David Koyzis can’t help but notice that Kuyperianism didn’t work out so well:
As a young man I was shocked during a visit to Amsterdam to see the proliferation of “sex shops” and the brazenness of the city’s red light district. In the four decades since then the Netherlands has come to be known for its permissive attitude towards euthanasia, recreational drugs and, of course, sexual expression. What happened? And why did it happen so quickly, that is, within two generations of Kuyper’s death?
So what happened? Koyzis thinks that institution building got in the way of evangelism:
Kuyper’s efforts led to the establishment of a variety of explicitly Christian organizations parallel to their secular counterparts. (The painter Piet Mondrian grew up in this Gereformeerd subculture.)
As Kuyper’s heirs immigrated to North America, they brought over his penchant for establishing and maintaining Christian institutions of all sorts, including a network of Christian day schools, a Christian trade union, more than one political organization, and a network of institutions of higher education. I myself have long been committed to these efforts and have taught at one of these affiliated universities.
Nevertheless, I have found myself wondering whether Kuyper’s perhaps too peaceful coexistence with the forces of secularization in 1917 might not have been sufficient to maintain the subculture he led over the long term. Kuyper certainly wouldn’t have been pleased by his followers’ failure to evangelize, and pillarization needn’t lead to a lack of outward strategy, but historically such power-sharing agreements place a premium on reaching a least-common-denominator form of consensus and toning down differences. In a pillarized society, the distinct subcultures became adept at erecting and maintaining barriers against the other subcultures, yet the consociational arrangements they come up with have tended to be short-lived.
I am not going to enter into debates about consociations that may play to Koyzis’ strength as a political scientist, but the habitual turn of the neo-Calvinist mind to matters public and political instead of spiritual and churchly, may actually point to what went wrong. In point of fact, the institutions that Kuyper helped to found were valuable not simply for erecting a sense of Calvinist identity but most importantly for passing on the faith to another generation and keeping the existing ones in it. Whether those institutions were always necessary is one thing. But their aim I suspect was ultimately religious not temporal, that is, to propagate and maintain the faith once delivered. If all the Reformed Protestants who participated in Kuyper’s institutions had maintained the faith and if their children had remained in the church, chances are those institutions would still be vigorous and large.
But once those institutions became ends in themselves, the genie left the bottle along with subsequent generations. The issue is not evangelism vs. institutions — the old problem of the Pretty Good Awakening. It is keeping institutions on point. And the point is creating and sustaining believers who can say:
My only comfort in life and in death is I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ; who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him.
Old Life 
TKNY biographical stuff with Keller & Mark Dever. Hart’s name gets mentioned 17 minutes in.
http://9marks.org/interview/life-ministry-and-books-with-tim-keller-part-1-life/
Keller had a gay younger brother who died of AIDS.
LikeLike
The thing that really comes through clearly with Keller is that his being an evangelical predates & trumps his being a Presbyterian. Not even saying that’s bad, but the milieu he comes out of is an evangelical milieu.
People in the PCA need to know this (not that they didn’t already).
How many Presbyterians knows the ins and outs of Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary?
Keller is far tighter with Dever than he would ever be with the Westminster West faculty.
LikeLike
Erik, I think the other thread today was the TKNY one, but no biggee.
I helped a retired OP minister move on Saturday. He went to Gordon Conwell with Tim.
I was first exposed to Tim in Deacon Training class, his book “Minstries of Mercy.” It’s OK.
Darryl’s chapter here is worth the price of this book. For real.
DG, you don’t hold back any punches, and obviously I’m a fan of yours. The New Horizons kinda chewed you up over this essay of yours.
Either way one slices it, I think DGH nails the TKNY approach. Doesn’t he always.
Hey, I’m jealous of a guy with 185k twitter followers too!
not really 😉
LikeLike
Tim ain’t no Machen (my new favorite quote):
But I like him. Come get me.
LikeLike
Kathy Keller wrote C.S. Lewis as a girl and actually got at least 4 letters back.
Tim met Kathy through Kathy’s younger sister. Tim went to Bucknell with the sister. Kathy was at Allegheny College.
Kathy has theological training. Sounds like she was one of the earlier female students at Gordon-Conwell. Not sure what her program of study was.
LikeLike
Erik, I’ll listen to that audio tomorrow when I exercise. Sounds interesting.
Here, I’ve been wondering do I like Kirk? Or do I like Picard?
Katniss, yo.
Fore.
Tillichfan,
I’m done commenting (emoticon).
LikeLike
Was the Netherlands problem one of using the wrong principles or that of failing to maintain what had been established. For it seems to me that the criticism of the NeoCalvinist penchant for delving into what is public and political instead of what is spiritual and churchly is based on a faulty model of thought. It is faulty because it implies an exclusive-or choice. It is also faulty because of the fruit it bears. For the natural fruit of such thinking tells Christians to live life in a virtual monastery. Yes, we live with neighbors, but we live as having no common concerns because they have a concern about what is public and political while our only concern is about the church and our own spiritual wellbeing. Do you understand how this model promotes being withdrawn from the world in a way that hinders one from carrying out the Great Commission? And it isn’t just a mild state of withdrawal. The withdrawal is to such a degree that it seems to promote a kind of spiritual autism. And evidence of this kind of autism can be found in the degree of agitation which is seen when what is public and political is discussed.
If our comfort is in knowing that we belong to Christ, shouldn’t that give us strength to go out into the world and work side by side with unbelievers in addressing our common problems and concerns? And that we can use such time to share the Gospel.
Did you ever consider that one reason why the NeoCalvinists are dealing with what is public and political is because of the spiritual and churchly with which they have been dealing? Certainly, they demonstrate many flaws in how they deal with the public and political, but what they are doing could very well be a result of their spiritual growth.
Finally, how ironic is the title of the blogpost with the message of withdrawing from what public and political which contained in the post itself.
LikeLike
Erik, great podcast find.
Ferguson is coming out with a book on the Marrow Controversy. MJ, take note.
Miss you on twitter, EC!
LikeLike
Just spent a week in the Netherlands. I wasn’t in Amsterdam, so I didn’t witness the infamous red-light district. The town I was a university town that didn’t strike me as particularly hedonistic (compared to say Munich, Edinburgh, Heidelberg, or Lyon). I was talking with an older colleague who remembered the days when your religion more or less determined your political party, school, and his case Ph.D. fellowship. He said that all disintegrated in the 1960’s. I don’t know much about post-WWII european history, but the sense I get is that the two world wars and end of colonialization had a traumatic effect on Europe that over turned more or less everything including commitment to organized religion. I’m not so sure the influence of any particular flavor of Christianity pre-WWI made any difference at all to where they are now.
LikeLike
Curt, “Do you understand how this model promotes being withdrawn from the world in a way that hinders one from carrying out the Great Commission?”
When did social justice become part of the Great Commission? It’s the 2kers who are trying to maintain the integrity of the gospel that goes out with the Great Commission.
Why don’t you see that 2k makes better neighbors than your busy-body social justice meme. If I lived near you, I’d always be wary that you’re going to tell me how I’m sinning. All a neighbor has to worry about with me is an invitation to church, and maybe a meal where prayer is said before hand.
LikeLike
Curt writes: “[the criticism of neo-calvinism] implies an exclusive-or choice” and “we live with neighbours, but [in the two kingdoms view] we live as having no common concerns because they have a concern about what is public and political while our only concern is about the church and our own spiritual wellbeing”
I am struggling to understand how you can write that we “hav[e] no common concerns” in a two kingdom view. The very reason for distinguishing between the redemptive and the common kingdom is to make it clear that our common concerns are meaningful, shared, and a key part of our fulfillment of the commandment to love our neighbour.
LikeLike
I’d take Ben Sasse over Kuyper’s descendants anyday!
LikeLike
Isa:I am struggling to understand how you can write that we “hav[e] no common concerns” in a two kingdom view.
Simple. He concocts the same straw man for the 150th time on here and chuckles to himself about how witty and superbrilliant he is…
LikeLike
Curt, what Isa said. A big part of 2k is to question the Christian ghetto so that believers can get into the world (without being of it). That comes by emphasizing the spiritual and institutional nature of the church. It’s emphasizing the Kuyperian organism that you end up with withdrawal. 2k doesn’t create day schools and trade unions in part because these things already exist in the created order and are waiting for believers to come in (or not if not so inclined). But why go in when there’s an allegedly pious version?
LikeLike
sdb, that’s interesting, welcome back.
LikeLike
Zrim,
The oldlife website seems to have dropped my first response due to maintenance. So I will see how much of it I remember as I retype it.
Remember that I have partial agreements with both 2K and neocalvinists regarding cultural interaction. For the most part, 2kers do not seek a privileged position in society for Christianity. That is for the most part. On the other hand, neocalvinists believe that the Church should address issues as the Church. The question is, can we do a miller-lite commercial where we combine the best of both theologies? We should note that with the strategies and tactics adopted by the neoCalvinists, their actions are often indistinguishable from those of 2kers. For Keller’s version of the Church speaking out on issues is fulfilled when individual Christians do that. Thus, since the strategies and tactics adopted by the neocalvinists betray their stated intentions, it ends up that the neocalvinists put so much effort in doing many of the things that 2kers do in their sleep.
But my problem with 2kers is that they take away the prophetic voice of the Church as it would have spoken to society about societal sins. That 2kers do this should not be viewed being special. Cornel West has noted that losing one’s prophetic voice is a significant problem in all religions in the West. And since the Church, as D.G. seems to have stated above, is suppose to stick to only spiritual and churchly things, there is a withdrawal of the Church from the world. While 2ker Christians might be working side by side with unbelievers, it is with a shared, that is with their fellow Babylonian residents, myopia so that the Scriptures are prevented from speaking to public and political issues. And those who hide themselves in the Church from the world, as 2kers are allowed to do, you have this spiritual autism that takes grip of the Church.
Finally, I fully agree with you that we don’t need Christian day schools and trade unions. That’s a withdrawal from society. But the denial of corporate sin with the Church’s implied duty to challenge society about that sin seems to forget that the Word of God speaks to all of life–and it is also a withdrawing from the world. Thus there can’t be this division between what is public and political from what is spiritual and churchly. So what is needed is a miller lite-beer commercial combining 2kers seeking no privilege with the neocalvinist intention of the Church speaking prophetically to society.
LikeLike
CD: So what is needed is a miller lite-beer commercial combining 2kers seeking no privilege with the neocalvinist intention of the Church speaking prophetically to society.
I would say that these are inherently antithetical.
The prophet has the privilege of speaking for God, of having the authority to declare “Thus saith the Lord.”
If I seek to “speak prophetically” into society by demanding repentance, then I am asking for the privilege to demand that you change your behavior according to my proclamation.
That’s why progressives get so much pushback. They demand the privilege to lecture, scold, and demand behavioral change from the rest of us.
There cannot be prophecy without authority.
LikeLike
D.G.,
When did adultery become part of the Great Commission? Or Murder? Or any other sin? Social points to societal, you don’t like the word corporate, sins. Is it possible to carry out the Great Commission without preaching the repentance of sins?
LikeLike
Curt, one problem with your “Miller Lite” proposal is that when members of the church engage they may well find themselves on opposite sides of whatever (and some may not even be interested). 2k makes room for that. But my sense with you and the neos is that you both assume there is a Christian side to something and everyone should find himself there. 2k wants to protect believer liberty before saving the wide world. This actually props up prophetic voice, since the gospel of God reconciling himself to the world is then given priority and isn’t hid beneath the bushel of men’s opinions, traditions, and interests of speaking on behalf of God where he is silent.
LikeLike
I have a new favorite quote, it’s kind of in line with the “my only comfort” from Darryl’s original post (H/T Scott Clark):
Curt Day
Posted February 19, 2015 at 3:22 pm | Permalink
D.G.,
When did adultery become part of the Great Commission? Or Murder? Or any other sin? Social points to societal, you don’t like the word corporate, sins. Is it possible to carry out the Great Commission without preaching the repentance of sins?
Very cutting question. Indeed, the “missionary” Pope Francis is investigating it as we speak.
http://www.aleteia.org/en/religion/article/the-21-most-important-quotes-from-pope-francis-sweeping-apostolic-exhortation-evangelii-gaudium-19014003
LikeLike
Curt, if the Bible speaks to all of life, why do the Westminster Confession and Catechisms have nothing about the church speaking to social justice? Why doesn’t a summary of the Bible include chapters on equality, freedom, social justice, poverty, math, biology, and grammar? All of life? Or just what you consider important?
LikeLike
Curt, sure you preach repentance of sins? But the Great Commission doesn’t give you license to make up sins?
LikeLike
While Curt is making up corporate sins Tom is making up a pope and Roman church that think he’s cool, we’re stupid, and this religion business is all about fixing society. Actually, that last one may not be imagined. The real Francis says it’s all good. Funny that Tom is so enamored with a more-or-less Marxist.
LikeLike
CWU, I wonder if Paul encountered someone like TVD in his day:
ps the drunks also come to mind, re: that verse. The latest comment from mildly buzzed current pastor notwithstanding:
Who’s next up to the tee, yo?
LikeLike
I don’t know how fair it is to judge the merits of Kuyper’s theology by Amsterdam. I’d suppose that Kuyper would be a rather obscure figure if those associated with his movement didn’t emigrate en masse to the eastern shores of Lake Michigan. Kuyper’s political party had little popularity outside of rural parts of northern Holland, i.e., the parts of Holland that are culturally akin to the South in the US. Few of them are from the Ranstad. Amsterdam is the northernmost major city in the Ranstad, and, as such, represents something of a borderline city between the civilized southern part of Holland and the hick northern part of Holland. The northerners have some presence in Amsterdam, but they are hardly influential.
Most Dutchmen wouldn’t view the Michigan Dutch as any more representative of Holland than if a large number of white Mississippians emigrated en masse to the same locale and declared themselves to be representative of the US population.
That’s why New York, whose founders hailed from the Ranstad, and Grand Rapids, whose denizens hailed from rural northern Holland, don’t look much alike.
LikeLike
In Plato’s Republic it becomes evident in the first 10 pages that if your search for justice needs a scapegoat then it’s not really justice you’re pursuing. I agree with that.
So the social justice a person thinks he’s establishing leads to injustices of its own that then will need to be righted, ad infinitum.
There are in Scripture passages that hold to corporate sin and those that say each man is responsible for his own. It won’t get you to the certainty that social gospelers think is self-evident.
To trust those who say they’re devoted to establishing justice, a wide-ranging understanding of personal sin, (regardless of income, intellectual gifts, etc) has to be the beginning of their message. If it’s not there, they’re not to be trusted.
Ask Christians receiving State pensions that they’re collecting because of the productivity of the taxpayers, if they’ll contribute 20% of that yearly pension to a community fund for the poor, to a fund to eradicate racism, managed by social gospelers. Not likely.
The Road to Serfdom is a fine book and one of the most important points made in it is that in any healthy functioning society, where interest checks interest, humility in at least one of the factions is a absolute requirement.
It’s important for a person who wants to control those things she can in her life to respect money. To respect commerce. Barter, trade is inescapable for man.
In Genesis, in the description of Eden and its rivers, the Pishon (IIRC) is where the gold is and its described as good. And I don’t think that’s an invitation to love it but I do think it’s an invitation to respect the good it can do, the progress and civilization it can bring.
LikeLike
Finished the movie “mud” tonight. I liked it a lot. McConaughey owes those two boys a lot. Reminded me of Tom & huck.
LikeLike
D.G.,
Are murder and theft imaginary sins? Is neglect or oppression of the poor and vulnerable imaginary sins? Or are these acts sins only when performed by individuals and not by groups?
The Great Commission teaches us to make people disciples of Jesus. Do you think that when a group we are in sins, that Jesus would have us say and/or do nothing?
LikeLike
D.G.,
Since when is the Westminster Confession the absolute final standard for faith and life? Think about the different contexts that existed and that includes the cultures in which the writers of the Confession were immersed in. Isn’t it possible that some of their writings were more determined more by their culture than the Scriptures?
LikeLike
Zrim,
Believer liberty is not the only issue here. Believer’s responsibilities is also an issue. There is a danger when addressing questions from the perspective of one issue only. That danger is that of reductionism. We will reduce a particular problem to just one issue. And in so doing, we make what we believe about that issue the absolute standard by which we approach certain problems.
The emphasis on believer liberty maybe parallel to the interests political conservatives have in individual liberty. The unfortunate problem with that conservative approach is that there are at least two liberties, not just one. There are individual liberties and there is group or social liberty that concerns how the group will determine how it will exist and how its members will live with each other. That group liberty is often called democracy. So when talking about liberty in our nation, we can neither afford to reduce that to individual or group liberty. We must blend both together.
And so that is also the case here. I very much understand the concern for believer liberty. But there are responsibilities given us by God’s Word. And we see, regarding social justice issues, these responsibilities written in the OT prophets. Remember that Jesus initiated His ministry with a reading from Isaiah. And remember what that reading said. In addition, remember what Jesus said about loving one’s neighbor and the Good Samaritan parable along with his parable of the sheep and the Goats.
Btw, the danger of reductionism is that because we make a belief or issue absolute, that belief or issue becomes the rule rather than the Scriptures and this resurrects human autonomy in the Christian.
I would be worried regardless of the 2k/neocalvinist camp I would be in if I thought that I couldn’t learn for the other side especially when that other side is made up of fellow Christians who are also Reformed Theologians. Again, our penchant for thinking in systems and our loyalty to ideological groups makes unnecessary divisions and invites us to judge and look down on those for whom Christ died. It is one thing to disagree, it is quite another say that we can learn nothing from the other group.
LikeLike
Erik, I saw what you did there.
Tom and Huck.
Brilliant.
LikeLike
Henry’s and Mouw’s attempts at extended reach were similar to Kupyer’s, and Fuller Seminary is a similar example of ending up off-point. Not to mention the “building a civilization of love” crapola that post-Vatican II now plagues Rome.
LikeLike
Curt,
I’m not really sure what your point is. From my understanding, the 2k approach is simply a limit on the church’s ability to bind the conscience of the believer. More particularly, it says that the church ought only to bind the conscience of the believer on issues to which Scripture speaks without ambiguity. On everything else, the church keeps its silence, and leaves it up to the individual believer to listen to his or her conscience.
In my view, when 2k is properly applied, it gets the church out of the business of speaking out on nearly all social issues, given that it’s awfully difficult to suggest that a collection of ancient texts can speak unambiguously on issues such as poverty, tax policy, civil marriage, etc.
That doesn’t mean that individual believers should have no opinions on such issues. It doesn’t mean that groups of Christians can’t organize together to form private societies that address such issues. It just means that the church has no business binding the conscience of the believer on such issues. Rather, the church ought to be about the business of dispensing the means of grace.
LikeLike
Bobby,
If you read my first comment on this thread, you will see that my point has been to temper the criticisms of the NeoCalvinism because both sides have stuff they can learn from each other.
As for you assessment of the applied side of 2K, I’m not sure that that would be the only application. However, 2K people would do a better job of commenting on that point. Now whether getting the Church out of the business of speaking out on social issues is a good thing. I am not sure of what you meant in your second paragraph.
But the Church does have the responsibility to speak out on certain issues that involve theft, murder, oppression, and neglect of the poor. That is because people are committing those sins either as individuals or in groups. And this is the problem for 2K theology. That sins individuals commit are no longer counted as sins when groups do the same. The OT prophets were certainly against that idea and one doesn’t need to support theonomy to use and apply their words on these issues.
The longer range problems for 2KT is that it grooms Christians to be myopic with regards to their society. Assuming that their society can’t sin regardless of what it does, 2KT advocates apply the Babylonian exile experience as a model for how Christians should relate to society–odd that using that experience as a model does not imply theonomy while using the words of the OT prophets does. Christians are therefore to work for the prosperity of where they live regardless of whether the society where they live exploits others in order to prosper. This is even more of a dilemma where those being exploited by one’s own Babylon contains Christians.
If you can say that the Church has no business binding the consciences of believers in order to command them to oppose murder and theft just because those acts are being committed by groups, especially society, rather than by individuals, then more power to you. I don’t see the Scriptures supporting that.
LikeLike
Curt, where did Jesus talk about the Roman Empire’s sins? Paul? By your standard (as well as most modernists), the New Testament authorities failed.
You think you can simply blur the line between theft and oppression of the poor? Way to go, Karl.
LikeLike
Curt, I didn’t say it was the “absolute” final standard. I don’t use the word “absolute” unless talking about vodka or God.
I did bring up the confession and catechisms to show that your idea of the Bible speaking to “all of life” is a long way from what they thought the Bible revealed. You may be right and they may be wrong. But my historical instinct says “nah.”
LikeLike
Curt, are your purposefully ignorant? Just because 2k doesn’t believe in your bogus (theonomic) idea of corporate sin, doesn’t mean 2kers don’t recognize injustice. But you do need to live life in the upper register. Everything is religious. Everything is at the level of sin or redemption. Say hello to Christian aerobics.
