It is of some interest to see the ties between the heavy hand of BBist transformationalism and the more palatable forms among progressive neo-Calvinists. Pinch hitting for Tim and David, Craig French may stretch to the breaking point the BBs opposition to 2k and its affirmation of the spirituality of the church:
Whatever we do with our bodies is spiritual in nature—we must remove the notion of a violent duality between man’s spirit and his body. Such a violent dualism has the lamentable consequence of many experiencing an excruciating alienation toward their bodies. Since this is rarely addressed head on, the infection becomes gangrenous because identity is divorced from embodiment. Because men refuse to be identified by their bodies, if they retain any notion of heaven, it is devoid of a Man ruling over all the stuff. A heaven devoid of such materiality is an emasculated one, which is the goal of LBGTQ-Z and egalitarianism. An emasculated eternal ideal cannot be reconciled with everlasting hell fire—so we must begin with heaven, otherwise the terrors of hell will burn down to a gentle warmth, until finally, they cease altogether. Hell cannot withstand an emasculated heaven.
[French does find support, though not without qualification, from Jamie Smith. Hey now!]
So what does French make of Jesus’ own words?
Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done. Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” (Matthew 16:24-28 ESV)
I know we need to define terms and interpret texts, but if you are going to draw the Manichean line in the sand, don’t you need to worry about where you leave Jesus?
Or even Calvin who writes the following on Jesus’ words?
The word soul is here used in the strictest sense. Christ reminds them that the soul of man was not created merely to enjoy the world for a few days, but to obtain at length its immortality in heaven. What carelessness and what brutal stupidity is this, that men are so strongly attached to the world, and so much occupied with its affairs, as not to consider why they were born, and that God gave them an immortal soul, in order that, when the course of the earthly life was finished, they might live eternally in heaven! And, indeed, it is universally acknowledged, that the soul is of higher value than all the riches and enjoyments of the world; but yet men are so blinded by carnal views, that they knowingly and willfully abandon their souls to destruction. That the world may not fascinate us by its allurements, let us remember the surpassing worth of our soul; for if this be seriously considered, it will easily dispel the vain imaginations of earthly happiness.
I understand if you don’t want to go back to the world-denying form of Protestantism with which the missus and I grew up — some version of fundamentalist, evangelical, dispensationalism. Watching Mad Men should prove that we are not in Levittown any more, Toto (yes, the missus also grew up in a Levittown, not the one in the virtuous commonwealth of Pennsylvania). But do you have to go all in with denying dualism and saying that our bodies are spiritual? Do you really counter the French Revolution’s anti-Christianity — thank you Abe K. — with saying that everything is religious? With that kind of argument I worry that Mr. French may wind up in the Church of Rome the men are ordained, and the women are merely religious.
Old Life 
How much Red Bull do the Baylys and their acolytes have to drink to gin up the outrage to write stuff like this? Let’s put the over/under at three cans.
I was reading Van Drunen the longer on Dooyeweerd and his Neocalvinist disciples (Cornelius Plantinga, Henry Stob, etc.) and was underlining pretty much every sentence. These “all of life” guys fit a tired, predictable script. The Baylys are just a more brutish, less elegant, un-Dutch variation of the same.
Nice Larry Sanders Show clip.
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Is there any conceivable subject that the Baylys and their followers can not somehow tie back to homosexuality?
Chinese Checkers? Welding? Manure Spreaders?
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“Manure Spreaders” is too easy to tie back to homosexuality. In fact, I think that will be my new favorite euphemism.
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“Emasculated,” he says. Yeah, Erik, I wonder if we should call this phallocentric theology.
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How do these guys deal with Galatians 3:28? Paul seems to suggest that Heaven will be emasculated.
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On a more serious note…
These guys, like a lot of the Gospel Coalition types, seem to conflate masculinity with maleness. The former is primarily a social construct, while the latter is biological. God may have made me male. My surrounding culture determines the degree to which I’m masculine.
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Paul on Justification and the Final Judgment, by J. V. Fesko
The final judgment is not a separate event on the last day but is part of the single event of parousia-resurrection-final judgment. The final judgment is the resurrection. In Romans 8:23 we read that we, “Who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” Here Paul explicitly relates the forensic category of adoption to the redemption of the body, or the resurrection from the dead (cf. Luke 20:35).
Fesko—Believers have the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit as guarantee or pledge of the believer’s future resurrection (2 Cor. 5:5; Ephesians. 1:4). Romans 8:23 means that we will be declared sons of God by the resurrection of our bodies, when what is sown perishable is raised imperishable (1 Cor. 15:42-44). Just as Christ was declared to be the son of God by his resurrection, those who are in Christ will likewise be declared to be sons of God. When we consider that the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23), then those who are raised from the dead are righteous in the sight of God.
