standard, of piety for their private lives, and of destructive criticism for their professional work. Wellhausen, for example, had a Pietist background and upbringing, and it is said that he retained this pietism in his private life, while he was at the same time making havoc of the Faith in his teaching. How often have we been told of some prominent critic: 'You should hear Prof. . . . conducting a Communion Service, then you could see the real man.' Of Prof William Barclay, lately retired from the Glasgow College, it can be said that he paid exquisite attention, and employed great teaching skill, embellishing the superstructure of Christianity after he had removed the foundations. It is surely a schizophrenic character who can reconcile such contradictions, and indulge in such self-deception!
But it sounds a note of caution to us who profess, and seek to defend the evangelical Faith. There are ominous signs that history, even ecclesiastical history, teaches nothing, except that it teaches nothing! And yet there is a monotonous sameness about the enemy strategy: 'Yea, has God said ?' There is the wisdom of much sore experience, doubtless, in the Apostolic injunction: 'Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, AND HAVING DONE ALL TO STAND.'
Well, R.A. Finlayson provides a helpful analysis of the cancer that entered the Free Church of Scotland more than a century ago. But what does all that mean for the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney and its theological seminary - Moore College?
The answer is "It's on!"
The slithering approach of Scottish academics to conceal their abandonment of trust in the Word of God was effective. Just as a snake moves slowly and concealed toward its prey so the Scottish academics, except for one or two overanxious, introduced their new approach to the Word of God with stealth. Students and congregations, save a few alert, were inwittingly seduced into abandoning their evangelical heritage.
It all starts in the Old Testament and spreads to the New Testament.
This is happening in Moore College where the approach of Luther, Calvin, Puritans and the majority of Church Fathers (who commented on the subject) to Genesis 1 is no longer applied. Instead, a student is carefully led to consider the employment of literary devices and other creation narratives.
The fruit of this is ordained ministers rejecting the traditional evangelical acceptance of Genesis 1 as historical narrative or prose and consequent avoidance of the convictive of the passage. This then is passed on to congregations and the cancer is well and truly established.
There are many examples but I will cite just two. The author of one blogspot was recently asked by an inquirer whether he thought the mention of Noah in the genealogy contained in Genesis 5 meant that Noah was a real person, the author replied something to the effect of "We can't be certain." Hullo! What is a genealogy for?
Another, when asked to explain why he held to Exodus 20:11 being only figurative language, his reply was something to the effect of "Whatever God was saying there I will not accept that the world is 6,000 years old." Sad, God cannot tell him only the world can!
These two incidents are sufficient to grasp that the rot is on and that there will be many more within the Diocese who are or will be like minded. And, just as with the calamity within the Scottish Free Church, the cancer can be dressed in a cloak of piety so that it will be difficult to assess just who the Christians are, even for the one committing the offence.
I ask all to trust God. Come out of error. Consider seriously John 17:17.
Sam Drucker
Finlayson completes his article here following and I will make a closing comment:
THE INFECTION SPREADS
The disease spread rapidly through the ministry of the Free Church, as could be expected with A. B. Bruce in the Glasgow College, A. B. Davidson in the Hebrew Chair and Marcus Dods in the New Testament Chair in the New College, Edinburgh, and Robertson Smith's successors in Aberdeen. The present Century opened with the blare of trumpets sounding the victory of Liberalism, and the complete rout of 'Traditionalism'. Prof George Adam Smith, in Glasgow, himself in the front rank of destructive critics, declared confidently that the battle was over and there remained but the fixing of the indemnity. The Rationalism that had entered so stealthily into the Colleges had by 1900 captured most of the pulpits of the Disruption Free Church, and not a few in the State Church and the United Presbyterian Church, and when the Union of the Free Church and the United Presbyterian Church was consummated in 1900 on a basis of theological indifferentism, a remnant of the Free Church - 27 in number - decided to abide by the evangelical traditions of the Free Church at its inception, and on that foundation it exists to this day.
HESITANT SUPPORTERS
True, there were lone voices in the unbroken Free Church that, for some years, pled for sanity and for the retention of the foundation truths of Christianity. But even they were heavily committed to the new order, and for the most part they had a foot in both camps. Their case is sad indeed to relate, and it can be done only to sound a note of warning to the present day. Dr James Denney, who was at heart an evangelical, came, as B. B. Warfield observes, 'under the narrowing and clogging influence of the Apologetic School which Dr Bruce unfortunately founded in Glasgow', so much so that when his valuable work on The Death of Christ came to be reissued by The Tyndale Press, it had to be edited in considerable part and some of its statements excised. Of some others in the forefront of the movement, it can only be said that there was a breakdown in character as well as in faith, over which the veil of charity must be drawn. As sad a case as any was, perhaps, that of A. B. Bruce, because of the early promise of his work on the teaching of Christ; and yet at the end of the day one of his closest friends commented sorrowfully: 'Sandy Bruce died without a single Christian conviction.' It is true that some of the Higher Critics adopted a plan of spiritual survival by developing a dual standard, of piety for their private lives, and of destructive criticism for their professional work. Wellhausen, for example, had a Pietist background and upbringing, and it is said that he retained this pietism in his private life, while he was at the same time making havoc of the Faith in his teaching. How often have we been told of some prominent critic: 'You should hear Prof. . . . conducting a Communion Service, then you could see the real man.' Of Prof William Barclay, lately retired from the Glasgow College, it can be said that he paid exquisite attention, and employed great teaching skill, embellishing the superstructure of Christianity after he had removed the foundations. It is surely a schizophrenic character who can reconcile such contradictions, and indulge in such self-deception!
But it sounds a note of caution to us who profess, and seek to defend the evangelical Faith. There are ominous signs that history, even ecclesiastical history, teaches nothing, except that it teaches nothing! And yet there is a monotonous sameness about the enemy strategy: 'Yea, has God said ?' There is the wisdom of much sore experience, doubtless, in the Apostolic injunction: 'Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, AND HAVING DONE ALL TO STAND.'
Well, R.A. Finlayson provides a helpful analysis of the cancer that entered the Free Church of Scotland more than a century ago. But what does all that mean for the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney and its theological seminary - Moore College?
The answer is "It's on!"
The slithering approach of Scottish academics to conceal their abandonment of trust in the Word of God was effective. Just as a snake moves slowly and concealed toward its prey so the Scottish academics, except for one or two overanxious, introduced their new approach to the Word of God with stealth. Students and congregations, save a few alert, were inwittingly seduced into abandoning their evangelical heritage.
It all starts in the Old Testament and spreads to the New Testament.
This is happening in Moore College where the approach of Luther, Calvin, Puritans and the majority of Church Fathers (who commented on the subject) to Genesis 1 is no longer applied. Instead, a student is carefully led to consider the employment of literary devices and other creation narratives.
The fruit of this is ordained ministers rejecting the traditional evangelical acceptance of Genesis 1 as historical narrative or prose and consequent avoidance of the convictive of the passage. This then is passed on to congregations and the cancer is well and truly established.
There are many examples but I will cite just two. The author of one blogspot was recently asked by an inquirer whether he thought the mention of Noah in the genealogy contained in Genesis 5 meant that Noah was a real person, the author replied something to the effect of "We can't be certain." Hullo! What is a genealogy for?
Another, when asked to explain why he held to Exodus 20:11 being only figurative language, his reply was something to the effect of "Whatever God was saying there I will not accept that the world is 6,000 years old." Sad, God cannot tell him only the world can!
These two incidents are sufficient to grasp that the rot is on and that there will be many more within the Diocese who are or will be like minded. And, just as with the calamity within the Scottish Free Church, the cancer can be dressed in a cloak of piety so that it will be difficult to assess just who the Christians are, even for the one committing the offence.
I ask all to trust God. Come out of error. Consider seriously John 17:17.
Sam Drucker
Friday, April 15, 2011
Leupold Genesis part 54 verse 24
24. And God said: Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, domestic animals, reptiles, and wild beasts of the earth after their kind; and it was so.
We have come to the work of the sixth day. The nobler and higher forms of animal life are to be brought forth and finally man himself. We have a kind of mediate creation as on the third day (v. 11), for the earth is bidden to produce them or bring them forth--totse'-- cause to come forth." The situation is really very simple, as far as the text is concerned. God could have called forth these creatures by His mere word; instead He speaks the word that enables the earth to bring them forth. They are to have such kinship with the earth that they may again be able to return to the earth. There is no confusion here of two points of view, which P here fails properly to reconcile with one another: namely an old view, which is the outgrowth of some ancient natural philosophy, and a higher conception of pure creation by the word (Procksch). That both types of creation here flow into one is the simple fact noted by the text. To create artificial difficulty and to pose as having ability to detect strains of older and imperfectly assimilated elements of tradition, merely serves to make the unlearned suspicious without reason and is proof on the critic's part of not having fully comprehended what the author said.
On the shortened form totse' see K. S. 189.