The church does speak against sin. It does so every week as it gathers for public worship. If the church is not out on the
street cornerblog corner with you, it doesn’t mean the church is silent about sin.The difference is that ministers and prophets speak to God’s people, not to not God’s people. If you could ever figure out the difference between the people of God and the not people of God, you might figure out 2k. But you won’t accept it because that distinction denies you sacred leverage with not God’s people. Funny thing is, you actually think not God’s people will listen to harangues designed for God’s people.
LikeLike
Zrim: You said: “A big part of 2k is to question the Christian ghetto so that believers can get into the world (without being of it). That comes by emphasizing the spiritual and institutional nature of the church. It’s emphasizing the Kuyperian organism that you end up with withdrawal. 2k doesn’t create day schools and trade unions in part because these things already exist in the created order and are waiting for believers to come in (or not if not so inclined). But why go in when there’s an allegedly pious version?”
I have a great deal of sympathy for this model. But I think at some point it shoots itself in the foot. In this very thread, Kuyper not only “goes in” but goes all in (to the secular culture). Then what does he do? He becomes “neo-Calvinist” and it seems to be a seamless cloth. He takes his strongly Christian sympathies into the government, and then 2K pulls back from Kuyper, and say “focus on the church” again. “Don’t cite Scripture out in the world”. What is Kuyper supposed to do? Ignore his Christian sensibilities?
Scott Clark used to tell me “read VanDrunen”. I haven’t figured out where to jump in. Wherever I see a VanDrunen book I want to get into, I always see someone I respect (like James Anderson) saying, “VanDrunen misses this big item and … ”
When Christians go out into the world — into secular music and secular trade unions and secular government — what really do we have that’s real and genuine, other than the Word of God?
LikeLike
Curt’s not standing down until every car in the church parking lot is a Pinto.
LikeLike
Erik, you’re becoming narrow and cranky in your retirement years. Why could there not be an ’84 Renault Alliance held together with wire and tape, three or four late 80s Dodge Caravans, and an assortment of Hondas and Subarus so favored by by his ilk? Toyotas (unless they’re over 30 years old) are bourgeois, though. Five bucks says I’ve identified one of Curt’s cars with this list.
LikeLike
After some thought, I believe I would edit that last statement of mine: “When Christians go out into the world — into secular music and secular trade unions and secular government — what really do we have that’s real and genuine, other than the Word of God?”
Of course, all of creation is “good”, and we know that all of creation speaks of the Creator. However, that is an incomplete story, given man’s fall and “special revelation” (as I’ve been writing about it, from Bavinck’s point of view).
There is a “catholicity” to it, which far exceeds anything that we fallen creatures could hope to encompass:
I do not see this as a human mandate to reclaim “every square inch” — I think that’s a straw man statement that comes from the 2K side. However, I do see it as a license that “God’s special revelation is applicable everywhere, and would eventually be welcomed everywhere” that God sees fit to carry it.
LikeLike
Following up on that, God’s chosen vehicle is “the church” — but not only “the church” corporately, but Christians individually are given “treasure in jars of clay”. This treasure goes where we take it.
Here is Paul: Is this for Apostles only? Or is this a general principle?
LikeLike
I think it is wrong to blame Kuyper for what has gone wrong in the Netherlands today. In reality, why not blame the Reformed Orthodox of the 17th century for “the Enlightenment” and secularization? The two analogies are of the same kind. If we think that preserving the good things that came out of 17th century is any more of a challenge than preserving the good things that came out of early 20th century, I’d say that we are wrong to think that the good things that have come out of any particular generation will be permanent.
LikeLike
The 17th century was already destroyed by the time that Kuyper arrived. And Kuyper’s challenge was not to restore the 17th century, but to live in the late 19th century and early 20th century. To be a Christian in his own time. With all of the challenges that came along with that (of which we, most likely, are not fully aware).
LikeLike
Curt, you say you “very much understand the concern for believer liberty.” But here’s a test. What happens when one believer thinks the problem of immigration should be addressed by proposal X and another by proposal Y? My guess is that you think each proposal has to be sifted for its biblical-o-sity and once found everybody has to submit, when in fact the Bible is silent on the matter, leaving each believer to his own political conscience. I’d further suppose you find this unacceptable. But if your Plan of Union means that Christians speak where God has not spoken and that consciences may be bound where God has not bound them, go back to the drawing board.
LikeLike
John, instead of playing with a Kuyper doll maybe we have a look at where his theories brought his advocates (though it’s interesting to note that by the end of his life Kuyper wasn’t regularly found in the pew)? And for that, I’ll lay down some Van Drunen (from “Always Reformed”):
In the long run, therefore, neo-Calvinism, despite its admirable commitment to education, has not been able to sustain vibrant, growing, and doctrinally sound Reformed churches over many generations. Its vision of Christian culture has been realized, in partial measure, only in relatively small pockets of rather isolated communities. Even many of these communities have suffered significantly in recent years. Some of them have been overwhelmed by the influx of outsiders and been forced to retreat (in smaller numbers) to other places where they can again be more isolated from the larger world. (The ongoing story of Dutch Reformed Christianity in southern Chicagoland, where my own ancestors settled in the mid-nineteenth century, is a good example.) Others have been declining along with other small, rural, agricultural towns in middle America, as family farms decline in number and the next generation moves off to suburbia.
Obviously neo-Calvinism did not set out to decimate the church, but to raise other institutions to a level of (equal) importance—all with very good intentions to protect against cultural indifference and to give meaning to all areas of life. The church, unfortunately for neo-Calvinism, is not the sort of institution designed by Christ to be one among equals for Christians.
Neo-Calvinism has not only made little noticeable progress in transforming Western civilization (or even Holland, or South Holland), but it has to an alarming degree lost the importance and uniqueness of the church along the way as well. It certainly has done no better than earlier Reformed Christianity in resisting the temptation of theological liberalism and other contemporary religious fads.
Ultimately, however, neo-Calvinism needs to be questioned not because of its struggle to accomplish what it set out to do but because it is so foreign to the message of the New Testament. The idea that the heart and soul of Christianity consists in the transformation of existing cultures is arrestingly and glaringly absent from New Testament teaching. Time and again the New Testament emphasizes the present suffering of Christians, the transitory and fleeting nature of the things of this world, heavenly citizenship, and the hope of the age to come. The things that it says about broader cultural affairs are so infrequent and so sparse—basically, submit to legitimate authority and work hard—that it is quite incredible to think that Christ and his apostles intended to instill a vision akin to the neo- Calvinist world and life view. The neo-Calvinist case from the New Testament rests upon a handful of scattered verses—the kingdom as a leaven, the groaning of creation, every thought captive, the kings of the earth bringing their glory into the new Jerusalem—that sound inspiring out of context but do not make the case intended. The burden of the New Testament is about as far away as imaginable from imparting an agenda of cultural transformation.
The Lord Jesus Christ did not come to raise up followers who would transform the cultures of this world. Christ came as the Last Adam to achieve the original goal of the First Adam under the covenant of works: the new heaven and new earth. By his perfect obedience, death, resurrection, and ascension Christ has succeeded. By virtue of his achievement Christians, by faith, share in his verdict of justification, his heavenly citizenship, and his everlasting inheritance. Redemption does not put Christians back on track to accomplish the original goal of the First Adam through their own cultural work—Christ has already done that on their behalf perfectly and finally. Misunderstanding this point is perhaps the fatal flaw of neo-Calvinism. Until the day when Christ returns he has ordained that his people be pilgrims in this world and be gathered together in the church.
It would be difficult to overemphasize the importance of the fact that the church was the only institution that the Lord Jesus established in this world during his earthly ministry.37 Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God; that is, the new creation, the original goal of the human race under the covenant of works. Yet if we scour the Gospels we find but one institution that Jesus associates with the kingdom and but one to which Jesus points to find the power and the ethic of the kingdom at work here and now. Jesus did not establish the family or civil government, but simply affirmed their legitimacy. He did not lay out plans for kingdom businesses. Families, governments, and businesses already existed under God’s providential rule and were common in the cultures of this world long before the kingdom was announced. Jesus established his church. Unlike the cultural institutions of this world, Jesus promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against the church alone. He entrusted the keys of the kingdom of heaven to the church alone. He commissioned disciplinary procedures reflecting the ethic of the Sermon on the Mount for the church alone. He promised, to the church alone, that where two or three are gathered in his name he himself will be there among them.
Christ came, in other words, not to transform the cultures of this world but to win the kingdom of God, the new creation, which will be cataclysmically revealed out of heaven on the last day, and to establish the church, for the time being, as a counter-cultural institution that operates not according to the cultures of this world but in anticipation of the life of the age-to-come. The church has its own doctrine, its own worship, its own government, its own discipline, its own ministry of mercy, and its own strange ethic of non-violence and forgiveness that defies the wisdom of this world. Jesus and his apostles did exert great effort to shape a culture: the church’s culture. The New Testament makes clear, of course, that Christians must live and work among the cultures of this world, and should be just, honest, loving, and industrious as they do so. But the only culture-shaping task in which the New Testament shows any serious interest is the formation of the church. In light of such considerations I suggest that the only Christian culture—in the profoundest sense of the term—is found in the ministry and fellowship of true churches of Christ operating according to the teaching of Scripture alone.
LikeLike
John, I’m also not sure you’re giving natural revelation its due. It’s just as much God’s book as special revelation is and what we use when in the world. It’s no disservice to special revelation to make it secondary in the common realm. It’s to play by the rules: natural revelation for common life, special for sacred life.
LikeLike
I don’t see the church as having any obligation to speak out against theft, murder, etc. If one of its members stole his neighbor’s car, then it may have an obligation to exercise church discipline.
Regarding corporate sin… When I last checked, business entities don’t join churches as members, so churches have no jurisdiction to carry out discipline of business entities. Because the church lacks such jurisdiction, it has no reason to speak out on those issues as the church. Again, that’s not to say that individual Christians can’t speak out on those issues. It’s just not something the church ought to be doing.
In general, I’d like to see the church speak more of Christ and less of things besides Christ. The Southern Baptists’ tendency to mouth off on every issue coming down the pike strikes me as something of an embarrassment to the church.
LikeLike
Zrim,
The problem isn’t that ‘believer liberty’ is an issue. The problem is that 2k theology has reduced the answer to that one issue. That other issues are not used to check the tide of absolutizing that answer which does nothing more than allow one’s understanding of believer liberty to replace the Scriptures as being judge here. In seminary, we talked about how reductionism leads to human autonomy. That when we reduce problems to a single issue, we make our understanding of the issue the final judge of what is right and wrong. The Scriptures are no longer the judge.
Furthermore, the Bible isn’t silent on the matter. We have source material from the OT prophets. We have Jesus’ parables on the sheep and goats and his one on the Good Samaritan with its teaching about what it means to love one’s neighbor. When we see groups oppress or neglect the poor and vulnerable, we are commanded out of love to find ways to care and stand up for them. After all, wasn’t one of the points on the Good Samaritan parable that love for the victim dictated the Samaritan’s actions, not specific commands.
What you are leading people to with your emphasis on believer liberty and assertion that the Bible is silent on justice issues, and might as well say with your expansion of the Regulative Principle to all of life, is that unless people see the same example in the Scriptures of what they see today or unless something is literally commanded, they are free to ignore social justice issues even though those issues deal with the violation of the commands against murder and theft. You are telling them that they must safeguard their own liberty first while, unless compelled by exact examples or concrete commands, they have no obligation to help those in need. You are promoting an inner-directed life for Christians. This is why I said that such teaching leads to a spiritual autism where the believer is so inner-directed that demands from the outside world causes more and more agitation.
Finally, don’t misinterpret what I am saying. I am not saying that the Scriptures command the Church to support specific proposals. But I am saying that the Church must challenge either all or parts of those proposals that either oppress or neglect the vulnerable. And in that challenge, we are simply saying that all of us together, Christians and nonChristians, must come up with better solutions. I am calling for ‘Christian’ proposals. Rather, what should be happening is that when general standards of justice are violated, then we must take a stand. And believe it or not, we will have company from people of other faiths as well as no faith. Both history and my own experience testifies to that.
LikeLike
Bobby, don’t forget the your denom (PCUSA) practically invented ministry by position paper and divestment.
LikeLike
Curt’s the drunk uncle that you have to pretend to listen to at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
He takes 10 minutes to unpack and dust off his one string banjo.
Has never bothered to pay any attention to the views of others that total checkmate him.
LikeLike
John, no one is blaming Kuyper for NL, at least not me. What is striking is how rarely do the neo-Calvinists today recall that Kuyper’s project didn’t withstand the test of something. So maybe you need to edit the manual? But no, the common neo-Cal spokespeople keep trotting out the inspirational bromides as if nothing happened in NL after 1915.
LikeLike
Curt, are you a Protestant? “The problem is that 2k theology has reduced the answer to that one issue.”
You mean, like the formal principle of the Reformation, as in you need to show from Scripture as opposed to some half-baked left leaning idealism that what you say has binding address. That one issue is huge. Sola scriptura. But you dismiss it as the mere hobby horse of some people obsessed with 2k.
In case you missed it, we aren’t in OT Israel anymore. Pay attention to the Bible. Jesus came. The gentiles are now running the church. The church knows no political boundaries. And the Pharisee turned apostle taught that Christians have liberty from the OT regulations.
Who are you to say otherwise? A Christian Howard Zinn?
LikeLike
Finally, don’t misinterpret what I am saying. I am not saying that the Scriptures command the Church to support specific proposals. But I am saying that the Church must challenge either all or parts of those proposals that either oppress or neglect the vulnerable.
1. Social gospler, listen to thyself. That’s precisely what your reasoning leads to. How is what you’re saying NOT lead to the conclusion that the Scriptures command the church to support specific proposals? You can’t just wave your hand and tell us to go right when all your pious advice has been going left. So by what principles do you deny that the Scriptures command the church to support specific proposals?
2. And you might say that the church must challenge either all or parts of those proposals that either oppress or neglect the vulnerable. But WCF says something else:
Synods and councils are to handle, or conclude nothing, but that which is ecclesiastical: and are not to intermeddle with civil affairs which concern the commonwealth, unless by way of humble petition in cases extraordinary; or, by way of advice, for satisfaction of conscience, if they be thereunto required by the civil magistrate.
LikeLike
Kent, so you are saying that maybe CD should spend some time with the drunks?
Had a bonding moment just now with JJS over Lebowski and the Wire. And it’s Friday, what could be more rich for such a day.
I need to go to the driving range at lunch, yo. Peace.
LikeLike
Zrim,
Regarding point #1, you can claim that what I am proposing calls on binds the Church to support specific proposals. But asserting and proving are not the same. All I have said is that the Church should act as prophetic curmudgeon to society. There can be multiple ways to correct a specific problem. One of the Church’s jobs is to point out the problem.
Regarding point #2, did you ever consider that the confession was wrong in that particular statement? Otherwise, the command to love one’s neighbor will be superseded by this statement in the confession. And the question is, doesn’t that remind you of Mark 7:9-13?
LikeLike
Curt, don’t play the logic card, it just makes things boring. But here’s where we’re at. You appeal to the Bible to say the church should meddle in social and political affairs, yet you also undermine the principle of sola scriptura which is the very principle you need to get there. You say the church should act as prophetic curmudgeon to society, yet you also say the Bible doesn’t command the church to support specific proposals and that multiple ways to correct a specific problem–how can the church speak prophetically if she isn’t bound to any specificity or if even her members disagree?
Yes, I have considered that, but it’s always struck me as dead on in its interpretation of the NT, as in John 18:36.
LikeLike
Bobby,
So, according to you, the Church has no obligation to love the victims of violence and theft? And the Church has no responsibility, while preaching the Gospel, to challenge individuals to repent from committing murder and theft?
Also, remember that corporate does not necessarily mean business or incorporated groups. Rather, corporate guilt and sin applies to any group that sins whether they consists of small groups of peers all of the up to whole societies. And it simply says that whatever actions an individual takes which are considered to be sins, are also sins when practiced by groups. But it seems that some Conservative Christians are saying something different. They are saying to the individual, if you sin, we will come after you either in the form of church discipline or preaching. At the same time, these same Conservative Christians are saying to groups that you can’t sin regardless what you do. And you are saying this to protect the individual liberty of the believer while putting Jesus’ summation of the second table on the shelf because you have reduced all issues involved here to believer liberty.
LikeLike
Zrim,
Instead prohibiting me from playing some ‘card’ as if you were speaking to an inferior, use logic to show your case. Anyone can brush aside arguments. Such does not show a command of the issues. Rather, such behavior assumes a certain position in a hierarchical relationship–one that does not exist here.
Also, why can’t the Church note the injustices of a system without offering alternatives? I see no reason why the Church must make its own proposals after witnessing the injustices of current policies or warning about the injustices of proposed policies.
Finally, you have brushed aside the Scriptures I’ve referenced while saying that I am not relying on the Scriptures. Here, I am compelled to play the ‘logic card’ by saying such is inconsistent. And how does John 18:36 prohibit us from loving our neighbor by seeking justice? After all, what are the responsibilities of the gov’t according to the Scriptures? And how is the context in which Jesus said his kingdom is not of this world otherwise his servants would fight for him comparable to seeking partial justice in this world?
LikeLike
Curt,
That’s too bad R. Scott Clark doesn’t let your comments through.
DGH is much nicer to you, eh?
LikeLike
Andrew,
That’s his choice and he has his reasons for that. BTW, he occasionally lets some comments in. Don’t think of it has one person being nicer than the other because it puts the other person in an unfair light. I do have that column just to show what has been blocked. I want people to focus on the content of the comments blocked, not make guesses about the character of those who do block.
LikeLike
Curt’s not standing down until every Pinto in the church parking lot has either a “Warren for President” or “Sanders for President” sticker on the bumper.
Now that’s Christian liberty — two choices.
LikeLike
Curt, fair enough, thanks for the explanation.
The only censoring that Darryl does that I am aware of is delete the comments from people interacting with certain interlocutors (Doug Sowers) that are disruptive. And he rarely does that, I just think he’s quite the gentleman letting anyone post on his site, regardless of how verbose and blathering they are.
LikeLike
Erik,
First, you need to catch up with the times. Who wants people to drive Pintos when they can drive Priuses instead? Second, I could care less who a person votes for as long as the recipients of their votes are not from the 2 major parties. During the last election, I complimented a friend who was considering voting for candidates from either the libertarian or Constitutional parties. Though I would never vote for their presidential candidates, my friend was showing more independence in thought than any Liberal who was voting for the democrats.
LikeLike
Curt, what sort of People’s Car do you drive? I sorta bet the world five bucks I could name it.
LikeLike
@CW
It’s not like there’s such a thing as a 2k denomination; it’s mostly an internet phenomenon. In my view, the PCUSA comes the closest, at least in the churches that lean in more of a Barth/Moltmann direction.
For the most part, OPC churches are highly patriarchal. Read the recent piece on the Aquila Report about the ecclesiastical trial that occurred in Raleigh, if you want some insight into the OPC (or at least the treatment of women in the OPC).
And I have a hard time seeing any difference between the PCA and the SBC.
LikeLike
FWIW…I drive a large SUV that could squish Curt’s Prius like a bug.
LikeLike
Bobby, you’re way smarter than that. The PCUSA, at least at the official level, is basically the Democratic Party (and its assorted constituencies) at prayer…to some deity or other.
LikeLike
Also, why can’t the Church note the injustices of a system without offering alternatives? I see no reason why the Church must make its own proposals after witnessing the injustices of current policies or warning about the injustices of proposed policies.
Curt, so the church as school-marm-finger-wagging-nag? All the benefits of judging the world with no responsibility to actually help anybody. Speaking of logic, imagine that applied soteriologically–the church as all law, no gospel. Witness social gospel’s ugly neo-nomian impulse.
LikeLike
If Curt drives a Pius he really is a bourgeois faker. The Pius is the epitome of phony self righteousness — gets no better mileage than my 13-year-old Civic, costs ten times as much, and with its toxic batteries and components from all over the world an environmental disaster.
LikeLike
Bobby, take up and read Ruling Elder Hart’s treatment of Barth in Calvinism, and get back to me.
Nice try tho.
LikeLike
At some point the thieves are going to have to be named. Thinking people will demand it.
This young lady is looking for the Lead Thief, so that she can help her people out. I admire her willingness to take the “Walker Percy on the Road and in the Paradigm” approach. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEvvNFt58Ug
I’ve worked my share of minimum wage jobs. No boss or supervisor or superior ever robbed me.
One of those jobs was as a shipping/receiving clerk. Stamina and accuracy a must. Pay was $0.35 more per hour than minimum wage.