Fesko—“For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked” (2 Cor. 5:2-3). Paul does not want to be naked on the day of judgment. To be naked is to be in the state of shame and guilt…. The resurrection of Christians is not the anticipation of final judgment. The resurrection of Christians is itself the final judgment.
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http://www.monergism.com/john-calvins-letter-cardinal-sadoleto-1539
As yet, the architects were unborn, by whom your purgatory was built; and who afterwards enlarged it to such a width, and raised it to such a height, that it now forms the chief prop of your kingdom. You yourself know what a hydra of errors thence emerged; you know what tricks superstition has at its own hand devised, wherewith to disport itself; you know how many impostures avarice has here fabricated, in order to milk men of every class; you know how great detriment it has done to piety. For, not to mention how much true worship has in consequence decayed, the worst result certainly was, that while all, without any command from God, were vying with each other in helping the dead, they utterly neglected the congenial offices of charity, which are so strongly enjoined.
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Muddy,
I wasn’t going to go there, but with these guys I envision a huge, overfed belly dwarfing a minuscule p***s.
Their rhetoric may be masking certain inadequacies. Those who have it workin’ in that sphere don’t have to spend much time talking about it.
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Baylycentric Get-together:
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All Hail Civil Religion!
http://online.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-ruling-gives-atheists-a-prayer-1405391861
Supreme Court Ruling on Public Invocations Gives Atheists a Prayer
Nonbelievers Deliver Invocations at Public Meetings; Next Up, Pastafarians
At a recent meeting of the Osceola County, Fla., board of commissioners, many attendees bowed their heads in silence as they listened to an invocation delivered by an atheist.
“Habit, I guess,” says David Williamson of Central Florida Freethought Community, who, in lieu of calling on the almighty, invoked the spirit of goodwill during his roughly one-minute speech.
Mr. Williamson, the first nonbeliever invited to perform the county ritual, is among a handful of atheists around the country who have given or are scheduled to give invocations before local-government meetings. The speeches have championed self-government, the human condition, intellectual openness and minority viewpoints.
At the same time, several town boards that had done away with prayers that include references to specific faiths are trying to revive them.
The groundswell is a reaction to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in May that sanctioned prayers before meetings of the town board in Greece, N.Y. The court rejected arguments that the overwhelmingly Christian prayers gave preference to one faith and violated the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from establishing an official religion.
The decision was a blow to nonbeliever activists, but it also created an opportunity. Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the 5-4 ruling, emphasized the importance of inclusion, holding the town to a policy that permits “a minister or layperson of any persuasion, including an atheist,” to give the invocation.
And so on June 16, Mr. Williamson, who lives outside Orlando, found himself for the first time at an Osceola County board meeting, standing behind a lectern in a navy blazer.
“Through the millennia we as a society have learned the best way to govern the people is for the people to govern themselves,” said Mr. Williamson, in his short invocation, which drew largely on themes of community and service.
County Commissioner Michael E. Harford says the invocation, which included offering thanks for the work of the legislators and staff and the citizens they serve, was so similar to the prayers that typically open the board’s meetings that he didn’t realize Mr. Williamson was an atheist until he read about the speech in the newspaper.
Mr. Williamson’s group has sent 20 letters to counties, cities and towns in central Florida, offering to dispense “secular reflections” at their government meetings. Most have answered and none have refused, he says.
In Portage, Mich., a city of about 47,000 residents just south of Kalamazoo, atheist Tim Earl has delivered three invocations, most recently at the June 10 city council meeting.
“Democracy does not mean a tyranny of the majority,” Mr. Earl told the council. “If we ignore minority viewpoints, we foster division and dissent within the community, which only grows worse as demographics change.”
Jim Pearson, Portage’s mayor pro tem, says Mr. Earl’s invocations impressed him. “He’s well prepared, and he gives original…I won’t call them prayers. I don’t know what to call them,” Mr. Pearson says. “But I look forward to them.”
The town board at the center of the Supreme Court case is also scheduled to receive an invocation from an atheist, Dan Courtney of Rochester, N.Y., at the body’s Tuesday meeting.
The former president of the Freethinkers of Upstate New York, Mr. Courtney says he plans to give a four-minute speech highlighting the notion that the country was founded on the authority of the people, and the importance of ensuring Americans of all types are heard.
He will be the first atheist to address the Greece town board. Before the Supreme Court ruling, the town board allowed a Wiccan priestess to deliver an invocation.