The "living creatures" brought into being on this day are first described by this general title, which we have noted above (v. 20) to mean literally "soul of life," because the animating thing, the soul (nehesh), is the most prominent feature about them. Let it be remarked separately at this point that according to the Scriptures not only man has a soul but also all living creatures even down to fishes and birds. However, the soul as such is then regarded merely as the animating principle, the thing that causes them to breathe. Yet the soul of other creatures is not the same as that of man; it originated in a manner which makes it inferior by much to the animating principle in man, as a comparison with 2:7 indicates.
These "living creatures" now are of three classes. First we find "domestic animals," behemah, which may also be translated "cattle." According to its root, "to be dumb," this classword describes these creatures as dumb brutes. Used sometimes in reference to all animals, it is here employed in reference to cattle or domestic animals because of its manifest contrast here with the wild beasts. Yet "cattle" is still a bit too narrow a term; "domestic animals" (Meek) is better. The second class is described as remes, which comes from the root meaning "to move about lightly" or to "glide about." "Creepers" almost covers the term, however, "creeping things" is too narrow (A. V.), for it does not seem to allow for bigger creatures like reptiles. "Reptiles" (Meek) again is too narrow, for it does not allow `for the smaller types of life. Everything, therefore, large or small, that moves upon the earth or close to the earth, having but short legs, may be said to be included: The third class comes under" the head of "wild beasts of the earth" (chayyath ha'ssrets). This is an appropriate designation from two points of view: the original comes from the root chay, to live, for these beasts are wild because "of their vital energy and activity" (B D B), an abundance of life throbs in them; then the modifying phrase "of the earth" is added to their name, because in a sense different from the other two classes these beasts have freedom of movement upon the earth. The first time this name is used in v. 24 we have the archaic connective, a remnant from an old case ending chaytho and the word 'erets without the article-- poetic--making a more solemn and dignified double term coming from the lips of the Almighty (K. S. 268 and 292).--When the narrator continues his own account, he lapses into the unarchaic prose chayyath ha'ssrets (v. 25). A double "after their kind," first applying to "the living creatures" as a whole then to the three classes separately, impresses this distinctive limitation upon all these creatures--a truth amply confirmed as not to be eradicated, as all who have engaged in crossbreeding of animals can abundantly testify.
The three class names are in the singular, collective (K. S. 255 d).
An unwarranted critical verdict in regard to the three classes just mentioned is rendered by Procksch, who calls this classification "very imperfect, based half on the history of civilization half on natural history." It certainly is uncalled for to expect a writer of hoary antiquity to operate with the specific scientific nomenclature of the twentieth century. Without a doubt, all readers who perused the accounts in a sympathetic spirit clearly detected that this popular grouping was sufficient to call to mind all types of living creatures as men not trained scientifically are wont to think of them.
We have come to the work of the sixth day. The nobler and higher forms of animal life are to be brought forth and finally man himself. We have a kind of mediate creation as on the third day (v. 11), for the earth is bidden to produce them or bring them forth--totse'-- cause to come forth." The situation is really very simple, as far as the text is concerned. God could have called forth these creatures by His mere word; instead He speaks the word that enables the earth to bring them forth. They are to have such kinship with the earth that they may again be able to return to the earth. There is no confusion here of two points of view, which P here fails properly to reconcile with one another: namely an old view, which is the outgrowth of some ancient natural philosophy, and a higher conception of pure creation by the word (Procksch). That both types of creation here flow into one is the simple fact noted by the text. To create artificial difficulty and to pose as having ability to detect strains of older and imperfectly assimilated elements of tradition, merely serves to make the unlearned suspicious without reason and is proof on the critic's part of not having fully comprehended what the author said.
On the shortened form totse' see K. S. 189.
The "living creatures" brought into being on this day are first described by this general title, which we have noted above (v. 20) to mean literally "soul of life," because the animating thing, the soul (nehesh), is the most prominent feature about them. Let it be remarked separately at this point that according to the Scriptures not only man has a soul but also all living creatures even down to fishes and birds. However, the soul as such is then regarded merely as the animating principle, the thing that causes them to breathe. Yet the soul of other creatures is not the same as that of man; it originated in a manner which makes it inferior by much to the animating principle in man, as a comparison with 2:7 indicates.
These "living creatures" now are of three classes. First we find "domestic animals," behemah, which may also be translated "cattle." According to its root, "to be dumb," this classword describes these creatures as dumb brutes. Used sometimes in reference to all animals, it is here employed in reference to cattle or domestic animals because of its manifest contrast here with the wild beasts. Yet "cattle" is still a bit too narrow a term; "domestic animals" (Meek) is better. The second class is described as remes, which comes from the root meaning "to move about lightly" or to "glide about." "Creepers" almost covers the term, however, "creeping things" is too narrow (A. V.), for it does not seem to allow for bigger creatures like reptiles. "Reptiles" (Meek) again is too narrow, for it does not allow `for the smaller types of life. Everything, therefore, large or small, that moves upon the earth or close to the earth, having but short legs, may be said to be included: The third class comes under" the head of "wild beasts of the earth" (chayyath ha'ssrets). This is an appropriate designation from two points of view: the original comes from the root chay, to live, for these beasts are wild because "of their vital energy and activity" (B D B), an abundance of life throbs in them; then the modifying phrase "of the earth" is added to their name, because in a sense different from the other two classes these beasts have freedom of movement upon the earth. The first time this name is used in v. 24 we have the archaic connective, a remnant from an old case ending chaytho and the word 'erets without the article-- poetic--making a more solemn and dignified double term coming from the lips of the Almighty (K. S. 268 and 292).--When the narrator continues his own account, he lapses into the unarchaic prose chayyath ha'ssrets (v. 25). A double "after their kind," first applying to "the living creatures" as a whole then to the three classes separately, impresses this distinctive limitation upon all these creatures--a truth amply confirmed as not to be eradicated, as all who have engaged in crossbreeding of animals can abundantly testify.
The three class names are in the singular, collective (K. S. 255 d).
An unwarranted critical verdict in regard to the three classes just mentioned is rendered by Procksch, who calls this classification "very imperfect, based half on the history of civilization half on natural history." It certainly is uncalled for to expect a writer of hoary antiquity to operate with the specific scientific nomenclature of the twentieth century. Without a doubt, all readers who perused the accounts in a sympathetic spirit clearly detected that this popular grouping was sufficient to call to mind all types of living creatures as men not trained scientifically are wont to think of them.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
A Clarion Call From Scotland to the Episcopalian Church of Sydney (Part 1)
This is the first of a two part blog based on an article written by R. A. Finlayson in the September 1976 issue of The Banner of Truth Journal. The article was titled: HOW LIBERAL THEOLOGY INFECTED SCOTLAND.
I repeat the article because it provides parallels with a slide taking place in the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney through its theological seminary - Moore Theological College. The article commences herewith:
To many it will seem strange indeed that some 20 years after 'the glorious Disruption', in which the majority of the ministers of the Church of Scotland severed the ties with the State on the ground of spiritual liberty and fidelity to the Evangel, the Free Church, thus formed, should be the body first infected by the Liberal virus that was playing such havoc with the Protestant churches in Germany. That, however, is the historical position, and it requires some explanation. The fervour that accompanied the Disruption of 1843 was strong and widespread. The mere spectacle of 474 ministers in serried ranks marching from the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland - leaving less than a hundred behind - was something that touched many hearts, especially when it was known that they were leaving, not only their legal stipends, but the manses that were home to themselves and their families. It was left to Lord Jeffrey of the Court of Session to give expression to the feeling of the moment when, on hearing the news, he sprang to his feet, and explained: 'I am proud of my country. There is not another country on earth where such a deed could have been done.'
THE SEEDS OF DECLINE
The popularity of the movement was very apparent throughout the whole of Scotland. And there lay the seeds of spiritual pride and rapid spiritual deterioration. The newly formed Free Church was ambitious to justify its stand for spiritual liberty by all means within its power, eminence in scholarship being one of these. She was not content with opening three Colleges, in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen, but her theological students would not deem their course complete, or their standing in the Church assured, without a post-graduate course of one or more years in one of the more famous Colleges in Germany. From that folly, the product of spiritual pride, the Free Church was to reap a bitter harvest. Germany, then, was the nursery of Liberal Theology, which was spreading like prairie fire through the Protestant churches of Europe. Its popularity was, perhaps, at its height in the second half of the 19th Century, with which we are now dealing.
THE GERMAN RATIONALISM TAKES OVER
What the Critical Rationalism of Colenso, Kuenen, and Wellhausen had originated, the more plausible teaching of Schleiermacher, Ritschl, and Troelsch propagated, till it took firm hold of the Reformed seminaries of Europe. Its main premise was that Christianity could no longer be held as rooted in divine revelation, but as the product of human reason and cultural evolution. The Bible had authority only as the repository of religious sentiments borrowed from many ethnic religions. Christianity would, therefore, have to be regarded as merely a variety of religion in general. There was no room for the supernatural, and so divine revelation, miracle, and personal redemption were but expressions of the universal religious consciousness. The fact so difficult to understand is that this barren nationalism captured so many of the Reformed Colleges within a few decades, and that Church leaders, professing to be evangelical, could not see that it could produce only bankruptcy in the realm of faith, and complete sterility in the life of the church. Our concern, at the moment, is with its rapid progress through the Scottish Divinity Halls, as they were then called.