The owner was a Christian woman who did not supply me with a health insurance plan but provided the opportunity to buy it at reduced rate. That was not theft. Yes, I had a deductible. Yes, it was high but that just meant that if I needed my esophagus resected, I’d learn to appreciate and be grateful to the MD with the skill to pull it off and not think that all I owed him was a $20/co-pay. Miss P provided the opportunity for all of her staff to buy any good at cost. She didn’t make a dime on us. That’s a decent return, not a theft.
The judgment against those the social gospelers are seeking restitution from (theft demands it) requires every honest gal to force those claiming the right to this judgment to name names, trace the
fault-line of genealogy and not hide behind ramose and eluding testament. And that includes Pope “Rabbits” Francis.
Aron says in The Opium of the Intellectuals that one of the biggest problems socialists face is their incapacity to cultivate and reward merit. And the trickle down, all-around, carpet-bomb that that looses is easy to imagine.
Hardest hit? Working families and the poor who need a real meritocracy (credentialed and not) more than any connected bourgeoisie.
LikeLike
Curt,
Sanders is a socialist. Not one of our two major parties.
LikeLike
MLD,
Good points. The left always thinks their compassion (with other people’s money) trumps laws of supply & demand and price theory. They never learn because they walk by faith, not by sight.
LikeLike
Eirk,
Not as much as you think and time will tell here. And here is why. First, the first tenet of socialism is worker control of the workplace. Is that what Sanders is advocating? Yes, Sanders is legitimately challenging the harmful consolidation of wealth and Vermont is progressive in certain areas; but his stance on Israel-Palestine is more reflective of the standard Democratic Party’s response than any Socialist response.
But there is something else that’s more important and this is where time will tell. It is not unusual for parties not running incumbent candidates run a wide variety of candidates. And at least one of those candidates will represent the outliers in the party who could easily leave. And the purpose of these outlier candidates is to challenge their respective party during primaries even to the point of almost departing the party, but when the more representative, or elite chosen, candidate is nominated, the outlier candidates lead their followers back to the party by voting for and supporting the party’s nominee. So time will tell whether Sanders will support the Democratic nominee after he fails to garner the nomination.
LikeLike
Zrim,
And from your perspective, the Church resembles the 3 monkeys: the one who sees no evil, the one who hears no evil, and the one who says no evil? See, it is all in the marketing, isn’t it?
Also, don’t 2kers acknowledge that what makes a righteous society different from what qualifies someone to be in good standing in the Church?
LikeLike
Curt, “righteous society”?
Have you been reading Finney again? Ever heard of original sin?
LikeLike
D.G.,
I’m surprised that a 2Ker has to ask that question.
LikeLike
Curt, if you mean society doesn’t need the church to be society, ding. But you and the neos seem to think the church is the soul of society. Gong, that’s the family.
LikeLike
Curt, everything you say implies righteousness by law and effort not by Christ. Try rinsing and not repeating.
LikeLike
Curt,
Are you really a member of an OPC? What consistory is overseeing you and what do they say when you bring these complaints to them?
LikeLike
D.G.,
There are no words used in the Scriptures that have multiple meanings? And of those that do, aren’t meanings determined by context? So that when I say one is righteous in society, why are you inserting our righteousness before God into the statement?
LikeLike
Erik,
In case you didn’t notice, not all OPC churches are dominated by 2K theology.
LikeLike
Zrim,
Remember that there are significant differences between me and the neos (a.k.a., transformers).
LikeLike
Erik,
I agree.
I lived a life on the run for several years but I was living in the wide world and not part of a protected profession or class. I kept wanting to find where I could belong. I even asked my Mom where I belonged and outside of always having my place with her, my Dad and brothers, how could she know? I had to find that out on my own.
And it wasn’t just Miss P, it was the landlord who let me pay my security deposit over a few months and the landlord who let me use my security deposit as my last month’s rent and the dentist who let me pay my bills over a few months time. That decency couldn’t have been reserved just for me.
If the US loses all vitality, the voters will be either first or last to blame, but the blame will be significant.
The thing that troubles me is that we don’t trade with each other. My coffee pot, toaster, moka pot, kneading board, shoes, purses, sweaters, etc are all made by someone other than my neighbor. If I can’t line his pocket by these kinds of steady and recurring purchases but instead line those of Germans and Poles and Chinamen how can he thrive?
It’s taken me some time to fairly consider libertarianism and whether it’s viable. I wonder though if an eye toward regulating with a light hand might not make it easier for some manufacturing to return?
The Left has not greater claim to be able to define or ability to make community. And people, including children, are good at spotting propaganda, dedication to ideological tribe, etc. If punishment is meted out because recognition of this is sin that still can’t prevent the determination to reject the propaganda. And that gift, given to many (maybe that’s part of the Imago Dei too) is what allows a generation to begin anew or to super a crisis.
LikeLike
Curt, oh, let me see, maybe because you use the phrase and use the phrase and use the phrase over and over again — wait for it — social sin. Now, you’re saying that you weren’t using “sin” to mean any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God? By sin you only mean what god Curt finds offensive to his sense of righteousness?
Silly me.
LikeLike
MLD: “The thing that troubles me is that we don’t trade with each other. My coffee pot, toaster, moka pot, kneading board, shoes, purses, sweaters, etc are all made by someone other than my neighbor. If I can’t line his pocket by these kinds of steady and recurring purchases but instead line those of Germans and Poles and Chinamen how can he thrive?”
Nothing new here… . Seems as though Madison, as President made note of the same problem in his 1816 State of the Union address, which I quote below:
“Amidst the advantages which have succeeded the peace of Europe, and that of the United States with Great Britain, in a general invigoration of industry among us, and in the extension of our commerce, the value of which is more and more disclosing itself to commercial nations, it is to be regretted that a depression is experienced by particular branches of our manufactures, and by a portion of our navigation.
As the first proceeds, to an essential degree, from an excess of imported merchandise, which carries a check in its own tendency the cause , in its present extent, cannot be of very long duration.
The evil will not, however, be viewed by Congress, without a recollection, that manufacturing establishments, if suffered to sink too low, or languish too long, may not revive, after the causes shall have ceased:
and that, in the vicissitudes of human affairs, situations may recur, in which a dependence on foreign sources, for indispensible supplies, may be among the most serious embarrassments.”
I know that my “quoting” is a source of irritation to some, but I can’t think of a better example to teach the value of being historically well-read, because those who set up this country had some insights to pass to the next generation. Excessive reliance on foreign manufacturers “for indispensible supplies” right now has deprived way too many of a decent job, and instead we even rely on someone halfway around the world to, for an example, make our drinking straws, arriving here as an air filled tube!
Whether is was 1816, or 2015 the issue is the same, and when we pass the many closed factories here, Madison is proved right, and are silent monuments to “the most serious embarrassments”. Church members who gave to the work of promoting the Gospel, when that factory they used to work at closes, now what can they give? Yes, current national trade policy has severely hurt missions support, and the furtherance of God’s Kingdom! Back in Princeton / Presbyterian educated Madison’s day they understood that commercial endeavours, created members’ wealth that would finance the work of missions. And, it did…all the while employing ourselves and neighbors in useful and beneficial work .
LikeLike
Curt,
You evaded my question.
Not every OPC is “dominated by 2K theology”, but if they ignore 2K it’s generally to be right wing culture warriors, not left wing social justice advocates.
My guess is that you are not really in an OPC or, if you are, you’re seen as an oddball there.
Not that I have anything against oddballs.
LikeLike
Curt,
If as a teacher you enjoyed outsized public employee benefits and if you now enjoy a pension plan and postretirement benefits that are not available to most private sector workers, how is that just?
public sector pensioner, heal thyself.
LikeLike
Curt,
Plus summers and holiday breaks off.
I haven’t had a full week’s vacation for 2 1/2 years.
Send me money. You owe me.
LikeLike
Erik,
Why use what the private sector no longer provides as the rule of thumb for what is fair? The private sector doen’t provide what it use to because of the maximize one’s own profit cutthroat mentality. You shouldn’t be complaining to or about me. You should be complaining to elites of the private sector. After all, they are taking care themselves quite well.
LikeLike
D.G.,
Yes, and I assume that you can distinguish contexts. But then again, when you believe that to use the OT prophets is to push for theonomy, maybe you have a point. Of course, solution is to realize that your implication is false.
LikeLike
Erik,
I should have added that it isn’t just the elites who are squeezing pensions to death. It’s hedge fund managers too. But more than that, it is the bill of goods sold to shareholders so that shareholders can make a living off the workers’ lower wages.
LikeLike
Erik,
One more point, those who approach teaching seriously experience it as a 24 hour a day, 7 day a week job. For teaching is not just what you see during the lectures, it includes, grading, tutoring, social work, preparation, and upgrading knowledge and skills.
LikeLike
Curt,
You leave out the fact that the American private sector has to compete globally in many industries.
How are you coming with getting China to cooperate with your social justice crusade?
LikeLike
Curt,
From your comments I’m going to assume that you’ve never started or owned a business of your own of any size.
One of the things about businesses is that they often entail large risks. People who start businesses that employ people usually borrow money and personally guarantee those debts. If the businesses fail, that owner still owes that borrowed money and might have to declare bankruptcy and suffer the consequences that come from that. In addition, even successful businesses are constantly on guard against litigation and the costs thereof.
Now the flip side of that is that when businesses succeed, business owners get to realize the rewards. Without those potential rewards, no one would take risks, no one would borrow money, no one would employ people.
Now you come along and pass judgment on people who start businesses, thinking that you know better how the economic affairs of society should be organized.
And you do all this from the perspective of someone who it sounds like has worked for the government his whole life. I’m not putting that down, but how does your life experience really give you any credibility for the kind of critiques that you are making?
LikeLike
I don’t know why a good quote, even if repeated, should be irritating. I’m glad of it.
Russell, I grew up in WNY about 50 miles from Eastman Kodak’s headquarters.
Around that time it employed 60,000 men and women in the area. Not only that, year after year, hefty bonuses were paid to each. Union scouts could find no takers. Who needed a Union to ruin such a good thing?
That Kodak doesn’t exist anymore.
I don’t think we have much choice but to go smaller in scope. From the ways in which we describe our difficulties to the solutions we propose. I think a lot of the engaged young are there already.
Who knows, maybe even guilds could return. A decent guilds could also make up for the awful insufficiency of matriarchy.
Time will tell if we’ve lost all capacity for self-government.
LikeLike
Erik,
Good luck fighting in online discussion against retired dudes.
I tried what you are doing against a retired mainline episcopal. I know how these things end.
Staying on the sidelines,
Andrew
LikeLike
@ Curt:
It would help a lot if you could agree that individuals have limited time and money, and must therefore make choices about which social projects they want to tackle.
If you can admit that, then it’s a short trip to admitting that God’s calling in the secular life of the believer is not the same from individual to individual. One individual believer can be called by God to invest time and money in combatting racism, while another might be called to invest time and money in combatting medical journal fraud.
Can you agree so far?
Assuming so, then can you see that this is different from the mission of the church? Members serve in different ways, but the church in its official proclamations put forward judgments that are binding on all: “Thus saith the Lord.” That’s why the regulative principle and freedom of conscience go hand-in-hand.
We can tell all church members not to be racist (that is, to make negative judgments about one another based on race, inasmuch as Christians are all members of one body).
We cannot tell all church members to be politically active against racism. That might not be their calling.
LikeLike
Jeff,
Why do I have a duty to combat anything, other than my own sin?
What if I just want to mind my own business.
LikeLike
Here’s reformed reddit, sorted by all time best:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Reformed/top/?sort=top&t=all
LikeLike
Erik,
I’ve gathered that if you started your own business, you’ve seemed to forget one of its foundational parts: workers. That all of that risk will be lost without them.
But there is something else here from your note. Are you saying taking risks is more important than working? So that risk takers are to be rewarded and workers are to be given table scraps? Do you understand why the nation’s work ethic, especially among the young, is fading? Do you know what another word for a risk taker is? It is a gambler. Do you want society to tell people that gambling is more honorable than working?
If you really read my comments, you will realize that I never said anything about people starting their own businesses. What did I write? I wrote that the current private sector approach to benefits is there to benefit elites, hedge fund managers, and shareholders. And note that unless a shareholder buys stock that is originally issued, then the money spent on those shares never sees the company those shares represent.
But it isn’t just pensions that are under attack, it’s wages. A growing number of businesses base profits on low, poverty, or below poverty wages. A growing number of companies have their payrolls subsidized by government assistance programs and many of those same companies do what they can to avoid paying taxes. Did you know that even our troops and some airline pilots have required gov’t assistance programs to get by? Did you know that even some banks use gov’t assistance programs to subsidize their payrolls. Other forms of cheap labor come via offshoring, immigrant labor that has been trafficked here, and prison labor. And all of that is because labor has been made into a commodity by the economic system and that makes the worker disposable if the company can find a cheaper source of labor.
So what do you want for anybody who has started a business? A medal? Yes, people who start businesses take risks and that should be valued. But honoring that does not imply that we relegate workers to be disposable or underpaid status. Those who demonstrated that kind of superior-than-thou, hierarchical attitude were called pharisees in the NT though their superior-than-thou attitude covered a different sphere.
Finally, do you know why some companies have gone under? For example, what about nation’s steel industry? Yes, workers adopted the same maximize personal profits that management and the business as a whole did. So you are going to blame the workers, but not the others? Our steel industry suffered huge losses because they were competing against subsidized foreign steel industries. Other companies failed for additional reasons to the maximize personal profits mentality borrowed by workers and their union from management and owners. And I suppose you are going to tell me that only owners or managers are morally allowed to adopt that attitude?
If because of competition, companies are having to choose between paying fair and liveable wages or survival, is it possible that the economic system requiring such a choice is the problem?
Finally, I didn’t work for the government my whole life. See, you are telling me to not pass judgment on those who start their businesses while you jump from conclusion to conclusion about me. And I never passed judgment on those who started businesses. I did write about those that underpaid their employees or did not offer fair benefits and pensions. Why you think that serves as an indictment on all who started their businesses is a logical mystery.
LikeLike
Jeff,
People have varied times to work on causes. ANd how much they can is controlled by how many hours they work and how demanding it is. Then there are family obligations, possible neighborhood obligations, as well as Church.
But those demands should not affect our recognition for the need for the Church to speak out on issues. And if the Church did that, people who have so little spare time because of other demands in their lives, have a viable, if limited, way to speak out on issues.
So whatever calls we answer in life will depend on the resources we have to dedicate to those calls as well as the love we have for others that fuels the desire to be involved.
LikeLike
Erik,
Why should you care about anyone else than your own personal battles? Is that the attitude your theology has produced in you? Do you remember that God so loved the world and that we are charged to carry out the Great Commission?
LikeLike
D.G.,
You can drop the superior-than-thou attitude toward the left. The parable of the two men praying should tell you that.
I believe that I have already stated my church background before. And that I am not the only one from my tradition to be concerned about issues which I count as important. Of course, I am write to you who looks at neocalvinists as being below you. And realize that I have said multiple times that both 2kers and neocalvinist can learn from each other.
LikeLike
Curt,
I’m a worker, not a business owner. We have 40 or so people that I work with who are glad to have their jobs, are paid fairly, are not in a union, and are happy with their lives. We hardly ever have anyone quit to go work anyplace else.
The company owner makes more than we do and we are happy for him and hope that he continues to succeed so we can all continue to succeed as well.
Not everyone is nursing on a pickle of grievance like you.
LikeLike
Curt,
You’re not peddling the gospel and that’s what The Great Commission is about. You’re peddling left wing dogma, which is why no one here is embracing you.
LikeLike
and, DGH, since you and I like to channel Homer Simpson,
http://www.realclearscience.com/lists/pareidolia_in_space/
when the sun goes super nova, one word:
Doh!
LikeLike
Curt,
One of the things that keeps people from succeeding in America are poor public schools.
Are you in favor of breaking up teacher union monopolies in public schools and allowing public money to go to charter schools and private schools, especially in the inner cities?
Are you aware of the recent Court Case in California on this issue?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/29/vergara-v-california-the-most-important-court-case-you-ve-never-heard-of.html
LikeLike
For working stiffs like me
Erik,
I have more reason to be critical of public schools that you do. That is because I would have to teach their graduates. But let’s be clear about one thing, education is affected by more than just the schools, it is strongly affected by parents, trends, peers, economic environment and home life. To give an example from one of the local school districts around here. There was significant parental pressure put on one local school district to fire a particular teacher because of some of the low grades he was giving to students. What might played an important role in preserving this teacher’s job were the testimonials of his former students who were in college at that time. They wrote how his standards helped prepare them for college.
Give another example of outside influences on education. I know a woman who taught at an inner city elementary school. Because of the home lives of many of her students, she could not count on homework as a learning tool because the home environment for many of her students was too disruptive.
Of course, school administration philosophies, government programs like No Child Left Behind and teachers’ faults also contribute to the poor public school performances. And please don’t forget that students have a role to play in the failure of public schools too. Then you add to that diminishing budgets which result in overcrowded classes and the economic surroundings of the school also play a role.
Yes, public schools need more money, but such is not a silver bullet. Providing economic hope into many poor neighborhoods in the form of non-poverty wage jobs would go a long way in stabilizing the homes of many kids. Also parents who demand higher academic standards rather than threatening litigation over grades would also help schools perform better.
In my last couple years of teaching, I dealt with many students who were horribly prepared for college. Their high school math classes emphasized using calculators rather than understanding concepts. One student told me that his high school math class approached problems by telling him what data to enter into the calculator. In a trig class, I gave a quiz where calculators were not allowed because we were not yet using the trig functions and 1/4 of the class could not divide 60 into 34–the actual numbers from a specific quiz problem. Some of those students told me that such a division was impossible to perform without a calculator.
Also, and perhaps this is most tragic, most of these students were taught by some in their high schools that they could be anything they wanted to be. So I would tell them that I wanted to be a defensive lineman in the NFL. I said that I was big enough to play because the bigger they are, the harder they fall. I said I was strong enough to play because I could benchpress 85 lbs, 5 times–the athletes loved that line. However, I said that the only reason why I can’t be a defensive lineman in the NFL is because I am allergic to pain and discomfort. Some of them got the point.
Public education is running on 4 flat tires, not 1 or two. Parents and students are just as guilty as administrators and teachers in the failures of public schools. And yet, public schools still provide a potential and very important educational opportunity. And so your question, on which I am undecided, is not the only question that needs answer to turn things around. I’ve seen in my last year of teaching and where the wife teaches that unions are important. But they have faults as well.
LikeLike
Erik,
Realize that the Great Commission commands us to teach more than just what to believe initially. We are to teach people how to be Jesus’ disciples. That is what to believe and how to live. Now is being complicit to sin by remaining silent part of what it means to be Jesus’ disciple?
Yes, I teach other things than the Gospel. But I am teaching other things in addition to the Gospel because my political views sometimes lead into conversations about the Gospel with unbelievers.
LikeLike
Local free TV channel is showing “Annie Hall” and “Five Easy Pieces” tonight.
Who needs cable?
LikeLike
Curt,
You worked in education so you realize that fixing education is complex. You can bring some nuance to the discussion because you have first hand experience.
Now try to do the same thing in your analysis of capitalism. You struggle to do so, because you don’t have the same level of expertise. You resort to repeating a lot of slogans and stereotypes that you’ve heard from others.
LikeLike
Curt,
I think the thing you miss is you assume you can help group B merely by taking things from group A and giving them to group B.
The problem is, when group A figures out that you’re going to take things from them they change their behavior — they would rather not produce than produce and have you just take from them.
The result is that your favored group B just ends up worse off than before you set out to help them.
All do-gooder schemes have unforeseen and usually negative consequences. Markets have to be allowed to work freely, whether you like their outcomes or not.
LikeLike
Curt,
Capital votes with its feet. If a favorable return can’t be earned on it here, it flows to where a fair return can be earned. Why has production flowed to China? Because labor is plentiful and regulations are less onerous. You tax capital more heavily, it just continues to flee. It’s a losing proposition.
LikeLike
Erik,
You are confusing the words ‘fair’ and ‘favorable.’ For example, when the globalization leads to an increased labor supply causing a drop in wages, how is that fair for those who lose their jobs or whose next job pays poverty wages? Why is it that Reformed Christians will question any secular thing except the economic system in which they grew up?
LikeLike
Erik,
what is missing in your economic theory is consideration for interdependencies. This is caused by making assumptions of independence and by failing to step back and critically look at the current economic system.
We currently have a redistribution of wealth, but it is upwards, not downwards. And it is taking from workers or is putting people out of work so those at the top can maximize profits.
LikeLike
Curt, sin? Righteousness? Redemption?
Why do you obscure the gospel with your sense of social injustice?