While Mr. Courtney disagrees with the Supreme Court’s ruling, he takes some comfort in his view that it weakened what he calls Christianity’s “de facto monopoly on invocations.”
“In a sense, it has opened the door for a bit of a free-for-all,” he says.
Ministers of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a parody religion meant to protest the mingling of church and state (its congregants identify as “pastafarians”) believe the decision could help their mission.
Bobby Henderson, who started the group in 2005, says “I see [the ruling] as good news for the church of FSM, as we’re always looking for captive audiences to evangelize at,” adding that he and his members plan to give invocations.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation, a group of atheists and agnostics, is holding a competition for the best invocation. The winner gets an all-expense paid trip to the group’s annual conference in October at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, a plaque and $500, said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the foundation.
As groups such as Ms. Gaylor’s ramp up their activism, the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian advocacy group, is preparing letters to alert municipalities across the country of the Supreme Court’s decision, said David Cortman, senior counsel for the group, which represented the board in the Greece case.
Mr. Cortman’s group is representing the board of commissioners in Forsyth County, N.C., which was barred by a federal-district court in 2010 from opening its meetings with prayers that “contain content distinctive to the prayer giver’s faith.” Alliance Defending Freedom filed court papers in June, asking the court to lift the injunction in light of the Greece case.
“If you’re not praying to a specific deity then you’re not praying. You’re just talking to yourself,” said Mr. Cortman. “There’s no such thing as a generic prayer.”
The interpretation of the Supreme Court’s ruling as endorsing inclusion cuts both ways. Some school boards, for instance, see the ruling as supporting prayer before their meetings, too—a view the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups have rejected.
The school board in Mesa, Ariz., voted in June to restore the practice of prayers before meetings, rather than a moment of silence. The school board in Pickens County, S.C., is also considering opening its meetings with prayers, said Bick Halligan, a lawyer for the district.
“We are probably like a couple thousand other jurisdictions, thinking about how to do this constitutionally and not pay lawyers a lot of money to defend what they do,” Mr. Halligan says.
Write to Joe Palazzolo at joe.palazzolo@wsj.com
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Erik, that clip isn’t even a parody of the situation. When you become the caricature of yourself, isn’t that like some harbinger of your end? Shouldn’t we expect to read any day now that the Bayly’s have resigned or the church imploded(literally) or they were discovered wide stancing the urinal? Where else can this possibly go?
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The problem with the Baylys is they act like the central problem with western civilization is that men aren’t manly enough. Wrong answer. The cental problem is that men aren’t Christian enough. And being a Christian man is more than being a blowhard and raging against sin, gays, 2K, and whatever their enemy of the week is. If they want more people to embrace Christ, try acting like He did. Maybe come off as a nice person vs. being perpetually angry.
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Has anyone sat down and made a list of everyone and everything you have to be mad at to be a Christian in certain circles today? Let’s see: gays, feminists, women who go to graduate school, PBS, NPR, The New York Times, Democrats, liberals, Hollywood, gays, liberal Protestants, most people who work for the government, gays, other Christians who are 2K, environmentalists, women who keep their maiden name…That’s probably about 10% of the list.
I don’t think all these things are great, but I don’t lead with what I dislike when I meet someone or hope to influence or befriend them.
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But how would we still have patriarchy in the age to come if we don’t still have gender?
http://cryingoutforjustice.com/2014/03/17/eternal-patriarchy-the-council-on-biblical-manhood-womanhood-says-you-bet/
I Corinthians 15: 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. 20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep…. then at his coming those who belong to Christ. 24 Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power.
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John Frame
(1) Those who appear after death in Scripture always appear similar to their earthly forms (1 Samuel 28:11-15; Matthew 17:1-13; 27:52ff.; Revelation 11:1-12). I would assume that the men continued to appear as bearded (if they wore beards on earth), speaking with masculine voices. This fact seems to yield some presumption, at least, that we retain our sexual characteristics after death.
(2) Even angels (whom Jesus says we will resemble in the resurrection) tend to appear in Scripture as men, rather than as women or as asexual beings (Genesis 18:2, 16, 22; Joshua 5:13; Hebrews 13:2).
(3) Jesus’ resurrection body also resembled the form He bore on earth, even down to the wounds in His hands and side (John 20:25, 27), although His new existence is mysterious in many ways. At the resurrection appearances, I have no doubt that the disciples saw a male figure.
(4) Sexuality is part of the image of God, part of what it now means to be human. It is possible that this resemblance might in the next life be replaced with other kinds of resemblance. (“Image of God,” we will recall, covers much territory.) But if we lose our sexuality, why should we not also lose our arms, eyes, and brains?