ITS FOOTHOLD IN THE FREE CHURCH COLLEGES
It is indeed a strange fact that the new unbelief in the Free Church of Scotland should have raised its head first of all in the classroom of Dr John Duncan, the saintly Rabbi whose piety was as deep as his scholarship was extensive. But the good man - no mean judge in such prognostications - was quick to see the course it was likely to follow. He is on record as expressing to his students, as early as 1867, his opinion that 'the attempts are mainly on the Old Testament. It needs more charity than I possess to believe that some of the critics do not know where all this will lead us. The Person of Christ, his Work, his Salvation, are the things against which these attacks are really levelled.' And so it proved to be. What he could not foresee was that the rot would start his own classroom.
In 1863 the Rev A. B. Davidson was appointed Colleague and Successor to Dr Duncan in the Chair of Hebrew and Old Testament Literature in the New College, Edinburgh. Dr Duncan was by then elderly and in feeble health, and his appearances in the College were few. Thus Prof Davidson had the field to himself, and he made the fullest use of it in a subtle way. Deeply versed in the German theology, he gave it to his students with the caution: 'Be careful to give this to your congregation in small doses'. [This given to the writer on the witness of one of them]. But the leaven was working, and the first public evidence of it was the notable Church case of Professor William Robertson Smith, who, while still a student-probationer, was appointed in 1870 to the Hebrew Chair in the Free Church College, Aberdeen. He had been a student in the New College, Edinburgh, under Prof A. B. Davidson, and afterwards in Germany under Prof Wellhausen in the University of Greifswald, and what he had imbibed of the destructive Criticism from his first master, he had it strengthened under the second. Wellhausen's opinion of Robertson Smith, expressed when he had gained prominence, is memorable: 'Smith was not a scholar, but clever at presenting other men's views the very man to do the job in Scotland! But clever or not. Prof Smith's lack of caution came out in a particularly offensive insolence. Articles of his in a new issue of the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1875 on 'Angels' and 'The Bible' brought it all, in its most offensive form, into the open, and the reaction of the older section of the Free Church was quick and decisive in the presence of what they termed 'the cold and poisonous air of negation, irreverence, and pride' seen in his articles. Robertson Smith was not without his friends, and, in the first instance, the Principal of New College, Dr Robert Rainy, gave him considerable support, and, stranger still, Prof James Candlish of the Glasgow College, made it known that that, in his opinion. Prof Smith's views could be reconciled with the Confession's Doctrine of Scripture, on the ground that our belief in the authority of Scripture is said to be derived from the inner witness of the Spirit and is, therefore, 'independent of criticism.' But after an admonition for his first article Robertson Smith, with all the brashness of youth, was more offensive still in his second article, and the General Assembly had to take action. It was for the deposition and dismissal of Prof Smith, the motion to that effect being supported by Principal Rainy, a shrewd but very inconsistent ecclesiastic, who was well able to assess which way the wind was blowing. Where did Prof A. B. Davidson stand in the crisis that his student was passing through? Silent as usual. It is reported that Robertson Smith approached him on his lack of support, and used the argument: 'I learned all this from you, and you are sitting safe in your Chair', and that Prof Davidson replied, in somewhat undignified terms: 'And why did you not keep your blethering tongue to yourself?' These were the high ethics of the new Modernism of the day!
Part 2 of the blog will be posted in a few days and I will comment then.
Sam Drucker
I repeat the article because it provides parallels with a slide taking place in the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney through its theological seminary - Moore Theological College. The article commences herewith:
To many it will seem strange indeed that some 20 years after 'the glorious Disruption', in which the majority of the ministers of the Church of Scotland severed the ties with the State on the ground of spiritual liberty and fidelity to the Evangel, the Free Church, thus formed, should be the body first infected by the Liberal virus that was playing such havoc with the Protestant churches in Germany. That, however, is the historical position, and it requires some explanation. The fervour that accompanied the Disruption of 1843 was strong and widespread. The mere spectacle of 474 ministers in serried ranks marching from the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland - leaving less than a hundred behind - was something that touched many hearts, especially when it was known that they were leaving, not only their legal stipends, but the manses that were home to themselves and their families. It was left to Lord Jeffrey of the Court of Session to give expression to the feeling of the moment when, on hearing the news, he sprang to his feet, and explained: 'I am proud of my country. There is not another country on earth where such a deed could have been done.'
THE SEEDS OF DECLINE
The popularity of the movement was very apparent throughout the whole of Scotland. And there lay the seeds of spiritual pride and rapid spiritual deterioration. The newly formed Free Church was ambitious to justify its stand for spiritual liberty by all means within its power, eminence in scholarship being one of these. She was not content with opening three Colleges, in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen, but her theological students would not deem their course complete, or their standing in the Church assured, without a post-graduate course of one or more years in one of the more famous Colleges in Germany. From that folly, the product of spiritual pride, the Free Church was to reap a bitter harvest. Germany, then, was the nursery of Liberal Theology, which was spreading like prairie fire through the Protestant churches of Europe. Its popularity was, perhaps, at its height in the second half of the 19th Century, with which we are now dealing.
THE GERMAN RATIONALISM TAKES OVER
What the Critical Rationalism of Colenso, Kuenen, and Wellhausen had originated, the more plausible teaching of Schleiermacher, Ritschl, and Troelsch propagated, till it took firm hold of the Reformed seminaries of Europe. Its main premise was that Christianity could no longer be held as rooted in divine revelation, but as the product of human reason and cultural evolution. The Bible had authority only as the repository of religious sentiments borrowed from many ethnic religions. Christianity would, therefore, have to be regarded as merely a variety of religion in general. There was no room for the supernatural, and so divine revelation, miracle, and personal redemption were but expressions of the universal religious consciousness. The fact so difficult to understand is that this barren nationalism captured so many of the Reformed Colleges within a few decades, and that Church leaders, professing to be evangelical, could not see that it could produce only bankruptcy in the realm of faith, and complete sterility in the life of the church. Our concern, at the moment, is with its rapid progress through the Scottish Divinity Halls, as they were then called.
ITS FOOTHOLD IN THE FREE CHURCH COLLEGES
It is indeed a strange fact that the new unbelief in the Free Church of Scotland should have raised its head first of all in the classroom of Dr John Duncan, the saintly Rabbi whose piety was as deep as his scholarship was extensive. But the good man - no mean judge in such prognostications - was quick to see the course it was likely to follow. He is on record as expressing to his students, as early as 1867, his opinion that 'the attempts are mainly on the Old Testament. It needs more charity than I possess to believe that some of the critics do not know where all this will lead us. The Person of Christ, his Work, his Salvation, are the things against which these attacks are really levelled.' And so it proved to be. What he could not foresee was that the rot would start his own classroom.
In 1863 the Rev A. B. Davidson was appointed Colleague and Successor to Dr Duncan in the Chair of Hebrew and Old Testament Literature in the New College, Edinburgh. Dr Duncan was by then elderly and in feeble health, and his appearances in the College were few. Thus Prof Davidson had the field to himself, and he made the fullest use of it in a subtle way. Deeply versed in the German theology, he gave it to his students with the caution: 'Be careful to give this to your congregation in small doses'. [This given to the writer on the witness of one of them]. But the leaven was working, and the first public evidence of it was the notable Church case of Professor William Robertson Smith, who, while still a student-probationer, was appointed in 1870 to the Hebrew Chair in the Free Church College, Aberdeen. He had been a student in the New College, Edinburgh, under Prof A. B. Davidson, and afterwards in Germany under Prof Wellhausen in the University of Greifswald, and what he had imbibed of the destructive Criticism from his first master, he had it strengthened under the second. Wellhausen's opinion of Robertson Smith, expressed when he had gained prominence, is memorable: 'Smith was not a scholar, but clever at presenting other men's views the very man to do the job in Scotland! But clever or not. Prof Smith's lack of caution came out in a particularly offensive insolence. Articles of his in a new issue of the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1875 on 'Angels' and 'The Bible' brought it all, in its most offensive form, into the open, and the reaction of the older section of the Free Church was quick and decisive in the presence of what they termed 'the cold and poisonous air of negation, irreverence, and pride' seen in his articles. Robertson Smith was not without his friends, and, in the first instance, the Principal of New College, Dr Robert Rainy, gave him considerable support, and, stranger still, Prof James Candlish of the Glasgow College, made it known that that, in his opinion. Prof Smith's views could be reconciled with the Confession's Doctrine of Scripture, on the ground that our belief in the authority of Scripture is said to be derived from the inner witness of the Spirit and is, therefore, 'independent of criticism.' But after an admonition for his first article Robertson Smith, with all the brashness of youth, was more offensive still in his second article, and the General Assembly had to take action. It was for the deposition and dismissal of Prof Smith, the motion to that effect being supported by Principal Rainy, a shrewd but very inconsistent ecclesiastic, who was well able to assess which way the wind was blowing. Where did Prof A. B. Davidson stand in the crisis that his student was passing through? Silent as usual. It is reported that Robertson Smith approached him on his lack of support, and used the argument: 'I learned all this from you, and you are sitting safe in your Chair', and that Prof Davidson replied, in somewhat undignified terms: 'And why did you not keep your blethering tongue to yourself?' These were the high ethics of the new Modernism of the day!