LikeLike
D.G.,
I am not obscuring the Gospel. I saying things you already know to be true. That words can have multiple meanings and that those meanings depend on the context. What being righteous in society and having a righteous society are concepts 2kers pretty much acknowledge. And I will throw in what I heard Robert Godfrey say. He said that theology is a study of concepts, not definitions. If you don’t like my use of words, at least be able to identify the concepts because these concepts are not new.
In addition, all social justice does is to point out are group sins. If we are required to repent from individual sins, how is it that we can be apathetic to the sins our groups commit? And there is a simple solution to how one should respond to the sins of one’s group. We can both not contribute to those sins and warn people about how they are sinning when their group sins. Oh, there is one more thing we can do. We can ask for forgiveness for how we enabled the group to sin. After all, wouldn’t we do much of the same if we committed individual sins? In addition, we don’t have the freedom to define an act as a sin only when the individual does it.
Finally, I think one of the biggest problems you and others have with what I am saying here, and correct me if I’m wrong, is that recognizing corporate or group or societal sins calls on you to be more outward directed. Right now, you are content to be inner directed. Remember Erik’s note to Jeff:
hy do I have a duty to combat anything, other than my own sin?
What if I just want to mind my own business
The answer to Erik’s question is simple. Being concerned about others is what God did when He sent His son to die for our sins and be raised from the dead so that we might be raised with Him. In addition, the summation of the law is that we are to love others, not ourselves. Loving ourselves is assumed. We are to love God first and others after that. The summation of those God’s commandments directs us to be outer directed, not inner directed.
LikeLike
D.G.,
Sorry, I cut off one letter from Erik’s quote:
Why do I have a duty to combat anything, other than my own sin?
What if I just want to mind my own business
LikeLike
D.G.,
One more correction. Godfrey said that theology is a study of concepts, not words.
LikeLike
Curt,
You don’t get to make the rules, the Democratic Party doesn’t get to make the rules, and the United States doesn’t get to make the rules.
The people who make the rules are the billions of individuals who make buying and selling decisions each day.
You can either get in line with what they are doing or you can be a dinosaur with ideals and unsuccessfully try to get in their way.
People want to pay $2 for a widget at Wal-Mart. They don’t want to pay $20 so you can have a U.S. union craftsman make it in a U.S. union shop. Sorry.
And a fair return on capital is the same thing as a favorable return on capital when you are talking about anything that is not a regulated utility, and even then fair needs to equal favorable (ask Warren Buffett who owns Mid American Energy).
LikeLike
Curt,
You miss that me minding my own business and doing what I do helps others. 40 people support their families through the company that I work for. Probably 2,500 people have a place to live. My wife & kids are taken care of and my church is supported. Taxes get paid. And my benevolence has little to do with any of it. I just do what I was trained for and am interested in. This is how capitalism works.
LikeLike
One of the formative experiences of my life was when, as an idealistic college freshman, I was preparing to go on an inner city missions trip over Christmas break. I was giving my parents a hard time over what they were (not) doing to help the homeless. My dad responded that his doing his job for the previous 20 years had helped the 5 of us in our family not be homeless.
My eyes were opened.
LikeLike
Curt, I wonder if you could state in one succinct sentence what the gospel is?
LikeLike
Perhaps a Merriam-Webster refresher course on the meaning of the word “socialism” would be appropriate, and are those in favour of it ready to give up all their “stuff” (house, car, PC, I phone, ad infinitum) to see it parceled out to those who government decides needs it best?
Socialism:
1 : any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2 a : a system of society or group living in which there is no private property
b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3: a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done.
Does anyone think the “deciding agency”, which will have total control of your goods/money/you, consider “giving” your stuff/money to any work that promotes the preaching of the Gospel?
Neither the Russian 1917-1991, or German 1933-1945 versions of Socialist government had any use for the Gospel, or those who promoted it.
Just some things to consider… .
LikeLike
Russell, I’m partial to the Polish proverb: “Under capitalism man exploits man; under socialism the reverse is true.”
LikeLike
“Group living.”
Oh, goody. I can barely get along with the people whom I choose to associate with…
The dangerous thing is that Americans are dumb enough to actually vote for politicians who would like to institute this crap.
LikeLike
Curt, then be clear about the gospel. If groups sin, how are groups saved? How can the United States be right with God?
You dabble in theological language.
LikeLike
The core of Curt’s aspiration is utopian. But it’s a chaste utopia so right there he’s lost 90% of his potential recruits.
LikeLike
Curt Rauschenbusch:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Rauschenbusch
LikeLike
If you’re going to promote religious socialism, you at least have to put an Oneida Community spin on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oneida_Community
LikeLike
Zrim: “Russell, I’m partial to the Polish proverb: “Under capitalism man exploits man; under socialism the reverse is true.”
Zrim, what then, do you propose to solve the your Capitalist/Socialist economic enigma that would be in accord with both the Bible and the Bill of Rights?
LikeLike
Interesting C-Span discussion on Left & Right in Hollywood:
http://www.c-span.org/video/?303403-1/book-discussion-hollywood-left-right
LikeLike
The only Christian nation is the church.
LikeLike
Erik,
Quite simply, I am a Christian Fundamentalist who is also a socialist. But what I am promoting in this thread is the idea that 2Kers and neoCalvinists can learn from each other. Yes, the discussion gets sidetracked. I faulted the 2k side because of their withdrawing from the world and your comment stating that you was only concerned about your own sins and the comments exercising an unbalanced emphasis on believer liberty at least partially verified my interpretation.
And I have also been specific as to what neocalvinists can learn from 2kers. 2Kers, for the most part, do not seek Christian privilege in society. This is is correction which neocalvinists would do better if they learned it.
So that is what I promoted and I did that from Christian Fundamentalist-Socialist perspective. I was not promoting a ‘religious socialism.’ Rather, from my perspective, I was saying that the two sides can learn from each other. But it seems that for some 2kers here, at least half of that idea is absurd. This is where what King said in speaking against the Vietnam War comes into play. I will modify just one part of it to make it appropriate for here:
The ________ arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just
LikeLike
D.G.,
I’ve already been clear regarding this question, but just like before, you ignore the answer. Just because groups cannot be saved doesn’t mean that groups don’t sin. Christians, or those who become Christians, in those groups are saved. And one of the results of being saved is our Holy Spirit aided battle against all of our sins including our participation in group sins. Seeing that failing to love our neighbor is a sin and seeing how the Good Samaritan parable illustrates what it means to love one’s neighbor, it seems that we are all in the same boat in our struggle against sin.
Groups can repent in the sense of stopping their sins. But because groups aren’t saved as groups, doesn’t mean that when they commits murder that it isn’t a sin just because they can’t be saved. I see no scriptural justification for that logic. And, if you remember the commentary quote I produced earlier, we are involved in the sins of others when we don’t do what we can to tell them of their sins. BTW, that quote, about which no one asked, came from Calvin’s commentary on Joshua as he was dealing with the chapter on Achan’s sin.
LikeLike
Curt, so you believe in personal salvation but not social salvation.
You leave societies with no hope. You think groups can stop sinning? Are you for real? Ever heard of regeneration? Sanctification?
But all you do is do your imitation of a prophet. “You’re sinning!” But you offer no consolation.
And yet, you think all this is Christian. As I asked, are you for real?
LikeLike
D.G.,
All you are trying to do is to protect one of 2KT’s Achilles Heels with logic that is not backed up by Scripture. We know from both Testaments that nations sin and that God’s wrath is shown to them. But you want to say that unless there is group/societal/national salvation, then what would be considered sin for individuals to do is not sin for them to do.
And yes, nations can stop sinning. But that is said in a context, not be taken absolutely. No nationw will quit all of its sins, but can curb its sins, especially its most grievous ones.
You are simply playing this logic game while never addressing the Scriptures that state the opposite of what you believe. And at the same time, you want to talk down to me by asking if I am for real. Again, if theology isn’t helping bear the fruit of the spirit, some self-reflection is needed.
LikeLike
Curt, I’m not understanding the method here.
If you would like to make a sustained argument from the Scripture for your position, then please do so. We are ready and willing to hear it and consider it.
But your method so far has been to point vaguely in the direction of the OT prophets. You are then surprised that the rest of us don’t see what you see. And then you speak as if we don’t want to listen to the Scripture … When in fact, we simply (well, at least I simply) don’t think you have yet made a case.
DGHs point is not to deflect, but to ask for refinement. If individuals within groups can only be saved as individuals because only individuals can have faith, then is it not possible that individuals within groups can only sin as individuals, because only individuals can exercise unbelief?
You deny, but the grounds are unclear.
I would add an objection of my own: why do you equate “stop sinning” with “repenting”?
I really do think you have an argument in mind, but you have been coy so far about laying your cards down. It would really help to have you lay it all out clearly.
LikeLike
Curt, I’ll ask again: Can you define in one succinct sentence what the gospel is?
LikeLike
And the guy that hangs out with the virtuous Occupy Movement dirtbags tries to holy juke DGH. Nice.
LikeLike
Here, conservative American Xians, if you ever wonder “Why do I not live in squalid, crime-infested tent cities with anarchists, rapists, and leeches?” Curt Che has the answer.
http://flamingfundamentalist.blogspot.com/2011/11/why-many-christians-dont-occupy.html
LikeLike
During the Occupy movement up here, one newspaper took heat sensing equipment to the overrun park to see who was actually spending the night in tents. Turned out almost nobody, the protestors were all booked at the Holiday Inn across the street. Mind you, it was a bit cold that night.
LikeLike
Curt,
If an individual came to me and asked how he could avoid sin I would suggest that he attend church to hear the preaching of the Word, that he partake of the sacraments, and that he engage in prayer.
What advice would I give to a nation on how it could avoid sin?
LikeLike
Jeff – I really do think you have an argument in mind, but you have been coy so far about laying your cards down. It would really help to have you lay it all out clearly.
Erik – We’re still at the stage (after several months) that we’re trying to determine if Curt is “coy” or if it’s just a case of not all his circuits firing correctly.
There’s also the possibility that he’s just a put on, but he’s gone to a lot of work to carry that on this long.
LikeLike
In the end, what exactly did the Occupy movement accomplish, other than several cases of crabs and a slew of unplanned pregnancies?
I continue to commend to anyone who wants to think about counterculture movements the seminal films “Monterey Pop” and “Gimme Shelter”. Those two films illustrate perfectly how youthful, left-leaning idealism begins with hope but inevitably ends in depravity and death. Curt is of that generation, but has not yet leaned these lessons.
I also commend the 1980 film “Serial”.
LikeLike
DGH said: “The difference is that ministers and prophets speak to God’s people, not to not God’s people.”
Sorry to go Biblicist on you, but this is a “theological society” blog. Prophets, however, DO at times speak truth to unbelievers. Think Moses (Deut 34:10) speaking to Pharaoh. Or, Elijah to the Sidonite widow, and Elisha to Naaman the Syrian (Luke 4:24-27). Think Jonah to Nineveh. Or, John the Baptist, speaking to Herod (Matt 14:3,4). Some of the other minor prophets had choice words for the Philistines, to people in Tyre, to Edom, to Ammon, to Moab, et al.
Is it the 2K position that “yeah, that was then, but this is now”, and that the church does not have prophets, or a prophetic voice, to speak truth to the world?
(To be clear, I’m not a defender of any of Curt’s views or arguments.)
LikeLike
Erik, an intelligent person who honestly cared to test our beliefs shouldn’t take too long to figure out what are real concerns to us.
Instead we get the same old third-rate reenactment of “did God really say????” by the usual type of lame-off.
LikeLike
Curt, are you for real? I can’t quit any of my sins. Even my good works are sinful. But a nation will quit of some of its sins? Spend more time with the Confession than the Manifesto.
LikeLike
Petros, the exceptions that prove the rule. Ever heard of the major prophets? Isaiah (only one), Jeremiah, Ezekiel? Were they speaking to the whole world?
If only you’d go biblicist. You seem to go cherry picking.
LikeLike
D.G.,
Again, you misuse logic. But not only that, you want to construct a strawman argument. For example, regarding what you can do I wrote the following:
And one of the results of being saved is our Holy Spirit aided battle against all of our sins including our participation in group sins.
Am I saying that you are without sin there? How about what else I wrote:
And yes, nations can stop sinning. But that is said in a context, not be taken absolutely. No nationw will quit all of its sins, but can curb its sins, especially its most grievous ones.
How is it that I said that a nation can quit its sins absolutely? How? All I wrote was that a nation can curb its sins and history can confirm or deny that. And here, because of the kind of quantifier involved, I can prove by example. We can take racism in America as an example. Does it exist? Certainly. Does it exist to the degree that it did before? The fact that people can honestly admit that progress has been made means that the nation has curbed its sin of racism. There is still quite a bit of it out there, but it is not like it was before.
So thus far, your protection of 2KT’s achilles heel has been that without group salvation, there is no group sin. Now your argument turns to nihilism, if you can’t stop sinning, how can a nation? Our working definition of terms is important here. I was clear in saying that I am not talking about stopping sinning in an absolute sense. Rather, I am talking about reducing the amount of sin there. And here, history can provide multiple examples that show that nations can reduce grievous sins, I provided one such example.
LikeLike
Erik,
The history of social movements shows that lack of cooperation by the masses can trump wealth.
Context is important regarding nation’s sins. That is because we are not dealing with the same standard of righteousness regarding nations as we would individuals. That is because the societies of nations combine those in the Church and those out of it. 2kers recognize this otherwise they would never be able to, on an individual basis, join nonChristians on joint social ventures. Thus, what one would say to a nation is to refrain from oppressing or neglecting the vulnerable and those in need. And that abstaining from hurting or ignoring people is applicable to those within one’s borders to those outside of one’s borders.
LikeLike
Erik,
People insult those who are different because they ignorant. And by insulting others, those who insult imply a superiority about themselves. And that associates them with the pharisee from the parable of the two men praying. Is that what you want?
Besides saving some from foreclosures, helping others recover from hurricane Sandy, having a voice in legislation regarding the financial sector, and drawing people’s attention to serious problems that exist and thus giving them an opportunity to speak out, the occupy movement is still at work.
LikeLike
Kent,
Tell me the specific night and location for which they did that? Since I participated in the encampments both staying and providing material goods, as well as knowing friends who participated, I know what many did to keep the encampments.
LikeLike
D.G.,
Regarding Petros’ note, OT prophets speaking neighbors is not the same as speaking to the whole world. But here are a couple of examples. Jonah and Amos. Yes, most of what the prophets said was Israel. But why? What was the historical context? Why were the exceptions the exceptions back then?
LikeLike
Curt – The history of social movements shows that lack of cooperation by the masses can trump wealth.
Erik – I have no idea what that means.
LikeLike
Curt – Thus, what one would say to a nation is to refrain from oppressing or neglecting the vulnerable and those in need. And that abstaining from hurting or ignoring people is applicable to those within one’s borders to those outside of one’s borders.
Erik – What does all this mean, though? The janitor at the bank should make the same amount as the CEO? We shouldn’t go after terrorists because they’re just misunderstood?
These are complicated questions that get worked out through the free market and the political process. What makes you believe that Christian churches have any special knowledge to answer these questions, and, even if they did, that they have the power to enforce their answers?
LikeLike
Curt,
The Occupy Movement would do more for society by just getting jobs, getting haircuts, and showing up to work.
LikeLike
Curt advising young people to quit because life isn’t fair and you will have to work very hard to make something of yourself, is disgusting.
LikeLike
Curt,
If you want to help the financial sector, push for banks to loan money only to people who can pay it back and push for bank employees and shareholders to be held financially accountable when they fail to do that. It’s when political pressure is applied so that they have incentives to make stupid loans that the financial sector gets into trouble.
You presumably start from the standpoint that it’s not fair that some people own houses when others don’t and conclude that the financial sector is unjust. That’s where the problems begin.
LikeLike
Big difference between prophets and anyone we’re interacting with today: prophets had explicit instructions from God.
LikeLike
Petros,
But doesn’t the NT interpret the OT?
I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”
So, Paul, when you say you have nothing to do with judging outsiders and it’s those inside we should worry about and to let God judge those outside, you mean we should stand over the world and judge it, right?
LikeLike
I won’t completely write off any possibility of signs or wonders or prophecy potentially happening today or in the future. If we have an eschatology that is literal to Revelation and it happens in the future, then they will be happening for sure
It’s just that what is being boasted of as signs/wonders/prophecy these days isn’t approaching Biblical standards by a long shot.
LikeLike
Curt,
When you were Occupying did you shower?
LikeLike
Curt, recommended reading.
LikeLike
Communism was about terror and the torture and murder of any of their enemies, even concocting show trials to torture and murder people on their side.
Not sure why people worship this unless they want to torture and murder people who just happen to disagree with them.
LikeLike
Zrim,
On my end, I’m just trying to better understand 2K thinking and rationale (some of which I’m very sympathetic to, btw).
Yes, a valid and important hermeneutic is for Scripture to interpret Scripture. And, I’d agree that the main focus of the NT is get Christians to live like Christians, and not on how to get unbelievers to live like Christians.
So, to net it out, you’re kind of making a dispensational argument, right? That is, with the advent of the NT, there is no longer a legitimate prophetic role that any of God’s people might have to the world at large, is that right?
LikeLike
Petros, no. You don’t really expect a Reformed believer to admit to dispensational reasoning, do you? There is indeed a legitimate prophetic role that God’s people have to the world at large. It’s the gospel of God’s reconciliation of sinners to himself by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone. And if you’re trying to better understand 2k thinking, write this down, because the preservation of said gospel to shine as brightly as possible and to be held out unfettered by the political and social interests of men is a vital part of it. Social and political gospel gets quite in the way of the actual gospel, which is why is gets 2k dander up. And to up the ante, it is the culturalist variant of law-gospel confusion.
LikeLike
Curt, oh, you meant stopping sinning in an absolute sense. That clears it up.
Not.
Have you ever heard of lusting or hating in your heart? But if nation’s don’t have absolute hearts, then I guess you’re good to go.
LikeLike
Petros, you’ve hardly proved that the OT prophets had a prophetic role to the larger world. But if they did, are you willing to bear the name neo-theonomist?
LikeLike
Kent,
But it would be different if the Wisconsin-Madison faculty senate had been in charge…
LikeLike
Zrim,
That’s a good comment, and a blog post once I’m not on my phone.
LikeLike
D.G.,
You mean that a person has not sinned less, drinking, if they are getting drunk fewer times? Or do you mean that a person has not sinned less because whereas they use to always give into lust, now they don’t even though they still lust?
And let me ask this, according to the Old Testament, Israel sinned against God. Was it because Israel was the only nation with a heart? Or was the only time Israel had a heart was during OT Times?
You can take as many logical detours as you want. Both Testaments tell us that nations go awry and that God is angry with them. Simple logic tells us that when a group does what an individual does, and what that individual does is sin, then what the group is doing is sin But these things hit the achilles heel of 2KT and so you keep coming with your logic games, some of which nothing more than exhibits in all-or-nothing thinking.
LikeLike
D.G.,
Didn’t you read my comment in that recommended reading you suggested. My comment has been there for most of the day.
LikeLike
Curt, again, all prophet, no preacher. Where’s the good news. Nations sin. So how are nations saved? You admit nations can’t be saved (though you never mention that Israel could have if it kept all of the law). So you are basically employing Christian ideas for your leftist ends. You serve a different god.
LikeLike
Curt, have you ever considered that national sin is only the aggregation of persons sinning? If so, then you’d know that national salvation is possible. Every citizen trusts Christ.
But then you have the problem of Christians still sinning, both outwardly and inwardly. And then you’re back to national sin and injustice.
Or maybe you only want to redistribute wealth. If so, just say so, don’t be a pietist, and leave Christianity out of it.
LikeLike
Hey, you can take me on as many logical detours as you want but we all know:
– Sharks live in the water
– There is water in my toilet
– I rest my case
LikeLike
D.G.,
Again, you wish to use logic to rule out something that is not only logical from a Scriptural point of view but is also stated in the scriptures. And the logic you employ is not in the NT. And here, it isn’t that I disagree with talking about the accumulated sins of a group, but groups also sin because they act as a single entity. Remember that not everyone is equally involved in group sin whether that group is simply a bunch of people or a nation.
Now we can continue to argue about whether groups sin or not, and you can continue to be silent on the relevant passages from Revelation which I have mentioned a long time ago in a thread far, far away. We can, but what seems to be the sore point for you is what are we as Christians are called to do about the sin of any group we belong to? Can we ignore that sin if we aren’t directly involved? Let’s go to what Calvin said in his commentary on Achan’s sin:
But here it is easy to object that all were ignorant of the theft, and that therefore there is no room for the maxim, that he who allows a crime to be committed when he can prevent it is its perpetrator. I certainly admit it not to be clear why a private crime is imputed to the whole people, unless it be that they had not previously been sufficiently careful to punish misdeeds, and that possibly owing to this, the person actually guilty in the present instance had sinned with greater boldness.