(5) Our sex organs and secondary sexual characteristics have functions other than procreation. They also image different attributes of God and express the variety of human personality. Sex, after all, is not only reproductive capacity. Stereotypes aside, men and women do differ in personality and in the distribution of their spiritual gifts. The body of a godly woman often serves as an appropriate accompaniment to her personality, reinforcing our impression of her inner meekness and quiet strength. ….I rather suspect that we will still be male and female in the resurrection.
http://www.mountainretreatorg.net/articles/made_in_the_image_of_god.shtml
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dgh–I do have the shield of two-kingdom theology, though, which allows me to have my cake (egalitarianism of a kind at home) and eat it too (hierarchicalism and patriarchy of a kind in the church).
https://oldlife.org/2012/09/why-does-complementarian-rhyme-with-egalitarian/
Bill Smith—I asked my wife what I should think about this, and she said it was not something she cared about very much, so I could think whatever I wanted about it. I might also add I have utterly failed in trying to get her to wear pearls and heels every day.
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What good would resurrection do if we did not already have “immortal souls”? But even if there were no resurrection, we are all in the image of God and therefore none of us can perish. The soul that sins shall not die.
I Timothy 6— until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 which He will display at the proper time—He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 16 who ALONE has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and lasting dominion. Amen. 17 As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. 18 They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, 19 thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the FUTURE, so that they will take hold of that which is TRULY LIFE.
I Corinthians 15: 51 Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. 53 For this perishable body must PUT ON the imperishable, and this mortal body must PUT ON IMMORTALITY.
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Paleo-Calvinist D. Gresham Hart scores huge rhetorical victory over swamp-Calvinist Bayly surrogate Craig French. The media have been alerted.
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Erik, you left out antinomians.
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The Baylys hatch a plan:
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Mike Horton—“Death is not a benign passageway to happiness, but a horrible enemy attempting to keep us in the grave. Death’s sting has been removed, but its bite remains. It does not have the last word for believers, but it remains the believer’s antagonist until the Resurrection of the body. The good news is never that one has died, but that death has been ultimately conquered by the Lord of Life.”
http://www.modernreformation.org/default.php?page=articledisplay&var1=ArtRead&var2=150&var3=main
Calvin—”The conclusion usually drawn is, that believing souls were shut up in an intermediate state or prison, because Christ says that, by his ascension into heaven, the place will be prepared. But the answer is easy. This place is said to be prepared for the day of the resurrection; for by nature mankind are banished from the kingdom of God…. we will not enjoy this great blessing, until he come from heaven the second time. The condition of the fathers after death, therefore, is not here distinguished from ours; because Christ has prepared both for them and for us a place, into which he will receive us all at the last day.”
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Are you saying that what one does in the body has no impact on the soul? Christ also said:
Matthew 18:8
Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire.
He certainly seemed to think the physical and the spiritual were correlate.
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Matthew 10: fear Him who CAN destroy both soul and body in Gehenna
ttp://heidelblog.net/2014/03/reformed-basics-on-dichotomy-and-trichotomy/
Mike Horton—-“The idea of a mere parallelism between the two elements of human nature, found in Greek philosophy and also in the works of some later philosophers, is entirely foreign to Scripture. While recognizing the complex nature of man, it never represents this as resulting in a twofold subject in man. Every act of man is seen as an act of the whole man. It is not the soul but man that sins; it is not the body but man that dies; and it is not merely the soul, but man, body and soul, that is redeemed in Christ.”
Horton—“This unity already finds expression in the classical passage of the Old Testament — the first passage to indicate the complex nature of man — namely, Gen. 2: 7: “And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” The whole passage deals with man: “God formed man . . . and man became a living soul.” This work of God should not be interpreted as a mechanical process, as if He first formed a body of clay and then put a soul into it. When God formed the body, He formed it so that by the breath of His Spirit man at once became a living soul. Job 33: 4; 32: 8.
Horton—The word “soul” in this passage does not have the meaning which we usually ascribe to it but denotes an animated being, and is a description of man as a whole. The very same Hebrew term, nephesh chayyah (living soul or being) is also applied to the animals in Gen. 1: 21, 24, 30.
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Alexander, the point is that while the life below matters, the life to come surpasses it. Jesus still expects us to obey the fifth commandment, but if those we’re called to love distract us from eternal life they should also be hated. That’s the cost of being a disciple.
Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.
But the French’s and Bayly’s of the world seem much too concerned with the cares of this world–well, the only two things that actually matter ever, family and life. But how do family value types and pro-lifers make much sense of the above words? Doesn’t Jesus know families are rent asunder and babies are dying? One wonders just how much of what animates the French’s and Bayly’s had a hand in finally shutting Jesus up.
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