Part 2 of the blog will be posted in a few days and I will comment then.
Sam Drucker
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Lost in a Lost World
One good thing to come out of recent dialogue with the manager of the These Infinite Spaces blogspot was his frank admission that no matter what the Word of God says (via myself and another quoting the Word of God) he would not believe that the world is about 6,000 years old. Although he has since deleted all comments on the topic there are a few witnesses who can testify that he made the statement. What was helpful was that he was actually blurting out what a lot of Sydney Episcopalians hold close to their chest - their lack of faith in the Word of God.
Aside from other problems already addressed in comments and blogs here there is another potential problem in embryo. It was picked up in a review published in the British and Foreign Evangelical Review in January 1868. It is was unsigned but suspected as having been authored by George Smeaton. The review was headed Some Lessons From The History of Rationalism and an extract is provided herewith:
The simple assertion of the Bible alone as the religion of Protestants, might seem to afford a foundation for such a via media [between Rationalism and Roman Catholicism] as we are in quest of; but when brought to the test, it will prove as treacherous as that of the Tractarians. Its danger,however, comes from the opposite side. It is safe enough as against Rome, and far enough removed from that extreme, but it lacks any sufficiently strong barrier to secure us from gradually and insensibly sliding into scepticism. The Bible is accepted as authoritative; but as we have seen it must be both authenticated and interpreted, and for these ends, unless I am simply to acquiesce in some Protestant council or confession instead of that of Rome, I have only my own faculties to use; I set out indeed with the full purpose of using them always in subordination to Scripture, and not as the Rationalist does as its judges. But how do I fare as I proceed ? In examining the evidence for the books of the Bible, I may not be able to acquiesce in the received canon; I may like many learned critics have doubts about the Second Epistle of Peter, or like Luther reject that of James; and if the evidence in their favour does not convince me, I have no alternative but to use my own judgment and reject them. Then I come to the contents of Scripture. I have been led to recognise it as divine partly, perhaps mainly, by the heavenliness of its teaching. But I find some things which seem to be unworthy of God, and inconsistent with his character; I cannot receive them. I endeavour to evade the difficulty by modifying my view of inspiration, and supposing there may be errors or inaccuracies in some parts of the Bible, I have recourse to forced and unnatural interpretations, to avoid what I cannot receive; but presently I find that neither of these expedients will suffice, and I must admit, that the Scriptures do teach these obnoxious doctrines.
What am I to do now ? is the question. You ought to submit to the Bible, and accept these doctrines in spite of your difficulties, would be the answer given by the orthodox Protestant. Yes, I reply, I would do that willingly, if I was sure that the Bible is the word of God. But it was only my reason that assured me of that at first, and now my reason tells me equally plainly that what the Bible says is not true. I accepted it at first among other reasons because of the doctrine it contained, and now it is this very doctrine that stumbles me. I must go back upon my former admission, and at the very least exercise the right of judging of the character of the Bible and of all its parts, and rejecting any portion or statement of it, not merely on external but internal grounds; and if I hesitated about some books at first, because of a lack of evidence, I may now reject many others because of their contents. I began with a real reverence for the Bible; but having no other witness for it save my own reason, this is what I have come to, and wherein does my position differ from that of the extremest Rationalist?
The only real and lasting security for the continuance of sound doctrine in the Church, is the continual presence and working of the Spirit of truth. The Holy Ghost is the river of living water, the streams whereof make glad the city of God. Popery hardens and crystallizes the living stream into an icy mass, making it more definite and tangible indeed, and more bright and brilliant as it glitters in the sun, but withal hard, dead and motionless, incapable of really imparting life; the Spirit is supposed to testify through the outward organism of the Church, and to work only through its ordinances. On the other hand Rationalism, ignoring or denying the work of the Spirit altogether, dries up the stream entirely, and leaves only empty channels that mock the thirst of the beholders. The living water may be something less definite and tangible, not so easy to limit down or portray exactly, but it supplies the real want of the city, as neither her the frozen glacier nor the empty channel can do. So it is not so easy, in some respects, always to realise the testimony of the Spirit, as rely either on ecclesiastical authority or enlightened reason; it requires an eye directed to the unseen, and a heart attuned to the melodies of heaven; it is always an easier thing to acquiesce in the idea that the Spirit speaks through the good and godly whom we can see and hear, and who form the Church, or that the dictates of our own reason are all the voice of the Spirit we are to expect; hence the facility with which either Rationalistic or Romanising principles have insinuated themselves into the Church; but in either of these ways we would be substituting something dead and formal for the Living Spirit, whom the Saviour has sent as the guide and teacher of his Church. This, as we read it, is the great lesson taught us by the history of Rationalism.
Sadly, for the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney, a generation has come through which is on a course toward the barren wasteland of Rationalism through their handling of the Word of God. Even sadder is that they are likely to take unwitting followers with them.
Sam Drucker
Aside from other problems already addressed in comments and blogs here there is another potential problem in embryo. It was picked up in a review published in the British and Foreign Evangelical Review in January 1868. It is was unsigned but suspected as having been authored by George Smeaton. The review was headed Some Lessons From The History of Rationalism and an extract is provided herewith:
The simple assertion of the Bible alone as the religion of Protestants, might seem to afford a foundation for such a via media [between Rationalism and Roman Catholicism] as we are in quest of; but when brought to the test, it will prove as treacherous as that of the Tractarians. Its danger,however, comes from the opposite side. It is safe enough as against Rome, and far enough removed from that extreme, but it lacks any sufficiently strong barrier to secure us from gradually and insensibly sliding into scepticism. The Bible is accepted as authoritative; but as we have seen it must be both authenticated and interpreted, and for these ends, unless I am simply to acquiesce in some Protestant council or confession instead of that of Rome, I have only my own faculties to use; I set out indeed with the full purpose of using them always in subordination to Scripture, and not as the Rationalist does as its judges. But how do I fare as I proceed ? In examining the evidence for the books of the Bible, I may not be able to acquiesce in the received canon; I may like many learned critics have doubts about the Second Epistle of Peter, or like Luther reject that of James; and if the evidence in their favour does not convince me, I have no alternative but to use my own judgment and reject them. Then I come to the contents of Scripture. I have been led to recognise it as divine partly, perhaps mainly, by the heavenliness of its teaching. But I find some things which seem to be unworthy of God, and inconsistent with his character; I cannot receive them. I endeavour to evade the difficulty by modifying my view of inspiration, and supposing there may be errors or inaccuracies in some parts of the Bible, I have recourse to forced and unnatural interpretations, to avoid what I cannot receive; but presently I find that neither of these expedients will suffice, and I must admit, that the Scriptures do teach these obnoxious doctrines.
What am I to do now ? is the question. You ought to submit to the Bible, and accept these doctrines in spite of your difficulties, would be the answer given by the orthodox Protestant. Yes, I reply, I would do that willingly, if I was sure that the Bible is the word of God. But it was only my reason that assured me of that at first, and now my reason tells me equally plainly that what the Bible says is not true. I accepted it at first among other reasons because of the doctrine it contained, and now it is this very doctrine that stumbles me. I must go back upon my former admission, and at the very least exercise the right of judging of the character of the Bible and of all its parts, and rejecting any portion or statement of it, not merely on external but internal grounds; and if I hesitated about some books at first, because of a lack of evidence, I may now reject many others because of their contents. I began with a real reverence for the Bible; but having no other witness for it save my own reason, this is what I have come to, and wherein does my position differ from that of the extremest Rationalist?
The only real and lasting security for the continuance of sound doctrine in the Church, is the continual presence and working of the Spirit of truth. The Holy Ghost is the river of living water, the streams whereof make glad the city of God. Popery hardens and crystallizes the living stream into an icy mass, making it more definite and tangible indeed, and more bright and brilliant as it glitters in the sun, but withal hard, dead and motionless, incapable of really imparting life; the Spirit is supposed to testify through the outward organism of the Church, and to work only through its ordinances. On the other hand Rationalism, ignoring or denying the work of the Spirit altogether, dries up the stream entirely, and leaves only empty channels that mock the thirst of the beholders. The living water may be something less definite and tangible, not so easy to limit down or portray exactly, but it supplies the real want of the city, as neither her the frozen glacier nor the empty channel can do. So it is not so easy, in some respects, always to realise the testimony of the Spirit, as rely either on ecclesiastical authority or enlightened reason; it requires an eye directed to the unseen, and a heart attuned to the melodies of heaven; it is always an easier thing to acquiesce in the idea that the Spirit speaks through the good and godly whom we can see and hear, and who form the Church, or that the dictates of our own reason are all the voice of the Spirit we are to expect; hence the facility with which either Rationalistic or Romanising principles have insinuated themselves into the Church; but in either of these ways we would be substituting something dead and formal for the Living Spirit, whom the Saviour has sent as the guide and teacher of his Church. This, as we read it, is the great lesson taught us by the history of Rationalism.