Link for the commentary is http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/calvin/cc07/cc07009.htm
FYI, Keller follows Calvin’s thought here when Keller talks about corporate guilt.
Here we have Israel being blamed for the sin of one man. Israel itself is said to have sinned. And what is the maxim Calvin quotes? And where does Calvin see Israel’s guilt for Achan’s sin?
So are we free to ignore the sins of our groups as long as we don’t contribute to them? Is our silence a sign of innocence or complicity? And when we talk about national sins, weren’t the oppression of others and the neglecting of injustices considered to be some of Israel’s sins? So when you chide me about the redistribution of wealth, is your concern there about piety or inconvenience?
LikeLike
Curt,
Achan’s sin was theft.
Forced redistribution of wealth is theft.
So if our nation does what you want, using your logic, wouldn’t our nation be displeasing God?
What else are you willing to make Old Testament Israel normative for? A lot of your (non-fundamentalist) leftist allies wouldn’t like where that leads.
LikeLike
http://literatecomments.com/2015/02/24/what-prophetic-role-do-gods-people-have-to-the-world-at-large/
LikeLike
Curt,
You protest with Occupy against capitalism.
Do you also protest in front of abortion clinics and against gay marriage? Do you protest against government waste?
LikeLike
Curt, this is tedious. You apply theological notions of sin and righteousness where they don’t belong because you admit that corporate salvation is not an option. You appeal to the OT but say you’re not a theonomist. You talk about Israel’s sin but not about her salvation. Where did it come from? From repenting from sin? Is that how Israel would have been saved even if Achan hadn’t sinned? You talk of logic but you won’t follow yours. All you want is the pietist’s justification for his politics.
But where did Israel’s salvation come from? From Christ, the one who didn’t talk about all the corporate sins around him — nor did his followers.
But pound your fist harder, Curt. Maybe that will get through to Wall St.
LikeLike
There most certainly are limited analogies between the individual Christian and the community of which they are a part. Just as outward obedience to God’s law is an affront to Him if not from a heart of faith, so is a community that has been coerced into resentful unwilling obedience at the point of the magistrate. If anything, we’ve then pushed them further from actual surrender.
The gospel goal is to lead men to Christ, not strong arm them into moralism. That doesn’t mean that Christians shouldn’t vote or participate in politics. OR even peacefully protest. There have been lives saved and converts made in sane godly abortion clinic protests. I know some. However, changing society is not only not the gospel, but is impossible if not done one individual at a time as they come to Christ anyway.
Forced redistribution of wealth IS theft. It is legalized extortion and has been a monstrous disaster everywhere of consequence it’s been inflicted upon a populous. Little rinky dink countries with the population of Maryland and the geopolitical significance of a scrapbooking club teach this nation nothing of value.
LikeLike
Curt,
Congrads on getting a mention in DG’s post.
Your name shows up a lot in my feedly device
http://feedly.com/i/subscription/feed/https://oldlife.org/comments/feed/
Still no interest in golf?
Peace.
LikeLike
Curt,
A study in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal that demonstrates how attempts to mandate wealth redistribution through a higher, government-mandated minimum wage actually do not end up helping the poor.
http://literatecomments.com/2015/02/24/the-minimum-wage-stealth-tax-on-the-poor/
LikeLike
Curt,
If you’re going to stand around protesting, do it like this guy and actually have an impact on real people’s lives:
LikeLike
DGH: Curt, this is tedious
Ya think? I was there 6 months ago…
LikeLike
Erik,
No one here knows Curt, right?
It’s possible he’s more drunk ex pastor than oldlife theologian..
LikeLike
Andrew,
I think Curt’s a decent guy. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t keep talking to him per my commitment to avoid toxic knuckleheads like the ebola virus.
LikeLike
…changing society is not only not the gospel, but is impossible if not done one individual at a time as they come to Christ anyway.
Ding on what isn’t the gospel, but resounding gong on the pious societal analysis (see Hunter).
Forced redistribution of wealth IS theft.
Just don’t go calling taxation (even the kind and amount you don’t like much) theft.
LikeLike
Zrim,
But are you more likely to leave your house unlocked in Pella, Orange City, and Lynden or in Detroit, Memphis, and Chicago?
Some of that is size of city but some of that is the demographics of the residents and their religious commitments.
I would feel better leaving it unlocked in Salt Lake City than in San Francisco.
LikeLike
Erik, I lock up more in transformed Little Geneva than I do in secular (and smaller) Traverse City, because I’ve experienced more crime in the former than latter. Not sure any of it means much in either direction.
LikeLike
I left out Grand Rapids because it’s big city (ish). I agree there is sin wherever you live. I disagree that sins that effect one’s physical safety and property are equally distributed throughout the country. Some of it is poverty, some of it is family, some of it is religious commitment — and not just Christian commitment. I would feel equally safe in a Mormon or Confucian enclave in which religion promoted values of non-theft and non-violence. An Islamic enclave — not so much these days, especially overseas.
LikeLike
Erik, I went with what I’ve experienced. Works better than all the theorizing, especially since that always seems to buttress the kinds of theories that make believers come off as the best humans around, which my Calvinism (and experience) cannot abide.
LikeLike
The Mormons in show “Hell on wheels” were spooky.
LikeLike
I’d feel completely at ease on the compound surrounded by grizzled old men and their sister wives…
LikeLike
Reminds me of playing church league basketball against the Mormons.
65 year old patriarch would show up and play in his overalls. Cheap shot artist.
LikeLike
Zrim,
Clearly you’re living around the wrong Calvinists.
You need to live amongst the Obedience Boys and you’ll be just fine.
LikeLike
The Dutch I trust, it’s the Calvinists I wonder about–or is it the other way around?
LikeLike
This thread reminds me of the American Idol singing contest where a contestant finds out for the first time they can’t sing. Change singer to prophet and this has been Curt’s interaction to the reception of his ideas.
LikeLike
The storm off in that clip was a toss up for how MJ stormed off though.
LikeLike
Chris,
That clip made my day.
“Well, weirdness is originality, too.”
Amen.
LikeLike
Erik,
Are you aware that the biggest financial losses from the 2008 collapse was due to derived financial products rather than loans. And that what also helped trigger the collapse was a sudden decrease in property values. In the meantime, most of the financial institutions that were hit the hardest had nothing to do with issuing loans, they were the ones dealing and insuring known faulty products.
Finally, if you want those lending the money to fully vet borrowers, then don’t the lenders sell the mortgages so that the lenders make a profit and those buying the mortgages take the risk.
Please study the French Revolution. Please realize the side the Church took in that revolution and what it cost both the Church and society for the stand it took. See, the difference between the founding of our nation and Europe back then. It was not that one side had elites and the other didin’t. Both had elites but one set was based on land, loans, and slavery, while Europe’s elites were born into nobility. In either case, when the elites abuse those below them, the Church has at least two responsibilities. One is to help those who are exploited. Part of that help is to tell society to help the victims because the Church can’t do it by itself. The other responsibility is to preach repentance to those who are exploiting others. The Church can do this from a common grace perspective and the Church can do this from a Special Grace perspective. But for the Church to be silent because it is only interested in conducting alter calls or the Reformed equivalent is for the Church to side with those doing the exploiting.
Finally, when you read from the Wall Street Journal, consider the lack of objectivity. See, my political side’s first concern isn’t about the redistribution of wealth; it is about the redistribution of power. When money rules society, we have a one-dollar one-vote system. And the more we have democracy, the more we have a one-person one-vote system. Now guess why the Wall Street Journal might not be in favor of the latter system even when there are successful businesses run democratically.
LikeLike
Erik,
If you had split time better between both Zinn and King and the confession, you would know what I mean. No matter how rich and powerful the public and private sector elites are, they depend a lot on our cooperation. Our cooperation can mean buying their products. Our cooperation can mean voting for the two major parties. Our cooperation can mean be silent and watch tv rather than caring about what is right and those in need. You don’t have to be radical by committing civil disobedience, though that is another way of challenging the elites. The movie Selma showed how that could work.
Well, stop cooperating. Vote for 3rd party candidates. Conservatives have at least 2 third parties to choose from. Being on the Left, I have a few more options in terms of the number of political parties. Don’t buy their products or shop at stores that do no pay and treat their employees well. Spend more time being aware of not just your situation, but the situations of those who are more vulnerable than you. You can write about things, speak out, protest, and help others. We don’t have to break the law to put pressure on the elites, all we have to do it get enough people to act persistently and elites start making changes.
LikeLike
D.G.,
FYI, I spend more time reading your comments than I do reading the manifesto. But perhaps there is something you can do. Educate yourself so you are not so reliant on stereotypes.
LikeLike
Curt – Are you aware that the biggest financial losses from the 2008 collapse was due to derived financial products rather than loans. And that what also helped trigger the collapse was a sudden decrease in property values.
Erik – Derivatives lose value because the assets on which they are based lose value. In this case, the underlying assets were pools of ridiculous loans made to people who couldn’t or wouldn’t pay them back.
The only reason property values decreased is that they were inflated by people’s ability to borrow ridiculous amounts of money based on their incomes.
A day laborer in California shouldn’t be given a $500,000 loan to buy a house. Everyone involved in that transaction deserves to lose their butt, from the day laborer, to the banker, to the government regulator, to the investment banker who packaged the loan into a security, to the rating agency, to the politician who encouraged the bank to do it. They all deserved to go broke if not go to jail.
You really don’t understand how money and risk work, which renders your entire critique suspect.
LikeLike
Curt,
The only thing that made the whole debacle possible was people’s beliefs that the government would backstop them. Make a risky bet that works out — you make a lot of money. Make a risky bet that doesn’t work out — the government will keep you afloat.
The entire crisis would not have been possible without politicians and you want politicians to get more involved in the economy.
LikeLike
This from kent back in January came to mind as I drove to work today, thinking about Curt’s approach here:
Source
LikeLike
Curt,
Perhaps your biggest weakness is you think you’ve identified who the bad guys in society are.
The problem is, there are bad guys all over the place — rich, poor, Democrat, Republican, black, white, Christian, non-Christian.
You want the church to pick a side, but whatever side they pick, they’re compromised because they’re aligned with bad guys.
You want to damage the church.
LikeLike
Curt,
Everyone gets only one vote regardless of how much money they have.
You just don’t like it that people believe the messages of people with money.
Labor unions, government employee unions, environmental activists, and gay rights activists have money too, though, and they send out messages as well.
Getting money out of politics solves nothing, but it’s the left’s apocalyptic issue right now because they lost badly in 2014.
LikeLike
Curt,
Basically you’ve become a conspiracy theorist. You’re just an oddball in our circles because you’re a left-wing conspiracy theorists. We all know conspiracy theorists personally, most of them just happen to come from the right.
I’ll read Zinn when you read “Christian Renewal”.
LikeLike
Curt, are you involved in the OPC’s efforts towards the poor?
http://opc.org/committee_dm.html
I fear you may need to find a better outlet for the needs you percieve than through blogging, but that’s just me and my opinions.
You might enjoy watching the 2010 diaconal summit videos in the underlying link, I was there, it’s a very good presentation by PCA Ruling Elder Brian Fikkert, based on his book When Helping Hurts.
Peace to you on your journey.
LikeLike
D.G.,
In one sense, we are not as different as it appears; we both have political-economic leanings. The difference between us is that you lean toward the system you were immersed, not sprinkled, I’ve read other approaches.
LikeLike
Erik,
You had an unregulated derivatives market. You had financial incentive for lenders to vet borrowers because they were turning around and selling the mortgages in financial products. You fraudulent ratings of these products. You had insurance type policies on these products that anyone could buy. And you had financial institutions that were overleveraged. The system was rigged to live off of short-term spikes in profits for certain employees in the financial sector with no concern for the repercussions that both their own firms and the system would have to suffer through–except many of their own firms got bailed out.
Was there anything else I forgot?
LikeLike
D.G.,
Whose god is being served when all we care about is our own personal righteousness when others around us are suffering? What you don’t understand is this: I see a difference between my political views and my activism. I don’t expect my activism to convert people to my political views. Rather, my activism is there to call attention to injustice. Now, what god is being served by calling attention to injustice.
In addition, I’ve been able to preach the Gospel to people because my activism has opened those doors to do so. In fact, consider one of my most recents blogposts:
http://flamingfundamentalist.blogspot.com/2015/02/what-was-obamas-sin-at-national-prayer.html
LikeLike
Curt, maybe three times is a charm. You say again your activism opens the way to preach the gospel to people (you’re ordained?). I ask thrice: in one succinct sentence, what is the gospel?
LikeLike
Curt,
So how do you fix the system so that it doesn’t happen again?
Remove the backstop and take away the notion that certain firms are too big to fail.
If they’re truly too big to fail, break them up while they’re solvent. Don’t wait until they’ve failed and have to clean up the mess.
LikeLike
And don’t force people to loan money to people who can’t pay it back.
If you want to do that, make the politicians demanding it cosign the loan.
LikeLike
Curt,
How do you identify injustice?
LikeLike
Erik,
Again, look at the system that the financial sector created. One loans the money but then sells the loans. And it wasn’t the loans, as faulty as they were themselves, that caused the problem, it was the financial products and schemes that used those loans. And to single out the loans is to ignore the faults and fraud practiced by the financial sector.
LikeLike
Curt’s ideal church exists, and the just went all Star Wars Episode 1 on some trade federation. http://www.pcusa.org/news/2015/2/24/presbyterian-church-us-joins-interfaith-coalition-/
LikeLike
Erik,
Look at job loss, poverty pay levels, poverty, limited or no access to healthcare, lack of housing, incarceration rates and differences in how the law is enforced on different groups, and police brutality and the killing of unarmed people and you will see one source of injustices. They deal with systemic injustices. But then you also have to include the one-on-one crimes also because that is a big source of injustice. Then you look at the environmental damage that is tolerated. And you look at government-business corruption. That is a partial list.
What do you use to identify injustice?
LikeLike
And Curt, the PCUSA loves fundamentalists — they side with Islamic fundies against the evil USAmericans every chance they get. DIVEST FROM ISRAEL! PLO! PLO! PLO!
LikeLike
We are not so different.
LikeLike
Curt,
How would the derivatives go bad if the loans were performing? That makes no sense.
You’re desperate to not blame any borrowers in this. That’s dishonest.
LikeLike
Curt,
I identify injustice when someone violates a law and is convicted in court.
Pretty simple.
LikeLike
Curt,
You left off welfare fraud, food stamp fraud, fraud committed by employees against employers, workers compensation system fraud, voter fraud, government waste, government employee pensions that crowd out other government spending, union protection of poor teachers at the expense of kids…
LikeLike
What is the church doing to combat those injustices?
LikeLike
Erik,
Except for government pensions, I did leave those out, thank you. But note your filter. It seems that you left out corporate corruption including government-corporate corruption and those costs are enormous and greater than any other costs our government has. In fact individual welfare fraud doesn’t come close to competing in costs with government-corporate corruption. In addition, the instances of voter fraud are rather minimal.
So as your list seems uninterested in protecting the vulnerable, you ask an interesting question: What is the Church doing to combat those injustices? By preaching Romans 13 and other scriptures, it does so indirectly. But I would have no problems with the Church directly addressing those forms of corruption from the pulpit. Would you return the favor on corporate and government-corporate forms of corruption from the pulpit? Would you have a problem with our immoral wars being addressed from the pulpit?
BTW, you will need to prove how pensions are a form of corruption.
LikeLike
Erik,
Some loans went bad because as, after being overinflated, housing values fell and people had more financial incentive, or perhaps no other practical choice than, to walk away from their mortgages. In addition, there were predatory loans that began as being manageable and then were defaulted on because the interest rates shot up. In fact, before the collapse, the Bush Administration made a big deal of the new levels of home ownership in the nation. But it was the kind of insurance policies that were written for the financial products of bad loans and the overleveraging that was practiced that greatly magnified the troubles with loan payments to a point of nearly collapsing the economy. Remember that anyone could buy such insurance policies on any set of mortgages. Now picture that practice in your neighborhood where anyone could buy fire insurance on your home. Your home fire means far more than one payout for losses. So what kind of incentive would that provide for your neighbors?
LikeLike
Zrim,
What did my article say?
LikeLike
Curt, you’re an activist because
you sayyou blog? Sheeeeiiihht.I blog more than you. That makes more of an activist than you.
LikeLike
Curt,
Addressed from the pulpit to who?
LikeLike
Curt,
You’re full of it. Have you read Michael Lewis’s “The Big Short”? You need to read something besides “The Nation” on the crisis. You’re being lied to.
LikeLike
Curt,
Yeah, it was all “The Bush Administration”. Which party has more voters who can’t afford to own a home?
LikeLike
Curt,
How do you feel about corporate welfare to green companies like Sondra that go belly up?
LikeLike
Solyndra
LikeLike
Curt,
What you’re not getting is all we have to do is battle you to a stalemate. You want to pick a side in the culture war and get the church on it. Both sides have corruption, though. You need to prove the clear moral superiority of your side. We win a tie.
LikeLike
Curt, nothing that answered my question.
LikeLike
D.G.,
Yours is an assumption. I’ve been to and led protests, have participated in planning meetings, committees, and encampments, and have participated in other writings in addition to blogging. But it looks like you are always looking for a chance to say something negative about me. You have been from the beginning mostly because we have different political views. You chide me for what I read while you take for granted what you have absorbed from your environment. You seem to have problems discussing these issues as an equal. And that I’ve shown you to be wrong about my being an activist will not stop you from looking for the next fault. Do you realize what kind of representative you are for the Reformed Faith? You like to assume some kind of authoritarian position over those with different views than yours.
Do you know what caused me to change politically? It was the actions of a nominal Roman Catholic coworker of mine. Having heard that kid at school had to walk through some rough neighborhoods to get home after being on the bus, she took the initiative to offer him a ride home for any day. BTW, she got off of work at around 8:00. So she gave this kid a ride home from school whenever he wanted for a semester, if not a year. And though she was scared during each trip, her compassion caused her to continue giving the kid a ride. And I said to myself, this kind of compassion seems biblical, but I hardly see any of it at my OPC church. So I figured that maybe us conservatives don’t know everything and so after a couple of years, I started reading people on the Left.
I read King and saw his aversion to both external and internal violence and his passion for winning people over. That seemed pretty Biblical to me even with all of his faults. I read Chomsky and he demonstrated a passion for being fair. And his passion for fairness would not allow him to compromise it even when those in his own groups were wrong. And I said to myself, that seems Biblical. So as I read more political stuff on the Left, I discovered some more consistencies with the Bible as well as some inconsistencies. So as I compare the first two Leftists I started reading with you, how you act here would, if I didn’t know any better, make me reject the Reformed faith before hearing it. But to you, that doesn’t matter because to you all is fair in war and blogging. So please realize how you seem to represent the Reformed faith to some who disagree with some of your other views. I’m sure the people in your choir enjoy find no fault.
BTW, there are some activists who do more than me and others who do less. But that there are those who do more does not mean I am not an activist.
LikeLike
LaFawnduh
LikeLike
Curt, I’m beginning to think the request for succinctness is what’s keeping you…
LikeLike
Curt, get some Kaopectate for that unstoppable flow from your brain to your finger tips.
LikeLike
Curt, I take it you’ve read nothing DGH has actually published in a book.
It shows.
LikeLike
Curt – You (D.G.) like to assume some kind of authoritarian position over those with different views than yours.
Erik – Yeah, but it doesn’t work worth a damn with the cats.
LikeLike
Curt,
Your story of your Catholic co-worker has nothing to do with the left. That’s private charity. The left would demand that the government pay for the kid to be given a taxpayer-funded cab ride.
That’s the lamest inspirational story I’ve ever heard.
I gave a kid a ride 25 miles out of my way a few weeks ago. Do you want to read my memoir?
LikeLike
Curt,
You seem like a genuinely nice guy with a concern for people, but you’ve just been sold a bill of goods.
How much 20th century history have you read? Leftist ideologies are responsible for the deaths of more innocent people than any other ideology in the history of man.
Read Paul Johnson’s “Modern Times” for starters, then move on to Robert Conquest’s “The Harvest of Sorrow”. Quit reading leftist junk.
LikeLike
Curt, this is the first any of us have heard that you actually do something other than blog. Good for you.
I don’t protest. I pray. You tell me which “seems biblical.”
Why you classify someone who helps someone else as a Leftist is a mystery though. It sounds like someone who is coming out of the fundamentalist ghetto and discovering that non-Christians are “nice.”
Let’s be clear about who is chiding whom. The chiding from here is that your politics are not biblical no matter how much they “seem” to be. Lots of people here agree with you on certain assessments of our common social conditions. Where the disagreement is is over the Christian response. And your powers of discerning what is Christian seem to be significantly skewed.
Meanwhile, you are the one chiding anyone reading that we are guilty of corporate or social sin. When we ask for relief, all we get is Finney — do more. When we want a gospel solution you say you don’t have one.