Sadly, for the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney, a generation has come through which is on a course toward the barren wasteland of Rationalism through their handling of the Word of God. Even sadder is that they are likely to take unwitting followers with them.
Sam Drucker
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
HOW LOW CAN SYDNEY EPISCOPALIANS STOOP?
Recent disappointments with a Sydney Episcopalian blogger are a miniature of the bigger problem within the Diocese. It is said that pride goes before a fall but in many instances there is a blow that brings the fall. Nevertheless, that blow can be avoided and the problem of pride rightly addressed.
John F. Brencher became aware of this as did some other notables of the past. Consider the following extract of an essay of John F. Brencher on the matter:
"Dr [Benjamin] Franklin of America related a lesson he had learnt from Cotton Mather in 1724. 'On taking my leave, he showed me a shorter way out of the house, through a narrow passage, which was crossed by a beam overhead. We were still talking as I withdrew, he accompanying me behind, and I turning towards him: when he said hastily - "Stoop - Stoop!" I did not understand him till I felt my head hit against the beam. He was a man who never missed an occasion for giving instruction, and upon this he said to me - "You are young, and have the world before you: Stoop as you go through it, and you will miss many hard thumps." This advice, thus beat into my heart, has frequently been of use to me: and I often think of it when I see pride mortified, and misfortunes brought upon people, by their carrying their heads too high.'
There is a general shallowness with respect to our conception of the Person of God and the nature of His providential works. Glibness of speech in spiritual matters is invariably the product of shallow thinking, feeling and understanding in the things of God. There is therefore nothing more contributory to the holy art of stooping than a good grasp of true theology in all the fulness of its biblical extensiveness. Yet today, there is a treatment of Scripture characterized by a picking and choosing which deprives people of the splendour of an expansive sweep of revelation, and consequently gives them a distorted and restricted view of revelation, and consequently gives them a distorted and restricted view of God. If people were not so obsessed by that well-meant but prohibitive cliché the 'simple Gospel', doubtless our churches would greatly benefit from preachers who unleashed all of His dynamic Word and not merely favourite parts. Considering the type of preaching which has been so prevalent it is no wonder that modern Christians have often such a poor conception of the immeasurable greatness of Almighty God! Of course not all people have got the time to examine the Scriptures and their original languages as they would like to do, and because of this full attention should be given to the public exposition of the Word and other allied means of grace. Let all the attributes of our triune God be vigorously evidenced in our thinking and prayers, and let the comprehensive workings of His gracious will be known among His people that we may be increasingly brought into conformity with His image by Christ Jesus. Such a goal will leave no room for shallowness and it will certainly encourage a bowing down of the entire personality."
The Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney prides itself on its theological seminary and its own self as being a bastion of evangelical conservatism in the worldwide Episcopalian church. All along it is flirting too much with the world.
To maintain such a position it engages in an exercise of "picking and choosing [Scripture] which deprives people of the splendour of an expansive sweep of revelation, and consequently gives them a distorted and restricted view of revelation, and consequently gives them a distorted and restricted view of God."
Within the Diocese emphasis is placed on Jesus Christ being the Son of God, Priest and Redeemer but His office as Creator is constrained to being fed through the filter of the world's view on Origins so that a distorted view (if anything) of Him as Creator is presented to the pewsitter and the world.
The Diocese needs to stoop. To stoop in prayer, in repentance, in submission to the clear utterances of God. A 'simple Gospel' is no match for the full revelation of Jesus Christ in all His majesty.
Sam Drucker
John F. Brencher became aware of this as did some other notables of the past. Consider the following extract of an essay of John F. Brencher on the matter:
"Dr [Benjamin] Franklin of America related a lesson he had learnt from Cotton Mather in 1724. 'On taking my leave, he showed me a shorter way out of the house, through a narrow passage, which was crossed by a beam overhead. We were still talking as I withdrew, he accompanying me behind, and I turning towards him: when he said hastily - "Stoop - Stoop!" I did not understand him till I felt my head hit against the beam. He was a man who never missed an occasion for giving instruction, and upon this he said to me - "You are young, and have the world before you: Stoop as you go through it, and you will miss many hard thumps." This advice, thus beat into my heart, has frequently been of use to me: and I often think of it when I see pride mortified, and misfortunes brought upon people, by their carrying their heads too high.'
There is a general shallowness with respect to our conception of the Person of God and the nature of His providential works. Glibness of speech in spiritual matters is invariably the product of shallow thinking, feeling and understanding in the things of God. There is therefore nothing more contributory to the holy art of stooping than a good grasp of true theology in all the fulness of its biblical extensiveness. Yet today, there is a treatment of Scripture characterized by a picking and choosing which deprives people of the splendour of an expansive sweep of revelation, and consequently gives them a distorted and restricted view of revelation, and consequently gives them a distorted and restricted view of God. If people were not so obsessed by that well-meant but prohibitive cliché the 'simple Gospel', doubtless our churches would greatly benefit from preachers who unleashed all of His dynamic Word and not merely favourite parts. Considering the type of preaching which has been so prevalent it is no wonder that modern Christians have often such a poor conception of the immeasurable greatness of Almighty God! Of course not all people have got the time to examine the Scriptures and their original languages as they would like to do, and because of this full attention should be given to the public exposition of the Word and other allied means of grace. Let all the attributes of our triune God be vigorously evidenced in our thinking and prayers, and let the comprehensive workings of His gracious will be known among His people that we may be increasingly brought into conformity with His image by Christ Jesus. Such a goal will leave no room for shallowness and it will certainly encourage a bowing down of the entire personality."
The Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney prides itself on its theological seminary and its own self as being a bastion of evangelical conservatism in the worldwide Episcopalian church. All along it is flirting too much with the world.
To maintain such a position it engages in an exercise of "picking and choosing [Scripture] which deprives people of the splendour of an expansive sweep of revelation, and consequently gives them a distorted and restricted view of revelation, and consequently gives them a distorted and restricted view of God."
Within the Diocese emphasis is placed on Jesus Christ being the Son of God, Priest and Redeemer but His office as Creator is constrained to being fed through the filter of the world's view on Origins so that a distorted view (if anything) of Him as Creator is presented to the pewsitter and the world.
The Diocese needs to stoop. To stoop in prayer, in repentance, in submission to the clear utterances of God. A 'simple Gospel' is no match for the full revelation of Jesus Christ in all His majesty.
Sam Drucker
Friday, April 1, 2011
Leupold Genesis part 53 verse 22, 23
22. And God blessed them, saying: Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas and let the birds multiply on the earth.
That this which was last made now actually represents a more important form of life is also made manifest by the fact that God bestows a blessing upon these creatures, a blessing by virtue of which the needed powers for continuance and for multiplying are imparted. The very idea of an initial single pair of creatures of this type is excluded by the statements of v. 20 and 21 where, when called into being, these creatures are bidden "to swarm" and the waters to "teem." But from these copious beginnings these creatures are to keep on multiplying until they fill the earth. Every vestige of emptiness is to be ultimately cancelled. This blessing of God, however, is not a mere wish or a wishing-well on the part of the Almighty. It is a creative word of power which makes possible the things that it commands, and it continues in power to this day. The Creator is glorified by the multitudes of beings which His creative word makes.
It will be worth our while to make a check-up upon what is supposed to be an index of the style of P, to whom critics assign this chapter (P is the author of all that criticism calls the Priestly Codex). Skinner remarks about the double expression "be fruitful and multiply," peru urebhu, that it is "highly characteristic of P" and is used "only three times elsewhere." By such unwarranted remarks are the unwary misled, and by such insubstantial arguments is the case of the source criticism of the Pentateuch supported. B D B lists all the instances of the use of this double expression. The fictitious P is said to have it Gen. 1:22, 28 and 9:1 as well as 35:1.1 and 47:27, yet the last two expressions differ in that one is singular and the other not imperative but future. Yet Jeremiah uses these two verbs jointly in (Jer 3:16) and (Jer 23:3); so does Ezekiel in (Eze 36:11). Is it not an overstatement to call a phrase that one author uses five times and others three, "highly characteristic" of the one? It is not so much a characteristic of style but a case of having the author describe several situations that of themselves demand such a statement. By his statement of the case Skinner would lead men to believe that the so-called P must have used the phrase at least a dozen times.
In trying to make the fictitious P as real a figure as possible and to invest him with distinct characteristics Procksch remarks on this verse: "A tone of solemn joy pervades the knowledge that it is ordained that life should increase; P is in no sense a pessimist." The same note of "solemn joy," if you will, can be discerned just as plainly in chapter 2:4 ff, which is not ascribed to P.
23. Then came evening, then morning--the fifth day.
Cf. v. 5 and 8.
That this which was last made now actually represents a more important form of life is also made manifest by the fact that God bestows a blessing upon these creatures, a blessing by virtue of which the needed powers for continuance and for multiplying are imparted. The very idea of an initial single pair of creatures of this type is excluded by the statements of v. 20 and 21 where, when called into being, these creatures are bidden "to swarm" and the waters to "teem." But from these copious beginnings these creatures are to keep on multiplying until they fill the earth. Every vestige of emptiness is to be ultimately cancelled. This blessing of God, however, is not a mere wish or a wishing-well on the part of the Almighty. It is a creative word of power which makes possible the things that it commands, and it continues in power to this day. The Creator is glorified by the multitudes of beings which His creative word makes.
It will be worth our while to make a check-up upon what is supposed to be an index of the style of P, to whom critics assign this chapter (P is the author of all that criticism calls the Priestly Codex). Skinner remarks about the double expression "be fruitful and multiply," peru urebhu, that it is "highly characteristic of P" and is used "only three times elsewhere." By such unwarranted remarks are the unwary misled, and by such insubstantial arguments is the case of the source criticism of the Pentateuch supported. B D B lists all the instances of the use of this double expression. The fictitious P is said to have it Gen. 1:22, 28 and 9:1 as well as 35:1.1 and 47:27, yet the last two expressions differ in that one is singular and the other not imperative but future. Yet Jeremiah uses these two verbs jointly in (Jer 3:16) and (Jer 23:3); so does Ezekiel in (Eze 36:11). Is it not an overstatement to call a phrase that one author uses five times and others three, "highly characteristic" of the one? It is not so much a characteristic of style but a case of having the author describe several situations that of themselves demand such a statement. By his statement of the case Skinner would lead men to believe that the so-called P must have used the phrase at least a dozen times.
In trying to make the fictitious P as real a figure as possible and to invest him with distinct characteristics Procksch remarks on this verse: "A tone of solemn joy pervades the knowledge that it is ordained that life should increase; P is in no sense a pessimist." The same note of "solemn joy," if you will, can be discerned just as plainly in chapter 2:4 ff, which is not ascribed to P.
23. Then came evening, then morning--the fifth day.
Cf. v. 5 and 8.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
The Weakest Link
There was once a television quiz program called The Weakest Link. Basically, the contestant who failed to contribute the required level of intelligence was deemed to be The Weakest Link.
One could be excused for thinking that the manager of a blogspot called These Infinite Spaces represents The Weakest Link in the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney.
You know people are losing the argument on a matter touching on science when they resort to accusing their opponent(s) of being "Flat Earthers". It happened last week at the No Carbon Tax protest rally in Canberra when three Get Up juveniles unfurled a banner in front of a news camera with the words "Flat Earth" imprinted on the banner. This was Get Up's low level accusation against people who are cautious when differing scientific views exist on the subject of Anthropogenic Global Warming and who thus oppose the imposition of a tax on power consumption.
That incident follows a recent blog titled "Young Earth, Bad Theology" by the manager of These Infinite Spaces, a blog which links Biblical Creationists to Flat Earthers simply because we take God at his word in Scriptural passages which traditionally have been deemed historical narrative.
To counter the remnant God has sustained through the ages, the manager of These Infinite Spaces cites a Nineteenth Century work by Samuel Birley Rowbotham who, through extensive reference to extra Canonical sources and citation of certain passages of Scripture, has a pretext (Flat Earth belief) which he takes to figurative language of Scripture to justify his argument. This is a long standing practice of cultists and heretics. The manager of These Infinite Spaces tumbles in and is impressed with the potential for figurative language to be taken as literal, forgetting of course, to discern whether a pretext has first to be dismissed. Additionally, no thought is given to the potential to commit the converse offence of taking literal language as figurative - something the manager of These Infinite Spaces is guilty of because he has previously declared, without equivocation, that his world view (pretext) dictates his interpretation of Scripture.
In addition to the great offence this is to God, this is a violation of the principle of Scriptural interpretation instilled by God into the mind of men in perhaps the greatest collective work of God since the Apostolic period viz., the Reformation. That principle Sola Scriptura or Scripture Alone is the means to interpret Scripture i.e. let Scripture interpret Scripture. Evangelicals today exhort the Reformers and their works but many have a mind similar to the author of These Infinite Spaces and, like the Pharisees and Teachers of the Law who revered the murdered prophets of God, are held accountable for killing off the ones they revered.
Today the united pronouncements of Martin Luther and John Calvin on interpretation of Genesis 1 are dismissed as error. It is not Sola Scriptura dictating this killing of Luther and Calvin but extra-biblical influences and the manager of These Infinite Spaces is a willing aggressor.
In throwing off our Reformation heritage these modern day heretics even ignore the sober testimony of scholars who, because they doubt the Inspiration of Scripture, can be deemed hostile witnesses to the Reformation and Biblical Creationist position. It is an old quote (nearly 30 years old) but it bears repeating here. It is that of James Barr, Professor of Hebrew, Oxford University, who doubted what 'Moses' believed nonetheless said this of 'Moses':
‘… probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1–11intended to convey to their readers the ideas that
a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24hours we now experience
b) the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story
c) Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark.’
The manager of These Infinite Spaces seems further behind James Barr and other former Hebraists in understanding because, while also influenced by external sources as they were, he cannot see the message that 'Moses' intended to convey in his writings.
Another failing of said manager is his failure to know anything of or grasp something of the use of the word yõm (day). It is definite in Hebrew that when you have an ordinal accompanying the word "day" it means a normal solar day. I think there are about 359 instances of support. If in the Bible anywhere "day" means something else the immediate context makes that perfectly clear. The context clearly shows that "day" is a long period of time. It would be the worst form of eisegesis to read that meaning back into Genesis 1 where "day" has ordinals in a specific series. (extensively a quote from Douglas Kelly, Theologian)
At the risk of criticism for repetition, when yõm is modified by a numeral or ordinal in historical narrative (359 times external to Gen. 1), it means a literal day approximating to 24 hours. When modified by “evening and/or morning”, (38 times external to Gen. 1), it always means a literal day.
Any attempt by me to have said manager justify his erroneous dismissal of the convictive of the direct utterance of God, recorded at Exodus 20:11, was avoided in the first instance and then, when put to further interrogation, he promptly banned me from his blogspot. Since then he appears to have deleted every comment on his posts - strange! He has thus became then The Weakest Link in the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney.
I caution new and tender Christians to avoid These Infinite Spaces. It is a black hole of infinite space from which escape to intelligence and understanding of truth is not possible.
Sam Drucker
One could be excused for thinking that the manager of a blogspot called These Infinite Spaces represents The Weakest Link in the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney.
You know people are losing the argument on a matter touching on science when they resort to accusing their opponent(s) of being "Flat Earthers". It happened last week at the No Carbon Tax protest rally in Canberra when three Get Up juveniles unfurled a banner in front of a news camera with the words "Flat Earth" imprinted on the banner. This was Get Up's low level accusation against people who are cautious when differing scientific views exist on the subject of Anthropogenic Global Warming and who thus oppose the imposition of a tax on power consumption.
That incident follows a recent blog titled "Young Earth, Bad Theology" by the manager of These Infinite Spaces, a blog which links Biblical Creationists to Flat Earthers simply because we take God at his word in Scriptural passages which traditionally have been deemed historical narrative.
To counter the remnant God has sustained through the ages, the manager of These Infinite Spaces cites a Nineteenth Century work by Samuel Birley Rowbotham who, through extensive reference to extra Canonical sources and citation of certain passages of Scripture, has a pretext (Flat Earth belief) which he takes to figurative language of Scripture to justify his argument. This is a long standing practice of cultists and heretics. The manager of These Infinite Spaces tumbles in and is impressed with the potential for figurative language to be taken as literal, forgetting of course, to discern whether a pretext has first to be dismissed. Additionally, no thought is given to the potential to commit the converse offence of taking literal language as figurative - something the manager of These Infinite Spaces is guilty of because he has previously declared, without equivocation, that his world view (pretext) dictates his interpretation of Scripture.
In addition to the great offence this is to God, this is a violation of the principle of Scriptural interpretation instilled by God into the mind of men in perhaps the greatest collective work of God since the Apostolic period viz., the Reformation. That principle Sola Scriptura or Scripture Alone is the means to interpret Scripture i.e. let Scripture interpret Scripture. Evangelicals today exhort the Reformers and their works but many have a mind similar to the author of These Infinite Spaces and, like the Pharisees and Teachers of the Law who revered the murdered prophets of God, are held accountable for killing off the ones they revered.
Today the united pronouncements of Martin Luther and John Calvin on interpretation of Genesis 1 are dismissed as error. It is not Sola Scriptura dictating this killing of Luther and Calvin but extra-biblical influences and the manager of These Infinite Spaces is a willing aggressor.
In throwing off our Reformation heritage these modern day heretics even ignore the sober testimony of scholars who, because they doubt the Inspiration of Scripture, can be deemed hostile witnesses to the Reformation and Biblical Creationist position. It is an old quote (nearly 30 years old) but it bears repeating here. It is that of James Barr, Professor of Hebrew, Oxford University, who doubted what 'Moses' believed nonetheless said this of 'Moses':
‘… probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1–11intended to convey to their readers the ideas that
a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24hours we now experience
b) the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story
c) Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark.’
The manager of These Infinite Spaces seems further behind James Barr and other former Hebraists in understanding because, while also influenced by external sources as they were, he cannot see the message that 'Moses' intended to convey in his writings.