Chide away and lose Christian friends.
LikeLike
Erik,
Why be so defensive? The story of my friend is about how we can learn from others because they know things that we don’t and vice-versa. If we come across as people who have nothing to learn from others, how will those others want to listen us?
And, btw, my friend is far more politically left than you might give her credit for. In addition, she inspired me to start reading by her life example of caring. Her life example showed me that we conservatives have a heck of lot to learn from those outside our group. And by reading, I learned from the heart and actions of people on the left. And when they were said something biblical, I kept. And when they said something unbiblical, I discarded. If you want to talk to those on the Left, that is you want them to listen to what you have to say, then listen and read and let the Scriptures tell you what to discard.
LikeLike
Andrew,
And how many authors have you never read? And it shows. So we are in the same boat, or at least the same kind of boat. Also note, personal interaction is different from reading books. And though blogging is not the most personal way of communicating, it is interactive.
LikeLike
D.G.,
So you assumed? Or I never mentioned that I was involved with Occupy?
We all do stuff. You write and teach and that’s very important. You say somethings that are important for people from different Christian perspectives because they can learn from you.
BTW, I don’t categorically classify someone who helps as being a leftist. I classify people as leftist, conservative, and liberal by their views. You read Chomsky and King and they are leftists. Both opposed Capitalism and that is the key issue that distinguishes being a leftist from being a liberal. As for my coworker, we are close friends and so I know her views. But what her example did was to simply motivate me to read people who were not conservative. So I went to the other end of the spectrum to read. Believe it or not, there isn’t a whole lot of difference between political conservatives and political liberals in this country.
I know conservatives who help others and I encourage them as much as possible. When the wife retires, and she is no leftist, I am hoping that we can do volunteer work together. We just recently finished helping someone as they were passing away from a terminal disease. And there is aftermath stuff to handle with that.
Finally, the ‘are you for real’ statements or statements doubting if I know the Gospel or what I am talking about is the chiding and that comes from your side. What have I said from my side? That you have things to contribute and things to learn. I have agreed with you where I can and have complimented some of your posts because I agreed with them. If that is chiding, then what do you call what you do when you make some of the statements to me which I just described?
Let me ask, are people chiding when they merely but strongly disagree? Or does chiding involve negative, personal statements while one is disagreeing?
LikeLike
Curt, you, Darryl, and me are in the same church. For what it’s worth.
I’ll leave you to your interactions. If I can be of help, let me know.
LikeLike
Curt,
How do your leftist friends feel about the unborn, the Apostle Paul, and Jesus?
LikeLike
@Curt Zinn is not a serious historian (maybe a small step above Barton), your understanding of economics is incredibly simplistic (the $=election wins has been examined empirically and falsified), and your exegetical work remains wanting. Here’s the thing though… I don’t think your intellectual inadequacies are sinful or something that the church should discipline you for or speak out against.
While I don’t speak for the others on this blog, I don’t find anything you’ve said convincing at all (and I am sympathetic to critiques of neo-liberal capitalism). It might be worth your while to step back and consider the pushback you’ve received here. It could be that we are all dolts who just don’t get it, but then you are just casting pearls before swine and would be better off just to move on. Or it could be that there are fundamental flaws in the case you are making and it would serve you well to think more carefully about your own stance (perhaps trying to understand neo-liberalism from the perspective of neb-liberals like Cowen, Mankiw, McArdle, and Bainbridge and then look at critiques of this approach from the right by guys like Deneen, Berry, and the FrontPorch guys). It will help you make your case more effectively, and who knows, you might even learn something…
LikeLike
Curt is the latest fish who is getting played out of all his strength
He can’t last much longer, then another will come along to amuse us.
And none of them ever figure this out.
LikeLike
This battle reminds me of Tom Van Dyke.
Does anyone really want to take on the owner of a blog?
At least David R and Jeff Cagle were both DG’s guest.
I mean, is there any mystery how the Curt Day chapter will end?
Amusing, indeed.
LikeLike
I mean, like the Michael on yesterday’s post, him and I have a little thing going since the 900+ Don’t stop believing thread, I like him:
Curt – You say somethings that are important for people from different Christian perspectives because they can learn from you.
Erik – What fortune cookie did you get that out of?
LikeLike
D.G. says: “The chiding from here is that your politics are not biblical no matter how much they “seem” to be.”
Boys n girls I believe we have just seen Dr. Hart declare the existence of “biblical politics”. Of course he’s absolutely correct about Curt and his utter lack of same.
I’d like to ask Curt a couple questions if I may.
1? What is your driving motivation in life? That’s a serious question.
Number 2? This must have been asked by somebody so forgive me for the repetition, but where in the NEW Testament do we find Jesus or the apostles instructing the church to send money to Rome for public redistribution in order to fulfill the charity commands?
I see precept and precedent for the church/es doing this themselves as godly wisdom would lead, but I seem to be at a loss for any instances of them being told to have Rome do it for them with their money. Any help in this regard would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
LikeLike
I’m with sdb. I’ve argued with leftists who brought it hard and, while I didn’t agree with them, I somewhat admired their vigor and internal consistency.
That’s not Curt, though, which is why we keep asking if he’s a put on. He’s not hard left enough to impress his fellow travelers nor is his analysis rigorous enough to persuade us.
Curt is probably the guy who shows up at the protest and is seen as a useful idiot by those who really know what’s going on.
Sorry Curt.
LikeLike
Kent,
Curt might be the guy tunneling under Toronto.
Check under his fingernails.
LikeLike
Ever since that youtube of GtheT, I knew who NOT to mess with around these parts.
Yo.
LikeLike
Greg,
Talk about the impact that you’ve seen left wing ideology have on Detroit.
LikeLike
Curt, “we conservatives.”
Who’s this we, left/social exhortation man?
LikeLike
Maybe Curt is like (or would like) a pope-like figure who would hand out indulgences for participation in societally righteous acts like Occupying and marching about Important Issues We Should All Be Concerned About. And maybe the intelligentsia(?) aka bloggers of this socio-religious wonder state are > the actual proletarian picketers and grievance expressers and should have certain extra entitlements like a new Macbook from the state-run Apple store. Brave new world.
LikeLike
Curt, disagreement is fine. Conservatives even disagree. Have you read Michael Oakeshott, Leon Kass, Wendell Berry, P.J. O’Rourke? I’m not sure they would agree. So reading conservatives doesn’t mean you’ve gone tribal. Being an academic hardly means you can afford to be tribal. Are you for real about disagreement?
As I said, you chide by constantly telling me I am a corporate sinner. Do you know want to pull your punch? That is a kind of chiding that is far more significant than asking if you are for real. Then again, since you immanentize the eschaton by identifying the eternal with temporal affairs, you may have lost the ability to tell what is really real and what is really the gospel.
LikeLike
My David Brent avatar should arrive soon. Thanks Michael!
LikeLike
sdb, I vote for flaming fundamentalist flaws.
LikeLike
ec, I doubt Curt’s fellow travelers regard him as a useful idiot. They are too earnest for that. Think pietism and the need to make everything you do Christian. Heck, think neo-Calvinism, the Reformed egghead’s pietism.
LikeLike
So much attention to Curt.
After my dust up with Kenneth we’ve scared off the hardcore Old Life dissenters.
It’s like we’re a murder of crows who used to dine on deer roadkill but now we’re reduced to dining on squirrel roadkill.
(Sigh)
LikeLike
Erik asks:
Greg,
Talk about the impact that you’ve seen left wing ideology have on Detroit.
To be as concise as possible. Any activity people are paid to do, they will continue doing. 80% of children in the 313 are born to unwed mothers. 99% of them are on Curt’s programs. The father is nowhere to be found and these kids would be no better off if he were anyway because a large % of them are kids themselves who are also coming up in non existent families.
We have produced an almost inescapable underclass of dependence in which money legally extorted from productive citizens is given, not to citizens are merely UNproductive, but indeed DEstructive. To themselves, their neighbors and the city. We are in effect paying them to perpetuate poverty and to destroy themselves and their community in the process.
Curt’s politicians love this because they need those people to need them. If we could push a button and transform the citizens of Detroit into godly, responsible and productive citizens nobody would need leftist politicians to steal other people’s money for them anymore. This being unthinkable to the power mongers, they continue to create dependence wherever possible so as to ensure their own necessity in perpetuity.
The result is a literally third world city in burned out ruins where moral disease and barbaric juvenile violence have become our claim to fame. The once mighty Motor City. That put the world on wheels and built the machines that won the 2nd world war. Now a rotting, decaying symbol of slavery v.2.0.
The tragic and ironic truth is that men were freer under the master’s whip. Bind a man’s hands and feet and you have still not conquered his soul. Lure him into voluntarily surrendering his manhood to mostly WHITE politicians by financing his sin and you have defeated him indeed. By God’s design it is MEN who are the rudder of a society. Women and children are as secure or not as the men, or not, in their lives. Directly or indirectly.
Now, guys like Curt will immediately retort with automation, off shoring jobs and the subsequent scarcity of decent work as the problem. And ya know what? That is not completely without any merit. If we leave corporations to run themselves they WILL screw everybody in their path for 12 cents. Conservatives don’t kid yourselves.
However the alternative of having these loathsome creatures in DC regulate and tax them to death is far worse. For one thing it serves to drive all that exportation of jobs to someplace where they can pay somebody 10 bucks a week and no benefits. It also gives them enormous economic and hence political power in all other areas of life as well. These are of course vast simplifications or I’d have to write a book
It’s really of matter who and in what ways they get to jack us up. So what’s the solution? Welcome to Adam’s world. Politically, sociologically and economically? There IS no solution. JESUS is the solution if there will ever be one. A divided nation is both ungovernable AND incapable of freedom. Until men (chicks too) do the right thing because its’ the right thing to do, we will continue to swirl down a toilet of death and debauchery.
In other words, making converts should be the goal. A faithful holy, morally credible Christian church being salt and light . Not foolishly believing that the machinations of a pagan God hating government will accomplish what only the gospel can. Which, it’s not even a given from the scriptures is God’s will anyway. (but it might be)
Curt, no offense chief, but you’re as a big a dupe as are the modern slaves themselves. They grovel at the feet of the politicians for stolen bread and you pass it out for them. Thinking you’re serving Jesus. Both are a tragedy.
LikeLike
Greg,
That was solid. Thanks.
LikeLike
Thanks Greg!!
LikeLike
Greg,
How many of my politicians can you list?
BTW, there is another alternative to running corporations which you have not considered.
LikeLike
D.G.,
First, we have to separate Conservative Christians from political conservatives. Being a Conservative Christian does not imply one is political conservative.
Second, how is saying that people have corporate guilt because of the sins of their groups chiding someone? If you told an unbeliever that they were a sinner, would you be chiding them? Or would you be stating a fact? Chiding is found in how we say things to people, not what. Chiding is also found in acting superior. We are both sinners and we have two sets of sins which constantly chase us: individual personal sins and corporate sins. We are in the same boat and it is much like a comparison of any two Christians. Person A will have strengths where person B is weak and vice-versa. But we all have such an abundance of sin that we can only afford to act like the publican from the parable of the two men praying. Any identification of a sin that has flown under the radar of the other person is a FYI announcement, not rubbing it in.
I talk about corporate guilt and sin here because recognizing it is a weakness in 2KT. And that is just like trying to Christianize culture is a weakness for the neoCalvinists. Here, both groups have something to teach the other. And we all have other things to teach each other. And that is what we should always keep in mind when talking with or about each other.
LikeLike
Curt – “We are both sinners and we have two sets of sins which constantly chase us: individual personal sins and corporate sins.”
Erik – Sounds like being chased by an ex-wife and her divorce attorney.
LikeLike
Curt,
I haven’t joined any group, other than a church.
How can I be guilty of any “corporate sins”?
It’s like you’re trying to bill me for union dues for a union I haven’t joined.
I’m returning the invoice to you unpaid.
LikeLike
Greg The Terrible: “In other words, making converts should be the goal. A faithful holy, morally credible Christian church being salt and light .”
That used to be done in this country in virtually every place that had a church, back, oh, about two centuries ago.
A little pastoral instruction:
“Study to make your hearers good Christians: thus you will make them good citizens and good in all relations.”
Joseph Lathrop to Stephen Bemis, at Harvard…1801.
Made sense then, and our only hope today… .
LikeLike
Russell (and Joseph and Greg), so much for humility. Christianity makes bad people good and good people better. Hello, Kant and Protestant liberalism. Good friggin’ grief.
LikeLike
A little more from Dr Lathrop, to dispel any confusion with Kantian metaphysics:
“If the gospel is true, it is infinitely important. Its contents respect, not merely the temporal, but the eternal condition of men. That we are intelligent beings, we know from our own consciousness-that our present manner of existence is soon to terminate, we learn from daily observation. Reason and nature lead us to suppose it probable, that we may exist hereafter in happiness or misery according to the character we form here.
But to ascertain this matter we need surer information, than reason and nature can give us. By the gospel, life and immortality are brought to light. A future existence, a righteous judgement, and an equitable distribution of rewards and punishments, are doctrines, which it teaches with convincing perspicuity, and on which it dwells with an affecting solemnity.”
LikeLike
We do need to consider that holy Christians and holy churches may be hated more than unholy ones, though. Many love the dark and hate the light. It’s a mistake to think that people will flock to us if only we get our acts together. The Spirit moves where it wishes – both softening & hardening along the way.
LikeLike
Erik,
At the same time, we need to take to heart Jesus’ warning to be a stumblingblock. For after His warning, how can we take too lightly our presentation of the Gospel or any faults which people will see as being inconsistent with the Gospel?
Though your assessment of having to have it together has validity, there are other concerns which we should keep in mind when we represent the Gospel before others: Romans 2:23-24
LikeLike
Erik,
Do you live on a deserted island? Are you a man without a country? Are you unemployed? Those are some questions to ask yourself when determining what groups you belong to.
LikeLike
Erik,
Look at it another way. That we sin in groups as well as individually is simply a reminder of how sinful we are. In that case think of it as having a mirror and a family.
LikeLike
Curt, it’s not like corporate sin is what separates 2k from theonomists, transformationalists, or pietists. Anyone not a modernist or social gospeler denies corporate sin.
Welcome to the modernist club.
LikeLike
@dgh I think it is safe to say that the only corporate sin we have to worry about is the one we inherit from Adam, but I’m pretty sure that one has been taken care of…though I’m no theologian.
LikeLike
ec, and while looking at it from Curt’s view of how sinful we are, remember that you have no hope of being forgiven your corporate guilt. Jesus doesn’t forgive that because if he does, then Curt loses his shtick.
LikeLike
Russell, if the second statement isn’t Kantian then all it does is confuse, because the first is. So is the gospel good for reconciling sinners to God (Pauline) or making them good citizens (Kantian)? Careful how you answer since it might actually put you in league with Curt (who has no clue what the gospel is, or at least won’t tell us if he does).
LikeLike
Curt,
If we present the gospel correctly (which you still haven’t done for zrim), people will realize it isn’t about us…or them.
Plus, if you’re really concerned, your leftism could be a stumbling block to some.
LikeLike
Curt,
No, but I am willing to learn how I can be those things.
But seriously, if these are things I have to do, how can they be sinful? Not really my choice to be born in the u.s.
Or to have to work.
LikeLike
Curt,
Here’s another angle. What “groups” have had their corporate sin forgiven and how did they obtain that forgiveness?
Are minority groups and women’s groups also guilty of corporate sin?
LikeLike
Erik said:
Greg,
That was solid. Thanks.
Kent said:
Thanks Greg!!
Praise God fellas O:) .
Zrim
Russell (and Joseph and Greg), so much for humility. Christianity makes bad people good and good people better. Hello, Kant and Protestant liberalism. Good friggin’ grief.
Please explain, lest I presume and waste abuncha time responding to something you aren’t saying.
Curt Day
Greg,
How many of my politicians can you list?
Please answer the questions I asked you first and I’ll answer yours.
Erik says: “We do need to consider that holy Christians and holy churches may be hated more than unholy ones, though. Many love the dark and hate the light. It’s a mistake to think that people will flock to us if only we get our acts together. The Spirit moves where it wishes – both softening & hardening along the way.”
Quite so. The Lord gives no guarantee that holiness will attract His elect, whose presence or not in a given time and place is known only to Himself. A church or individual whose life brings dishonor and scorn upon God and His gospel however, by showing no evidence of it’s power to raise men from death in sin to new life in Christ is not going to be validated with a harvest of souls.
Also, a holy church, which the word itself (ekklesia) means a people called out, will still do the work of heightening the judgement of those she lives before. Therefore even their stiff necked unbelief brings glory to His name as they resist the conviction of a holy people in their midst. A flagrantly carnal and worldly church or individual never brings glory to the Lord. I mean practitioners of sin as per 1st John 3.
<strong.Erik asks
Curt, Here’s another angle. What “groups” have had their corporate sin forgiven and how did they obtain that forgiveness?
A splendid question. God can judge nations. And forgive nations. Nineveh. However He does so because a significant enough preponderance of the individual citizenry believe and hence behave in such a way as to be taken by God as representing the spirit of the nation as a whole even if it’s not every last person that is either disobedient or faithful..
God regularly pronounces His displeasure upon “my people Israel” while recognizing a faithful remnant among them. For instance.
There is not a community category of sinfulness that actually exists as such, but could not a nation populated with a majority of sinners be called a sinful nation?
Nations can’t be baptized either, but could not a people among whom a large percentage is being baptized be eventually called a baptized nation in a manner of speaking? That’s all I ever mean by that kind of phraseology. Certainly not the collectivist view that curt APPEARS to be advancing.
LikeLike
That tagging is actually correct in the copy on my blog. I don’t know why it didn’t render correctly.
LikeLike
Greg,
You asked no direct question of me but you seemed comfortable enough to assume whom my politicians are. Then you say that I have to answer your question before you answer mine. Fair enough.
There is no guaranteed answer, even if everyone was a Christian. We’ve seen Christian societies before and they have always marginalized some who are different. And such either starts or continues a pendulum swing. But for the solution, whether you are from the left or the liberal/right, is always found in two parts:political-economic structure and the correct set of morals. And you would think that Christian societies would have solved problems but they have hurt people because they have syncretically joined their particular cultural view with Christianity and feel entitled to rule over others.
The solution from the left would say something like this: We need to distinguish between Democracy as a state of being for society and Democracy as a political-economic structure. Democracy as a state of says that people are vested in sharing society with others as equals. That is the moral side of the equation. Democracy as a political structure says that we have one-person, one-vote rule at the workplace, in the community, the city, the state, the nation, and internationally.
Now it easy to anticipate a response that says such a situation is idealistic and will never happen. But what is more idealistic is to think that we can continue living the way we do, seeking privilege and advantages over other in both domestic and foreign relations and still, in an age when the proliferation of WMDs is inevitable and when we are destroying the environment, expect to survive. The Democratic approach listed above doesn’t guarantee things, but it does gives us our best chance at surviving and even improving what we experience now. The greater the democracy we have both in our society’s state of being and in our political-economic structures, the more people share and the more power is dispersed. The less democracy we have, the more we have elite rule both domestically and internationally and such sets up a permanent game of king-of-the-hill. And that game will sometimes be played with toys that are too destructive for us to play with.
So Gregg, who are my politicians?
LikeLike
Greg,
Something else, the denial of corporate guilt/sin based on the idea that there must be corporate salvation is not forthright. The idea that when an individual murders or steals, that it is counted as sin while when a group does the same, that it is not counted as sin is beyond belief. Besides, there are the NT Scriptures that talk about nations sinning and God’s wrath against them.
But the requirement that for corporate salvation is necessary for corporate guilt/sin to exist is not forthright because it shows an inconsistency in what is considered to be righteous at the societal level vs at the personal-religious level. 2Kers here imply such a distinction when they state that Christians and work as individuals with unbelievers to better society. The reliance there is on common grace and what we are dealing with is what makes life liveable and fair in society. Note in the NT verses regarding Church discipline that what determines whether we are members in good standing in the Church are not the same rules as those that determine whether we are in good standing in society. If 2Kers didn’t believe in those two different sets of rules, they would not believe that believers and unbelievers can work together to make life better for all.
LikeLike
D.G.,
Machen defined the modernist club differently than you. He based on whether one reduces all of reality to the natural. Now you are saying that that definition no longer applies.
In addition, go over to the youtube video of an evening with Anthony Bradley, John Piper, and Tim Keller and you will find Keller talking about corporate guilt. You may not like his neocalvinist theology, but he is hardly a modernist. And he makes valid points which people here have never addressed. What were the responsibilities of German citizens during the Nazi rule? Obviously, our generals, like Eisenhower, knew they had responsibilities because they made those citizen tour the concentration and death camps. But according to your position, Christians in Nazi Germany could go along with the crowd with no need to ask for forgiveness for their life as a German during that time. Just think, Nazi Germany could attempt genocide but that attempt was not considered to be sin because a group was trying to do that. If you take that message outside of your choir to the real world, you will see how well it flies. And that is the sad thing because it hurts our witness to the Gospel.