Another failing of said manager is his failure to know anything of or grasp something of the use of the word yõm (day). It is definite in Hebrew that when you have an ordinal accompanying the word "day" it means a normal solar day. I think there are about 359 instances of support. If in the Bible anywhere "day" means something else the immediate context makes that perfectly clear. The context clearly shows that "day" is a long period of time. It would be the worst form of eisegesis to read that meaning back into Genesis 1 where "day" has ordinals in a specific series. (extensively a quote from Douglas Kelly, Theologian)
At the risk of criticism for repetition, when yõm is modified by a numeral or ordinal in historical narrative (359 times external to Gen. 1), it means a literal day approximating to 24 hours. When modified by “evening and/or morning”, (38 times external to Gen. 1), it always means a literal day.
Any attempt by me to have said manager justify his erroneous dismissal of the convictive of the direct utterance of God, recorded at Exodus 20:11, was avoided in the first instance and then, when put to further interrogation, he promptly banned me from his blogspot. Since then he appears to have deleted every comment on his posts - strange! He has thus became then The Weakest Link in the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney.
I caution new and tender Christians to avoid These Infinite Spaces. It is a black hole of infinite space from which escape to intelligence and understanding of truth is not possible.
Sam Drucker
Monday, March 28, 2011
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Craig's Epistemic Rule-of-Thumb: What the Man is Really Saying
Readers of our blog will be familiar with Craig's blog These Infinite Spaces. Craig rarely tackles subjects which rate high on the importance scale - unless of course you find cage wrestling on par with theological considerations – however, of late, he has composed several threads laying out his opinion (and I do stress, opinion!) on creation, the Bible and science. I won't bother going over old ground again; I just want to underscore his most basic presupposition. It requires mention because, unfortunately, it is lost, buried among all the distracting and evasive non-factual material that prevails on his threads on this combined subject.
Craig's latest disconcertingly muddleheaded comment is that “It's foolish for the Bible to be used as a cosmological textbook.” I have no desire to debate either the soundness of his claim or take issue with the appropriateness of his choice of words in this statement. Others can take up the challenge, if they so choose. What I wish to analyse is his fundamental epistemology and demonstrate how inconsistently he applies it. Furthermore, has Craig adopted a truly Christian epistemology or has he opted for an atheist one?
I seem to recall that it was Alvin Plantinga who called some beliefs properly basic. That is, there are propositions which are immediately justified and are in no further need of epistemic support or the inclusion of further beliefs: they just are. Craig, as does just about every heretic within the Sydney Anglican Diocese, asserts the proposition that the Bible isn't a cosmological textbook as though this were an instance of a properly basic belief. But is it really?
Quite clearly it isn't, because, as it stands, it is neither meaningful nor self-validating and lacks any trace of justification, inferential or explicit, notwithstanding Craig's obvious self-belief that it does possesses all these qualities. Consequently, mirroring his wholesale disdain for epistemic warrant, one is free to dismiss Craig's proposition without committing a logical faux pas.
Hidden beneath Craig's foundational belief is a more deeply rooted one, namely, 'Science Rules OK!' Without this additional supporting belief his actual articulated one makes absolutely no sense. Additionally, its particular quality needs to be understood against a universal proposition. In Craig's case it's that science is the filtering tool for all biblical statements. Without a universal Craig would be accused of, as he has been, special pleading. Craig, I've intimated, claims ex cathedra, “Heck, science is allowed to be the final arbiter on these parts of the Bible but not those.” This, you would hope, no rational man could honestly live with – but Craig, apparently, “can”.
The real point of my criticism of Craig's profoundly irresponsible epistemology is that, consistently applied, it destroys the Gospel. If science, so-called, truly is the final truth arbiter or the tool by which biblical propositions are decided to be figurative or not, then Lazarus and Christ didn't rise from the dead. Science has shown that the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics rules and dead men cannot overcome entropic termination. Every day millions are seen to die and none has rise from the dead.
Of course, Craig could rightly object that God can overrule the 2nd Law. We would agree God can. However, if Craig can special plead God out of this dilemma, why then does Craig not allow God to do the same when it comes to the creation of the earth? Why does Craig not permit God to create in 6 real days, as Scripture unambiguously records he has done, but prefers to align himself with what basically amounts to a deeply offensive, non-supernatural and atheist worldview?
One thing is certain, Craig is consistently inconsistent when it comes to instances of applying his own epistemic rule-of-thumb to biblical matters.
Craig's latest disconcertingly muddleheaded comment is that “It's foolish for the Bible to be used as a cosmological textbook.” I have no desire to debate either the soundness of his claim or take issue with the appropriateness of his choice of words in this statement. Others can take up the challenge, if they so choose. What I wish to analyse is his fundamental epistemology and demonstrate how inconsistently he applies it. Furthermore, has Craig adopted a truly Christian epistemology or has he opted for an atheist one?
I seem to recall that it was Alvin Plantinga who called some beliefs properly basic. That is, there are propositions which are immediately justified and are in no further need of epistemic support or the inclusion of further beliefs: they just are. Craig, as does just about every heretic within the Sydney Anglican Diocese, asserts the proposition that the Bible isn't a cosmological textbook as though this were an instance of a properly basic belief. But is it really?
Quite clearly it isn't, because, as it stands, it is neither meaningful nor self-validating and lacks any trace of justification, inferential or explicit, notwithstanding Craig's obvious self-belief that it does possesses all these qualities. Consequently, mirroring his wholesale disdain for epistemic warrant, one is free to dismiss Craig's proposition without committing a logical faux pas.
Hidden beneath Craig's foundational belief is a more deeply rooted one, namely, 'Science Rules OK!' Without this additional supporting belief his actual articulated one makes absolutely no sense. Additionally, its particular quality needs to be understood against a universal proposition. In Craig's case it's that science is the filtering tool for all biblical statements. Without a universal Craig would be accused of, as he has been, special pleading. Craig, I've intimated, claims ex cathedra, “Heck, science is allowed to be the final arbiter on these parts of the Bible but not those.” This, you would hope, no rational man could honestly live with – but Craig, apparently, “can”.
The real point of my criticism of Craig's profoundly irresponsible epistemology is that, consistently applied, it destroys the Gospel. If science, so-called, truly is the final truth arbiter or the tool by which biblical propositions are decided to be figurative or not, then Lazarus and Christ didn't rise from the dead. Science has shown that the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics rules and dead men cannot overcome entropic termination. Every day millions are seen to die and none has rise from the dead.
Of course, Craig could rightly object that God can overrule the 2nd Law. We would agree God can. However, if Craig can special plead God out of this dilemma, why then does Craig not allow God to do the same when it comes to the creation of the earth? Why does Craig not permit God to create in 6 real days, as Scripture unambiguously records he has done, but prefers to align himself with what basically amounts to a deeply offensive, non-supernatural and atheist worldview?
One thing is certain, Craig is consistently inconsistent when it comes to instances of applying his own epistemic rule-of-thumb to biblical matters.
Friday, March 18, 2011
6 days! What could they have meant?
This might help the discussion with Craig of t'other blog: a quote from The Interpreter's Bible (1952 edition) on Genesis (p. 471)
In a similar vein, have a look at this piece on the Anglican site.
When we decide that we can set aside the truth value of the whole content of Genesis 1, we end up in the odd state that we say that we can infer truth from non-truth. The detail is too much to say it is merely figurative, and Simpson, quoted above, would agree: the author meant it! How can we infer what God did from what we say he did not do? If we set aside the direct meaning of Genesis 1 (and it is clearly not poetry, despite the protestations of some non-Hebrew readers) we have to give a reason as to why the detail of the revelation can be disregarded, when the whole Bible treats it as an account of actual events.
What it does is to say that something that doesn't give information about this world (the world it would speak of) gives instead information about some other world which doesn't exist in terms of Genesis 1 (that is an imaginary world, not the real world, as it holds that Genesis 1 doesn't touch the real world of what actually happened).
There can be no question but that by Day the author meant just what we mean--the time required for one revolution of the earth on its axis. Had he meant an aeon he would certianly, in view of his fondness for great numbers, have stated the number of milleniums each period embraced. While this might have made his account of creation less irreconcilable with modern science, it would have involved a lessening of God's greatness, one sign of which was his power to do so much in one day.
In a similar vein, have a look at this piece on the Anglican site.
When we decide that we can set aside the truth value of the whole content of Genesis 1, we end up in the odd state that we say that we can infer truth from non-truth. The detail is too much to say it is merely figurative, and Simpson, quoted above, would agree: the author meant it! How can we infer what God did from what we say he did not do? If we set aside the direct meaning of Genesis 1 (and it is clearly not poetry, despite the protestations of some non-Hebrew readers) we have to give a reason as to why the detail of the revelation can be disregarded, when the whole Bible treats it as an account of actual events.
What it does is to say that something that doesn't give information about this world (the world it would speak of) gives instead information about some other world which doesn't exist in terms of Genesis 1 (that is an imaginary world, not the real world, as it holds that Genesis 1 doesn't touch the real world of what actually happened).