LikeLike
How’d it take this long to invoke WW2 Germany make you feel self-righteous
LikeLike
Curt, it is because I studied Machen for a guhzillion years almost a buhzillion years ago that I oppose your views. I don’t think you understand Machen. That goes with your understanding of the gospel.
And puhleeze on TKNY. When I see Keller out there with Occupy, then I’ll know the PCA is off the hook for its corporate guilt in aiding and abetting holy urbanism and sanctified ambition, because that will be the day that Keller loses his teflon.
“Nazi Germany could attempt genocide but that attempt was not considered to be sin because a group was trying to do that.”
Do you understand how lame that logic is? It supports your point about tribalism but hardly has anything to do with what happened to Jews in Europe. From the Reconquista to the Holocaust, Christian Europe was not exactly homey for the physical descendants of Abraham. And the funny thing is, the way Christians treated Muslims and Jews had a lot to do with ideas of corporate guilt and social righteousness. How do you have a holy society? You get rid corporately of the sinners. Social solidarity my arse.
You’re on flimsy ground, Curt. The upside for you is that its easier for you to dig your own hole.
LikeLike
D.G.,
The issue isn’t you opposing my views, I understand that. The issue is labels. Machen was specific regarding terms like modernity and liberalism. These concepts, he thought the actual labels were misleading, are rooted in naturalism, not social action. Thus, to apply the label to someone who believes in the same supernatural God of the Bible as you do is wrong. Applying the label that way doesn’t fit the definition provided by Machen.
IN addition, read your note. For it seems to say that you have nothing to learn from Occupy or any other social action group. It also suggests that you have nothing to learn from Keller. And, btw, I’ve seen no association of Keller with Occupy. As far as I can see, he mildly opposes it because it does not revolve around Christianity. And remember, that is the key to his involvement with cultural renewal. But if would seem that the 2K objection to Occupy isn’t the participation of individual Christians; rather, it is church endorsement of Occupy that should be the only problem with 2KT. Any other objection would be along political-economic-social views, not theological views per se.
It also seems like you don’t think you can learn from Occupy. Then read the following:
http://occupywallstreet.net/learn
Finally, silence and withdrawal are not remedies for tribalism. Rather, they show complicity. That silence and withdrawal would be considered the only alternative for tribalism indicates binary thinking. Or, as the math side of me says, it is using discrete objects to paint a picture of a continuous world. The world is far more complex and nuanced to be satisfied with binary thinking. And that is what you seem to promote. You believe either that you have a holy society or one that is speeding on the highway to ____. There is no room in your social views for the working of common grace. It seems that you only allow for special grace or nothing.
Finally, what you quoted me on Nazi Germany isn’t about what happened to the Jews, it is about your belief that there is no corporate sin.
LikeLike
Greg, it appears the Sowers embargo has been momentarily lifted on you (smoke ’em if you got ’em, I guess). What I mean is that the gospel is good for reconciling God to sinners, not making sinners into good and better citizens. Those are two entirely different programs, and you seem to be suggesting they go together. Don’t look now, but you’re closer to Curt than you think. Where does the Bible give believers any hint that their salvation transforms them into good and better citizens? Prescriptions to live as such still have to contend with abiding sin.
LikeLike
Do you see a man wise in his own eyes?
LikeLike
Curt says: “Greg,
You asked no direct question of me but you seemed comfortable enough to assume whom my politicians are. Then you say that I have to answer your question before you answer mine. Fair enough.”
I stopped reading right there. I will assume that you simply missed it and am posting this link so as to insure that if you miss it this time it will be because you really wanted to.
LikeLike
Greg:
Curt gets addlepated quite a lot on here, you’ll have to treat him like a “special friend” and just nod and smile and look for the exit sign…
LikeLike
D.G.’s surprise at this thread taking off like this is only matched by Becker & Fagen’s surprise at “Haitian Divorce” becaming a minor hit in the U.K. back in ’76:
LikeLike
Greg’s here on my tab, but if he acts up I’ll claim to not know him.
LikeLike
The thing I’ll always remember about my oldest daughter’s wedding day is driving through the Dunkin’ Donuts drive through listening to “The Royal Scam” on the way to the church.
That’s just how I roll.
LikeLike
Curt – Democracy as a political structure says that we have one-person, one-vote rule at the workplace, in the community, the city, the state, the nation, and internationally.
Erik – Internationally?
Have you asked Islamic Extremists if they are on board with your ideals?
If you want absolute equality internationally you’re going to have to surrender your generous public employee pension which is guaranteed by taxpayers regardless of how well the underlying investment fund does. It crowds out other government spending, including vital programs that assist the poor. Lots of poor people in the U.S., not to mention overseas.
How do you like equality now?
LikeLike
Curt – Besides, there are the NT Scriptures that talk about nations sinning and God’s wrath against them.
Erik – List the nations today that are not sinning and incurring God’s wrath.
Short list.
LikeLike
Curt – In addition, go over to the youtube video of an evening with Anthony Bradley, John Piper, and Tim Keller and you will find Keller talking about corporate guilt.
Erik – Will put that one on my list right after watching the entire run of “The Munsters”.
LikeLike
D.G. – And puhleeze on TKNY. When I see Keller out there with Occupy, then I’ll know the PCA is off the hook for its corporate guilt in aiding and abetting holy urbanism and sanctified ambition, because that will be the day that Keller loses his teflon.
Erik – This will happen when Starbucks sets up a kiosk in the camp.
LikeLike
ec, you don’t see Kathy Keller, with b-s detector in tow, out there cooking hot dogs for the protesters?
LikeLike
I start reading Curt’s Occupy Manifesto and can stop after the first point:
“They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage”
Illustrates right off the bat what a bunch of whiners these people are. “I should get a free house because a bank can’t find the paperwork. Never mind that I know I signed a mortgage and I know I owe money on the house and I know I haven’t made my payments.”
These people are infantile.
LikeLike
If Kathy’s BS Detector is like a Geiger Counter that thing would be going nuts at an Occupy encampment.
I’m going to read through Curt’s Occupy Manifesto later and go point by point on (1) How ridiculous it is and (2) How incompatible with Christianity it is.
LikeLike
Keller, Piper, and Bradley:
Redeemer has a “Grace & Race” team.
LikeLike
Greg,
Sorry I missed the question. I have more than one drive. When it comes to my activism, I am driven by what drove Karl Kautsky but for different reasons. I look to contribute to reducing oppression. And there are two reasons why I do that. The first reason is that the current state of affairs is destroying the reputation of the Gospel. And it is destroying it from two sides. Those acts of oppression and exploitation that are done in the name of the Gospel is the first side. The second is lack of response by many Christians to the suffering of many because their only concern is to see a person “converted.” It is difficult to share the Gospel with many people because of how its reputation is being harmed. Because of how the reputation of the Gospel has been harmed, I find that sharing the Gospel is impossible with some and near impossible with many others. Why? Because oppression and exploitation have been too closely associated with the Gospel by the two-pronged attack I just mentioned.
The second reason for wanting to reduce oppression is because of the actual suffering people experience. In many cases, it’s wrong and it’s horrible.
LikeLike
Zrim,
Lest you forget, the world is made up of Christians and nonChristians. In addition, to many Christians have served themselves at others’ expense. Now, if we could guarantee Christian privilege in enough nations of the world through converting enough people, you would have a point. But it would be the same point which Keller is making. And that seems ironic.
Of course we preach the Gospel. But first, we do that in various ways. And second we are involved in secular ventures with unbelievers. At this point, who is sounding more 2K here?
LikeLike
Curt reminds me of Cliff on Cheers.
LikeLike
Erik,
Your response is one reason why the Gospel is becoming an easy target for being discredited. Without knowing the personal stories of so many people who have lost their homes, many because of fraud, you characterize everyone as a freeloader. How is it that a scriptural scholar like you comes to make and accusation and judgment so quickly? Or is your first concern defending the status quo because of syncretism?
LikeLike
Curt,
Are you suggesting that Jesus can’t save people without you first repairing the gospel?
Wouldn’t that make you the savior’s savior?
LikeLike
Curt, not to be a tool, but I’d like to see a response to my simple and repeated request to succinctly define the gospel before responding to anything direct from you.
LikeLike
D.G.,
How are b_s comments directed at the Kellers the result of the fruit of the Spirit? Or maybe those who are doctrinally pure don’t need to bear the fruit of the Spirit?
I don’t agree with Keller on everything just like I don’t agree with you on everything. But yous both have things to teach each other as well as things to teach others. And that will hindered if either of yous act and believe that you are above others rather than being equal because of sin and human limitations. What is it that Paul said about the different parts of the body and how cannot afford to regard each other?
LikeLike
Zrim and Russell, more help from Justin Taylor, this time on Kant.
LikeLike
Have I mentioned this week that I’m liking Chris Townsend?…a lot.
LikeLike
Zrim, Curt posts in many places on the internet, and when he gets blocked, he posts on his own website. This appears to be just his thing – like some people with cats, others dogs, others movies, others sports.
He doesn’t respond to my question about whether he’s sought out the ways he can serve in the OPC, but rather, seems intent on going it alone, and has an axe to grind with DGH (duh).
I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for a response, just keep asking and maybe he will, maybe he wont.
Fun times on the interwebs..
LikeLike
Curt,
Provide me with the name of one person who has lost their home because of fraud.
Unless someone is driving up in the middle of the night, loading it up on a truck, and driving off with it, no one is losing their home because of fraud.
People lose their home because they borrow money to buy it or refinance it and then can’t make the payments that they agree to make.
LikeLike
Who would be crazy enough to block Curt?
I would almost pay him to post.
LikeLike
Erik,
Everyone gets blocked some of the time
http://heidelblog.net/2015/02/on-pushing-back-against-political-correctness/#comment-466602
Curt should listen to heidelcast #67 on Recovering the Mother Kirk at RSC’s website, DGH explains what he’s doing with OLTS, even the name. I’m sure he can find it without my help, he’s an interweb pro!
LikeLike
Curt, like the Pope, might be badly in need of an editor in many of his comments.
LikeLike
Curt,
Here’s your biggest obstacles in your pursuit of “social justice” as I see it.
(1) If you try to force the private sector to promote your aims through, say, paying above market wages, that won’t work because those industries will just migrate to where they can pay less. Remember, we’re dealing with a global marketplace.
(2) Anything that you do through the public sector has to be filtered through the public sector and the public sector always gets its cut. Public sector employees are not poor — they want to be middle to upper middle class. This means generous salaries, generous benefit plans, lots of vacation, and lucrative, guaranteed pensions. A dollar put into this system is far less than a dollar when it emerges out the other end.
What you want just doesn’t work in this current world.
LikeLike
Does anyone over 22 who has heard Piper preach more than 2-3 times really continue to find him engaging?
Unless you’re an extremely emotional person, how do you continue to gin up the enthusiasm?
LikeLike
Curt got his Achan point from Keller in that speech.
Achan stole and him and his whole family was stoned.
That may be a better argument for infant baptism than it is for corporate sin.
How we take that story out of the context of ancient Israel I have no idea.
LikeLike
If Keller really believes what he says, why not set up a reparations program for African Americans within Redeemer. Who is stopping him?
His Asian members might not be crazy about that, but I imagine they have some kind of corporate guilt of their own to atone for.
LikeLike
Keller says that if there is no concept of corporate sin there is no gospel.
He says this on the basis of our inheriting Adam’s sin, even though we didn’t commit those sins ourselves.
Whoa.
Why can I not turn it around on him and say that since we’re all sinners because of Adam’s sin, why does one group owe another group on account of corporate sin? It’s just sinners offending sinners offending sinners, after all.
The thing that goes unexamined is how some groups are arbitrarily given victim status while others are arbitrarily given perpetrator status without due process.
That is wrong and is not fitting for a gospel preacher to be involved in. Shame on Keller.
LikeLike
In 1975 Keller had an elder on his session in West Virginia whose father was a Civil War veteran.
LikeLike
Keller’s talk includes a defense (or at least an “understanding”) of Gangsta Rap.
Thankfully he doesn’t perform any.
He shares two examples of “systemic sin” — one of which could be resolved by a business owner having a conscience, the other of which could be resolved through hiring an attorney. Systemic sin continues to just boil down to the sins of individuals.
LikeLike
Erik, Provide me with the name of one person who has lost their home because of fraud.
The time the rich uncle let the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers stay at his house and when he got there a month later they had sold every part of the house to buy dope, leaving a big hole in the ground.
LikeLike
The first 45 sermons of Piper on Romans was very important to getting me on the road to a Truly Reformed church. That got me about halfway through Romans 5.
LikeLike
I will say this for Keller, he is a gifted speaker.
Which makes him potentially extremely dangerous for the PCA.
LikeLike
The thing the PCA needs to realize is that, right or wrong, this is the road that leads to becoming the Christian Reformed Church.
Soon your Synod (GA) is filled with an agenda full of racial grievances, class grievances, environmental grievances, gender grievances, and a bunch of debates over pronouncements that no one outside of the gathering and maybe the New York Times (if they get wind of it and it sounds left-wing enough) bothers to read.
Churches only have so much time and attention. If you take up some new emphasis, some old emphasis always gets crowded out.
It’s the road to becoming a Mainline protestant Church.
LikeLike
EC: “…I will say this for Keller, he is a gifted speaker …”
Erik, I’m afraid I’ll have to disagree with you on this observation, wherever you found it. I saw/listened to him at the memorial service of a famous British theologian and author a few years ago and I was unimpressed. I’ve heard better sermons … if you even want to call it that … from run-of-the-mill evangelical preachers.
LikeLike
George,
The funny thing is, I’ve yet to hear him preach (he does still do that).
What I have heard, and what he apparently does in abundance, is panels, talks, interviews, conferences, etc.
Sometimes one gets the impression, right or wrong, that he is Charles Jefferson:
LikeLike
Hmmmm…no, Erik, my impression was more like But Lahr:
LikeLike
Whoops, Freudian slip. Make that “Burt” Lahr. (‘course, the other spelling might be appropriate in this caricature, too)
LikeLike
Part 3 of Dever’s interview with Keller is up — the books:
http://9marks.org/interview/life-ministry-and-books-with-tim-keller-part-3-books/
LikeLike
George,
That clip is old school.
At least you didn’t call him Judy Garland.
LikeLike
I had to write this in between abuncha work today. Please forgive any typos.
————————————————————————————————————————
Zrim says: “Greg, it appears the Sowers embargo has been momentarily lifted on you.”
Thank you Dr. Hart. I won’t make you sorry. Or at least not for the wrong reasons.
Zrim says: “What I mean is that the gospel is good for reconciling God to sinners, not making sinners into good and better citizens. Those are two entirely different programs, and you seem to be suggesting they go together.”
Here are some facts that historian extraordinaire (that was a serious statement), Dr. DG Hart will know are indeed facts. During the 18th century and well into the 19th no greater percentage of Europeans living on this continent attended church than all people living here do now. In fact it may have even been less.
In other words, as far as the raw math is concerned, there was no more Christian presence here then than now. Of course church attendance doesn’t guarantee true conversion. However, the regular neglect of the assembly is a pretty sure sign that one does not know Jesus if the apostle of love is to be taken seriously in the 2nd chapter of his 1st epistle. The scriptures know nothing of a justification that doesn’t sanctify.
What then accounts for the publicly normative morality of that era? Read De Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” (everybody here should know him, French political scientist studying our fledgling nation in the 1830’s), on the interaction between the sexes at that time. You will think you are in a Twilight Zone-esque alternate reality from today. He talks about the stern influence of the Christian religion on public life and morality. How the average man dare not utter a vulgarity in the presence of the fairer sex lest he be thought a boorish non-gentleman whose company and business association may be unwise. HAHA!!!
Our average unremarkable mainstream women (and children) in 21st century middle America LIVE in what their progenitors would not even have spoken of. To say nothing of their horrific profane language.
What’s the difference? We have more professing Christians now, a zillion churches and all of modern technology to proclaim God’s holy truth. There was even the presence of some unitarian and deistic influence too. They had their liberals to contend with as well. How could that church SO influence society and this one be SO derisively and scornfully ignored?
I’ll tell you why. Today their theological children, the alleged guardians of Westminster Calvinism, celebrate as “art”, “entertainment” and “Christian “LIBERTY”, blood, blasphemy and filth of such a debased magnitude as would have been unthinkable in a drunken brothel back then. Consciences seared in sin, taking as amusement what their puritan forefathers would have rather died at the stake than tolerate. A worldly carnal church filled with media addicts who spend more time in front of a television and in the theater in a week than they do in the word and prayer in 6 months. Filling their hearts and minds with the most powerful tools of influence and propaganda the world has ever known. Not just voluntarily, but they PAY God’s money for their own spiritual castration. That’s the difference. (the biggest one anyway) Do not underestimate my ability to make that case in Jesus name.
SALT AND LIGHT Zrim. Preservation and illumination, of the EARTH and WORLD (ges and kosmoc), Jesus said in Matthew 5:13 and 14. That means the entire reality of the human condition (in a nutshell) A relativly small overall citizenry of faithful committed believers steered the highest and most meteoric rise of a world superpower in the history of the planet. (Proverbs 14:34. Yes, that principle is valid for all time if properly understood) Not by force either. The POWER of the mere presence of the faithful bride and body of Christ decisively informed the public conscience. It was shameful to be immoral. A pregnancy out of wedlock was a scandal and multitudes of marriages were vowed rather than live with the stigma of having spawned an “illegitimate” child. Men and women.
Something like same sex marriage was not addressed in our founding documents for the same reason unicorn farms aren’t addressed either. Neither could have so much as even been conceived of in their minds.
Zrim says: “Don’t look now, but you’re closer to Curt than you think.”
That sir, is a great steaming pile of bovine fecal matter. The element of force is conspicuously missing from both this nation’s history AND my views in this area. Morality indeed CANNOT be legislated. I don’t want a nation where abortion is illegal for instance. I want a nation where most wouldn’t need or have one because it’s evil. I have no sympathy for the oxymoron of forced charity either. Where one group of pagans steals from another group of pagans in order to buy the dependence and the votes of a third group of pagans. I see no biblical place for Christ’s church in that pagan equation.
Zrim asks: “Where does the Bible give believers any hint that their salvation transforms them into good and better citizens?”
I’ll just assume you know passages such as Romans 13 where obedience to government is commanded. I define “good citizen” as God defines that term. One who is obedient to Him. Laws that do not conflict with God’s are to be obeyed. Period. Disobedience is only allowed when compliance would constitute disobedience to God. In which case such DISobedience is honoring to God. I know plenty of people who’s now law abiding life is viewed as nothing short of miraculous to those around them. Actually my own would qualify there. Becoming a “good citizen”, insofar as that is possible depending on where one lives, is simply a public component of sanctification. It’s not a specific goal, it’s what people begin to grow into when they get saved. WCF XXIII practically says that.
Zrim says: “Prescriptions to live as such…”
See? You already knew this.
Zrim says: “Prescriptions to live as such, still have to contend with abiding sin.”
Of course. Every second of our lives this side of the grave IS the contention with remaining sin. The shorter catechism, Q. 82 says that. What is your point? That since we can’t do it perfectly the “prescriptions to live as such” aren’t binding? Look, it’s like this man. If the unbelievers who are around you regularly don’t see you as any different than they are? Then you ain’t. They’re not stupid. They’re lost. They can tell when they’re being snowed. I’m not talking about putting on some Pharisaical, self righteous show either. It’s simply the biblical reality that when somebody has been give the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16) and been made a partaker of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), that is, adopted and grafted into the very family of the living God, it changes them. Is that “pietism”? if it is then that’s like tough. Call it what you want, but you’ll need to show me where it isn’t scriptural or the burden is on you to change.
LikeLike
Keller says one of his emphases is on “the Augustinian emphasis on disordered loves.”
Sowers would like that.
LikeLike
Erik – I can only call them as I see them, Old Skool or not. BTW, all of the evangelicals in the audience hip-hip-hoorayed him near the end of his “sermon” when he began to talk about societal transformation, FYI.
LikeLike
Greg – That sir, is a great steaming pile of bovine fecal matter
LOL
You gotta admire this guy’s style.
LikeLike
Erik, yeah.
More like Greg the AWESOME.
(emoticon)
Listen to these by TKNY and get back to me. Come on, the guy ain’t that bad. I’m telling you, he’s our celebrity, like it or lump it.
I’ll finish the 3rd Mark Dever part on the way home from work, I’m about half way through it.
LikeLike
Greg,
On the entertainment issue, certainly technology is a factor in that. Mass media was not available in past centuries to the degree it is today.