Thursday, March 17, 2011
The Execution of Dialogue
It would be easy to write words at length in criticism of the churlishness of Craig Swarze on his blogspot - culminating in his complete removal of a conversation he and I were having in the comments section of a recent blog. It occurred in his blog on the Moore College Think Tank. Look, and you won't now see any comments section.
There is more to his behaviour than just that. Let me just say that there is nothing of Jesus Christ in Craig Swarze's behaviour.
Sam Drucker
There is more to his behaviour than just that. Let me just say that there is nothing of Jesus Christ in Craig Swarze's behaviour.
Sam Drucker
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
What 'creation' is about.
One of the things missing, it seems, in the debate about origins and the Bible (in the poetry blog), at least as I read it, represented on Craig's blog, is something that Al Mohler says in his conference address on the age of the universe. And that is, the Bible doesn't set out to answer a theoretical question about the origin of the universe and its life, but it sets out to communicate God's relationship with his creation in its full teleological scope and show the ramifications of the interactions between God and his creation.
The Bible unfolds the account of our relationship with God, as relational, physical, dependent and 'in his likeness' beings in a long symmetrical set of events, in palindromic fashion.
It goes like this: creation...dissolution of relationship...rescue of relationship...new creation, or creation, fall, redemption, new creation, in more traditional language.
The creation account sits then as a meaningful (the Spirit revealed it, so its needful us to know, presumably) part of this sequence, and has to be, to make sense in that sequence, delineated by the same spatio-temporal constraints: so the time and event information corresponds to actual things within the world created. As it is, the detailed history of forming the people of God from Abraham, which follows the relating of why such action is needed by God, has a purposive place within the arc of redemptive history. Deny that the ground work in Genesis 1-11 is informative in a realist sense, and the faith of Abraham and the work of Christ, with the hope of renewal, lacks a basis in the way God relates to the world and responds to events within that world.
It is not about 'science' per se, although it interacts with the physical world, definitively, but it is about theology; about God and how it came to be that the world, in need of Christ, is as it is. The whole span of scripture is rich with meaning; not allegory, not figure or metaphor, although it does contain such, for communicative purposes, but, particularly in the case of God's real contact with the creation it has to be real, because what is is a result of what really was and will be.
Moreover, the first half of the sequence: breaking from relationshp, sets the scene that makes the call of Abram and the following events contextually significant: it places them both ontologicall and soteriologically and gives a great 'so this is why!" to Gods acts to save. Then in the second half of the sequence it is not only that we are saved in Christ, but that he is Lord: creator: the bearer of the restored relationship between us and the one who made us. But this has to be in terms the Bible uses: creator as the one whose actions are described in Genesis 1, etc. so that we see that he is creator in as real a sense as he is redeemer and will be creation-restorer.
The Bible unfolds the account of our relationship with God, as relational, physical, dependent and 'in his likeness' beings in a long symmetrical set of events, in palindromic fashion.
It goes like this: creation...dissolution of relationship...rescue of relationship...new creation, or creation, fall, redemption, new creation, in more traditional language.
The creation account sits then as a meaningful (the Spirit revealed it, so its needful us to know, presumably) part of this sequence, and has to be, to make sense in that sequence, delineated by the same spatio-temporal constraints: so the time and event information corresponds to actual things within the world created. As it is, the detailed history of forming the people of God from Abraham, which follows the relating of why such action is needed by God, has a purposive place within the arc of redemptive history. Deny that the ground work in Genesis 1-11 is informative in a realist sense, and the faith of Abraham and the work of Christ, with the hope of renewal, lacks a basis in the way God relates to the world and responds to events within that world.
It is not about 'science' per se, although it interacts with the physical world, definitively, but it is about theology; about God and how it came to be that the world, in need of Christ, is as it is. The whole span of scripture is rich with meaning; not allegory, not figure or metaphor, although it does contain such, for communicative purposes, but, particularly in the case of God's real contact with the creation it has to be real, because what is is a result of what really was and will be.
Moreover, the first half of the sequence: breaking from relationshp, sets the scene that makes the call of Abram and the following events contextually significant: it places them both ontologicall and soteriologically and gives a great 'so this is why!" to Gods acts to save. Then in the second half of the sequence it is not only that we are saved in Christ, but that he is Lord: creator: the bearer of the restored relationship between us and the one who made us. But this has to be in terms the Bible uses: creator as the one whose actions are described in Genesis 1, etc. so that we see that he is creator in as real a sense as he is redeemer and will be creation-restorer.
Leupold Genesis part 52 verse 21
21. And God created the great sea monsters and each one of the creeping creatures with which the waters teem after their kind and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good.
Verse 21 in its relation to v. 20 furnishes a very excellent example as to how the account of what actually was done furnishes an invaluable commentary upon the original command of what was to be done. We ourselves would, as a rule, not have discerned what the original commands involved if the following statements had not made the full breadth of the original command plain. As far as the "swarms of living souls" of v. 20 are concerned, we are given to understand, first of all, that these swarms included not only the smaller fry among the fish but also "the great sea monsters" (tanninim), a word whose root indicates a creature of some length. In this category are found not only "whales," as A. V. translates, but all larger marine animals like sharks and, no doubt, also crocodiles: Nor do we hesitate to include under this head amphibians like the saurians of every class and description. Then the account specifically mentions what we have translated, "each one of the creeping creatures!" For here, apparently, nephesh has the common meaning of "individual" or "one," and what the account wishes to emphasize is that of the teeming multitudes of these marine creatures each one owed its existence to God's creative work. On this meaning of nephesh see K. S. 302a. The term rendered "creeping" (romeseth) literally implies "moving lightly about" or "gliding about" (B D B). Difficulty in fitting in these terms led to our rendering "creeping," which strictly does not apply to movement in the water. Another distinctive thought conveyed by this half of the verse is the added assertion that these creatures appeared "after their kind," a phrase not new but as important in its bearing as above. (v. 12) and allowing for no transmutation of species [Leupold here conflates the biblical concept of 'kind' with the scientific term 'species. The two are not the same thing. It is 'kinds' that do not transmute. Kinds may exist at the genus or family level. The definition of species is such that transmutation is readily achieved]. In the second half of the verse it is applied also to the birds.
The expression "winged bird" is literally "bird of wing," kanaph, "wing," being a genitive of quality and the phrase' as a whole what is known as an "ornate epithet" (K. S. 335 a) similar to our expression "yellow gold." Of course, birds have wings. But here, besides, where the very broadest of class distinctions are being made, without a doubt, the expression is meant to include every type of being that has wings--the small and the large, and not only what we call birds.
But on the whole an entirely new type of being has come into existence, creatures that breathe and are animated and have power of their own volition to go from place to place. To give existence to such is the peculiar prerogative of God and is a monumental, epoch-making achievement that deserves to be described by the verb "and He created" (wayyibhra') as the opening verse does.
Verse 21 in its relation to v. 20 furnishes a very excellent example as to how the account of what actually was done furnishes an invaluable commentary upon the original command of what was to be done. We ourselves would, as a rule, not have discerned what the original commands involved if the following statements had not made the full breadth of the original command plain. As far as the "swarms of living souls" of v. 20 are concerned, we are given to understand, first of all, that these swarms included not only the smaller fry among the fish but also "the great sea monsters" (tanninim), a word whose root indicates a creature of some length. In this category are found not only "whales," as A. V. translates, but all larger marine animals like sharks and, no doubt, also crocodiles: Nor do we hesitate to include under this head amphibians like the saurians of every class and description. Then the account specifically mentions what we have translated, "each one of the creeping creatures!" For here, apparently, nephesh has the common meaning of "individual" or "one," and what the account wishes to emphasize is that of the teeming multitudes of these marine creatures each one owed its existence to God's creative work. On this meaning of nephesh see K. S. 302a. The term rendered "creeping" (romeseth) literally implies "moving lightly about" or "gliding about" (B D B). Difficulty in fitting in these terms led to our rendering "creeping," which strictly does not apply to movement in the water. Another distinctive thought conveyed by this half of the verse is the added assertion that these creatures appeared "after their kind," a phrase not new but as important in its bearing as above. (v. 12) and allowing for no transmutation of species [Leupold here conflates the biblical concept of 'kind' with the scientific term 'species. The two are not the same thing. It is 'kinds' that do not transmute. Kinds may exist at the genus or family level. The definition of species is such that transmutation is readily achieved]. In the second half of the verse it is applied also to the birds.
The expression "winged bird" is literally "bird of wing," kanaph, "wing," being a genitive of quality and the phrase' as a whole what is known as an "ornate epithet" (K. S. 335 a) similar to our expression "yellow gold." Of course, birds have wings. But here, besides, where the very broadest of class distinctions are being made, without a doubt, the expression is meant to include every type of being that has wings--the small and the large, and not only what we call birds.
But on the whole an entirely new type of being has come into existence, creatures that breathe and are animated and have power of their own volition to go from place to place. To give existence to such is the peculiar prerogative of God and is a monumental, epoch-making achievement that deserves to be described by the verb "and He created" (wayyibhra') as the opening verse does.
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