I’m not sure 18th & 19th century Americans would have been more virtuous than 21st century Americans given an equal playing field.
Consider that “Fanny Hill” was written in 1748. I imagine some copies made it over to the new world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Hill
I do agree it’s a slippery, downhill slope. I watched a doc on Netflix about a guy who made “sexploitation” films in the 60s. The kind of stuff that would play in Times Square. The films he made were plot driven, had some nudity and sexuality, but were by no means hardcore porn. Once “Deep Throat” came along in 1972 he was basically put out of business since he had no desire to write that kind of stuff. He still directed some of it, but under fake names.
From hardcore we’ve now gone to gay hardcore and when that’s not perverted enough, some turn to child porn (as I noted in a recent blog post). It does make one ask what the bottom is when it comes to this kind of thing.
LikeLike
Greg (and we’ll see how long this comment remains un-erased from existence),
Just go after the guys who go after DGH, and he’ll make you part of his all star cast.
Come on, we have a religion to promote here, people. We need all the help we can get. We gonna let a guy named Cletus Van Damme jerk us around like Kenny boy?
I’m out.
LikeLike
Keller manages to dis InterVarsity Press and Zondervan in Dever interview part 3 when he talks about hitting the big time with a secular publisher.
LikeLike
Keller says there are so many themes in the Bible that a church can’t do justice to all of them.
God forbid you just preach through it and take it as it comes…
LikeLike
There is no possible way I can keep up with all this. Don’t even get me started on Keller now.
——————————————————————-
Curt says: “Greg,
Sorry I missed the question………………”
No problem. I’ll have to look at your answer later though.
kent says:
Greg:
Curt gets addlepated quite a lot on here, you’ll have to treat him like a “special friend” and just nod and smile and look for the exit sign…
Come on man 🙂 I think Curt is dreadfully misguided, but he’s not an unpleasant or stupid chap with bad motives.
Erik says: “Greg’s here on my tab,..”
As unlikely as that is, it’s true.
Erik says: ” …but if he acts up I’ll claim to not know him.”
Ok, but I still have the pix from that last ski outing we went on together.
(jist kiddin 😀 )
LikeLike
There’s also this novel thing called a “Confession” that tries to tie all those Biblical themes together.
We can’t get crazy and use those, though…
LikeLike
Greg,
If you accused me of going skiing with you it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been accused of something I didn’t do.
Try pressing a Catholic hard enough and you never know what you’ll have to deal with.
LikeLike
Erik, true on that last part. Glad you see it now too.
By the way, pick up Engaging Keller if you see that in a dumpster sometime. Again, DGH takes TKNY to the shed, and New Horizons doesn’t do DGH any favors. It’s brutal man.
Hey, it’s almost time for March Madness, vote Hart remember?!?
LikeLike
Keller makes reference to the “mockery” of the “Kuyperian world & life view”.
LikeLike
Andrew – By the way, pick up Engaging Keller if you see that in a dumpster sometime
Erik – I will, as there aren’t too many foodstuffs on it. Ha, ha.
I actually need to buy it. Maybe a good one for the Kindle.
LikeLike
it’s $6.49, less than my lunch two hours ago from the salad guy accross the street.
trust me here, man, when I have ever betrayed my OL homeboys? come on, the third annual OLTS march madness (DGH picked all papist schools in year one, remember?!?) should be ready to start, I’m going to nominate lame fox to run it for all us fatties.
LikeLike
I just checked, the authors didn’t make it loan-able.
I just dropped $28 for the latest from Darryl Glen. $6.49 bro, you can blame me if you don’t like it.
And ping me if you need help with your kindle app, yo.
LikeLike
Greg, what’s my point? It’s that if HC 114 is right–that only the holiest of men make but a small beginning of obedience in this life–that’s hardly a theology that ends up making believers the best citizens. In fact, most don’t even make a small beginning. So how is inside-out-conversion getting you the kind of society Curt wants to outside-in-impose? Neither of you are really accounting for abiding sin and its effects.
I get it, you read books. And you bluster book reports. But try Hunter’s “To Change the World.” He demolishes the religious fantasies of “more Christians equals better world.”
LikeLike
Andrew,
Last E-Book I bought was Hart & Godfrey’s history of Westminster West.
I’m due to buy another one. I’m such a paper guy I just have a hard time pulling the trigger.
LikeLike
And Zrim is writing from Grand-freaking-Rapids.
If that doesn’t lend credibility, what does?
LikeLike
Well, to be fair, it would only tell you that which you already know.
Read the NH Review page 23, if you need help deciding.
I need to go, Michael T is lurking, and he might tase me..
Toodles.
LikeLike
Andrew,
Where did you post about the OPC trial & Reddit? I can’t find it now.
LikeLike
Here to serve.
LikeLike
Where’s Jasitek and CWU?
LikeLike
Erik, TKNY calls himself more conservative than Machen.
In that part 3 segment, toward the end, re: evolution.
He cites this ad Machen’s liberal viewpoint location.
Guess what book is in the mail for yours truly?
Let me know your thoughts on Engaging, if you go for it. You need not read Ministries of Mercy, the call of the Jericho Road as I was made to for ordination.
Peace bro.
LikeLike
Andrew,
I heard that part. TKNY is ticked that people give him crap about his views on evolution.
LikeLike
And they mention Waltke (either here or in the Preaching Christ series with Clowney link )
Aimee bird mentions golf in the MOS podcast.
I could go on..
LikeLike
Zrim says: “It’s that if HC 114 is right–that only the holiest of men make but a small beginning of obedience in this life–”
What if it’s not right? Or what if Ursinus means compared to the final state of glorification? According to his own exposition of q.114:
“The obedience of the law is possible in the regenerate, 1. As touching external propriety and discipline. 2. As it respects the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, or by the benefit of justification and regeneration,, which we obtain by faith. 3. As it respects the commencement of internal and external obedience in this life. “This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not grievous.” (1 John 5:3.) He that boasts that he knows and worships God, without the commencement of obedience, or regeneration, is a liar.
But the law is impossible to the regenerate in respect to God, or the perfect internal and external obedience which it requires.” Zacharias Ursinus, Commentary on the HC.
There’s a lot in there, but it seems if pressed he would agree with WCF VIII:
“I. They who are effectually called and regenerated, having a new heart and a new spirit created in them, are further sanctified, really and personally, through the virtue of Christ’s death and resurrection, by his Word and Spirit dwelling in them; the dominion of the whole body of sin is destroyed, and the several lusts thereof are more and more weakened and mortified, and they more and more quickened and strengthened, in all saving graces, to the practice of true holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.”
Zrim says: “…that’s hardly a theology that ends up making believers the best citizens.”
Absolutely not. Whatever on Earth could I have been thinking? Clearly the reprobate, dead in trespasses and sins and by nature children of wrath would make the best citizens.
LikeLike
Greg,
But Curt’s a Christian & he calls for civil disobedience.
Are you questioning his sanctification?
And Curt (rightly?) cites Keller.
LikeLike
Curt, you’re hanging out with the Left, not exactly a fruit of the Spirit crowd, and you’re going to get all righteous on me?
LikeLike
ec, you’r lumping Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans together under “Asian”? Haters gonna hate.
LikeLike
ec, but is TKNY a gifted thinker?
LikeLike
D.G.,
No disrespect intended. All of those groups are academically superior and therefore suspect in Curt’s eyes.
His thinking is at a pretty basic level, which is why he’s popular with evangelicals
LikeLike
When Piper, Keller, & Bradley preach as they do they have to realize that they will spawn Curts.
Are they willing to be held to account for that or will it be like Tim Bayly & his axe-wielding deacon?
LikeLike
Lol
Darryl fights the fights TKNY is unable (umwilling?) to.
And I bet Tim prefers dogs to cats.
Hiss, boo.
LikeLike
Zrim says: “It’s that if HC 114 is right–that only the holiest of men make but a small beginning of obedience in this life–”
What if it’s not right? Or what if Ursinus means compared to the final state of glorification? According to his own exposition of q.114:
“The obedience of the law is possible in the regenerate, 1. As touching external propriety and discipline. 2. As it respects the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, or by the benefit of justification and regeneration,, which we obtain by faith. 3. As it respects the commencement of internal and external obedience in this life. “This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not grievous.” (1 John 5:3.) He that boasts that he knows and worships God, without the commencement of obedience, or regeneration, is a liar.
But the law is impossible to the regenerate in respect to God, or the perfect internal and external obedience which it requires.” Zacharias Ursinus, Commentary on the HC.
There’s a lot in there, but it seems if pressed he would agree with WCF VIII:
“I. They who are effectually called and regenerated, having a new heart and a new spirit created in them, are further sanctified, really and personally, through the virtue of Christ’s death and resurrection, by his Word and Spirit dwelling in them; the dominion of the whole body of sin is destroyed, and the several lusts thereof are more and more weakened and mortified, and they more and more quickened and strengthened, in all saving graces, to the practice of true holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.”
Zrim says: “…that’s hardly a theology that ends up making believers the best citizens.”
Absolutely not. Whatever on Earth could I have been thinking? Clearly the reprobate, dead in trespasses and sins and by nature children of wrath would make the best citizens.
Zrim says: “Neither of you are really accounting for abiding sin and its effects.”
This is a psychological trick that antinomians play on themselves and then think it will play with others too.
I say it’s you who doesn’t understand how bad sin is and how dead sinners are. The mere existence of the Romans 7 war in a man’s heart is itself the result and evidence of a radical and consuming transformation. In the ultimate display of making the perfect the enemy of the good, guys like Tchividjian try to sound so spiritual in their high view of sin, when in actuality what they’re really showing is an emaciated estimation of God’s provision for His own glory through His church in this age. Which yes, He most certainly does care about.
Zrim says: “…the religious fantasies of “more Christians equals better world.”
Ya gotta pay attention to the people you’re having a discussion with if you expect to be taken seriously man. Please reread my comment. I specifically said that numbers alone are not the point. Didn’t I? FAITHFULNESS is the point. Today’s American church is in a torrid panting love affair with the the world and the things therein.
There are lessons in this nations history. She has always been very VERY far from perfect. There was no golden age, but she was moving in the right general direction until the 1960’s.
Erik and Curt? I’ll get to yours as soon as I can.
LikeLike
Erik: Greg,
But Curt’s a Christian & he calls for civil disobedience. Are you questioning his sanctification? And Curt (rightly?) cites Keller.
I am NO fan of Keller. At all. His cultural transformation/social justice views are unbiblical and dangerous. Not to mention his endorsement of pornographic media in his also unbiblical quest for “cultural engagement”.
Where can I read about the particulars of Curt’s civil disobedience? It’s not all created equal.
I can barely keep my eyes open man. Have to continue tomorrow. It’s been a long day.
LikeLike
Just because there’s not enough controversy on this thread yet:
“Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” — 1 Pet 2.12.
Could this be a hint that being Christian makes or should make us better citizens?
Just musing out loud.
LikeLike
Jeff, your musings are better than most peoples arguments (your guesses are better than most peoples facts (star trek)).
LikeLike
Jeff, maybe, but aside from Paul few Christians then were technically citizens, which is a luxury we have by virtue of living in a secular society where religion is private. I’d say Peter is talking about being a good neighbor.
LikeLike
D. G. Hart
Jeff, maybe, but aside from Paul few Christians then were technically citizens, which is a luxury we have by virtue of living in a secular society where religion is private. I’d say Peter is talking about being a good neighbor.
Ok, that’s a fair point, which is along the lines of what I was saying above.
Becoming a “good citizen”, insofar as that is possible depending on where one lives, is simply a public component of sanctification. It’s not a specific goal, it’s what people begin to grow into when they get saved.”
We’re talking about the modern west and America in particular in this conversation. Although it is eroding fast, the rule of law in this nation was based on biblical morality. Not the form of government, because the New Testament sets forth no specific form of government. But the kind of citizen required for the form we chose was one of private virtuous conviction.
Limited public government worked for us because people were generally well behaved already due to a pervasive private consensus on what right and wrong meant.(that could use some further exposition) Denying that that private consensus was informed by the Christian religion does not pass the chuckle test. I know you know that.
I agree, the biblical principle centers on being a good neighbor. Which may or may not also mean good citizen depending on where and when God puts somebody in history. The trade guilds of 1st century Asia Minor, for instance, made being a good citizen there at that time nearly impossible for believers living there then. The pagans defined “good citizen” as participation in their drunken, openly idolatrous orgies. And that in order to make a living. God says being a good citizen in that setting necessitates that your luminescent saltiness make you a bad citizen in the eyes of the pagans you’re living among.
Christians are supposed to be ambassadors of Christ to a hostile world. That means portraying His goodness and holiness to them in how we live before them. We are approaching a tipping point, and in fact in some areas we’re already there, where good American citizenship will be impossible for a true committed believer. However, living in peaceful joyous obedience to whatever laws are not contrary to God’s in the meantime, in other words, being a “good citizen”, insofar as that is possible, remains the godly thing to do. NOT so we can make them good Americans. But so that God may hopefully use our holy lives as an instrument of salvation to them. If that happens they’ll be good citizens, defined as I have been presently saying.
How we handle the imposition of laws that ARE contrary to God’s, must be determined depending on several factors, on a case by case basis.
LikeLike
@dgh For the purpose of these discussions, what is the distinction between Christianity making you a better citizen and Christianity making you a better neighbor?
LikeLike
For Jeff
LikeLike
Greg The Terrible: “We’re talking about the modern west and America in particular in this conversation. Although it is eroding fast, the rule of law in this nation was based on biblical morality.”
Excellent point!!
As it turns out, the preaching of the Gospel, and the consequences of rejecting it was a common theme 2+ centuries ago, and by the way, was well known to politicians.
Samuel Davies, the well known and celebrated Colonial era Presbyterian preacher in Virginia,
( where it was illegal to do so) lays out the fate of those who reject it. No doubt, many politicians had this in the back of their minds in their deliberations, and it shaped their efforts, knowing they would give account to the Great Judge of the World. President Washington stated in his Farewell Address the criticality of “Religion and Morality” as fundamental to the stability of the country.
Davies (1724-1761) later was President of The College of New Jersey at Princeton.
“The General Resurrection”
http://www.sermonindex.net/modules/articles/index.php?view=article&aid=27289
Excerpt:
“Now the TRIAL comes!
All his evil deeds and all his omissions of duty—are now produced against him. All the mercies he abused, all the chastisements he despised, all the means of grace he neglected or mis-improved, every sinful and even every idle word; more—his most secret thoughts and dispositions are all exposed and brought into judgment against him! When the Judge interrogates him, “Is it not so, sinner? Are not these charges true?” His conscience obliges him to confess and cry out, “Guilty! Guilty!” Now the trembling criminal, being plainly convicted and left without any plea nor any excuse—the supreme Judge, in stern majesty and inexorable justice, thunders out the dreadful sentence, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels!”
Oh tremendous doom! Every word is big with terror and shoots a thunderbolt through the heart!
“Depart!” Away from My presence! I cannot bear so loathsome a sight as you! I once called you to come to Me that you might have life—but you would not regard the call. Now you shall never more hear that inviting voice!
Depart “from Me”—from Me, the only Fountain of happiness, the only proper Good for an immortal soul!
“But, Lord,” we may suppose the criminal to say, “if I must depart, bless me before I go.”
“No!” says the angry Judge, “Depart you who are cursed! Depart with My eternal and heavy curse upon you; a curse dreadfully powerful—which blasts whatever it falls upon like flashes of consuming, irresistible lightning!”
“But if I must go away under Your curse,” the criminal may be supposed to say, “then let that be all my punishment. Let me depart to some agreeable or at least tolerable remote place, where I may meet with something to mitigate the curse!”
“No! You must depart into FIRE! There you must forever burn in excruciating tortures!”
“But, Lord, if I must make my bed in fire—oh, let it be a transient blaze that will soon burn itself out and put an end to my torment!”
“No! Depart into everlasting fire! There burn without being consumed, and be tormented without end!”
“But, Lord, grant me,” cries the poor wretch, “at least the mitigation of friendly and sympathizing company. Or, if this cannot be granted, grant me this small, this almost no request—to be doomed to some solitary corner in hell, where I shall be punished only by my own conscience and Your immediate hand. But, oh, deliver me from these evil, tormenting devils! Banish me into some hidden corner in the infernal pit—far from malicious fiends!”
“No! into the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his angels! You must be one of their wretched crew forever. You joined with them in sinning—and now must share in their punishment! You gladly submitted to them as your tempters—and now you must submit to them as your tormentors!”
The sentence being pronounced and read—it is immediately executed!
“And they will go away into eternal punishment!” (Matthew 25:46) Devils drag them away to the pit, and throw them down headlong! They must go away into the bottomless pit! There they are confined in chains of darkness, and cast into the burning lake of fire and brimstone forever and ever!”
Quite a scary theme…especially for politicians of that day…and oh so lacking now. Imagine being Lenin and Stalin upon their entrance to face the eternal Judge they denied even existed, and all the millions of their victims the evidence of their evil deeds confronting them… .
More Davies sermons,
http://www.sermonindex.net/modules/articles/index.php?view=category&cid=221
Might be useful to read:
The General Resurrection
The Justice of God, And The Sins Of Our Country
The Resurrection of Damnation
The Universal Judgment
Washington’s Farewell Address:
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp
LikeLike
“…the religious fantasies of “more Christians equals better world.”
Ya gotta pay attention to the people you’re having a discussion with if you expect to be taken seriously man. Please reread my comment. I specifically said that numbers alone are not the point. Didn’t I? FAITHFULNESS is the point.
Greg, but this is where the point about abiding sin comes back to tap you on the shoulder. You want to say that more conversions is the way to a better society in pushing back against Curt’s more political agenda. But if, instead of citing plenty of biblical and confessional language about it (yippee for Greg, he gets a gold star!), you actually grasped the reality of abiding human sin you wouldn’t be wanting to make that contention, because you’d know that conversion has more to do with stoking humility, and humility has a way of recognizing that good citizens come from a variety of backgrounds, including “the reprobate, dead in trespasses and sins and by nature children of wrath.” You don’t think so, but until you admit that, a big fat F on your grasp of sin.
LikeLike
Could this be a hint that being Christian makes or should make us better citizens?
Jeff, it all turns on “should.” Think of how law meets sin, the potency of latter weakening the effects of the former (Ro 8). Should those who keep the law perfectly be the best citizens? Sure. Oops, there’s sin again. So much for “should.”
LikeLike
sdb, citizenship involves participation in the polis — voting, councils, discussions, reading the news. Neighborliness doesn’t.
Since next to no Christians were citizens, the apostles didn’t have much reason to consider it.
Maybe the better category is aliens. And we do have the apostles talking about that, plus the precedent of the Israelites. In fact, once Jesus leaves, and Jerusalem is no longer holy (tell that to the RC’s, Jews, and Muslims), Christians are simply exiles.
LikeLike
Greg – FAITHFULNESS is the point. Today’s American church is in a torrid panting love affair with the world and the things therein.
Erik – Have you ever looked at the records of church discipline from consistories of Reformation era churches? Of Puritan era churches?
I don’t think we have a golden age to point back to — ever.
LikeLike
My experience of the church, even Reformed churches, even the best of Reformed churches, is that sanctification is an ongoing struggle.
Families come and go, marriages struggle, pastors are unfaithful (even sexually immoral, even criminally convicted), people get mad at each other, people get excommunicated.
And these are the best of churches.
LikeLike
Curt – but she was moving in the right general direction until the 1960’s
Erik – But Machen’s struggles took place in the 1930’s. Darwin died in 1882. Freud died in 1939. Finney died in 1875. Fosdick graduated from Union Seminary in 1904. Joseph Smith died in 1844. Marx died in 1883. The first Unitarian church was formed in the U.K. in 1774.
You are way, way late with a 1960s date.
LikeLike
That should be Greg, not Curt.
LikeLike
Jeff – Just because there’s not enough controversy on this thread yet:
Erik – This is an episode of “Mister Rogers Neighborhood” compared to where we have been in the past.
LikeLike
Russell – Imagine being Lenin and Stalin upon their entrance to face the eternal Judge they denied even existed, and all the millions of their victims the evidence of their evil deeds confronting them… .
Erik – Careful, Russell. Curt may still be around. Lenin and Stalin were Marxists who understood group and class sin. Curt, Chomsky, and even Keller may see some positive nuances of Lenin and Stalin that you do not.
LikeLike
Using Greg’s schema what are we to make of Doug Phillips?
Christian, conservative, son of a prominent conservative, preacher, elder, promoter of Christian virtue, biblical manhood, biblical womanhood, modesty, fidelity, chastity, homeschooling, patriotism.
http://literatecomments.com/2014/04/15/civil-lawsuit-for-over-1000000-filed-by-lourdes-torres-manteufel-against-doug-phillips-vision-forum-ministries/
LikeLike
It seems like the one who has been forgiven much goes down Zrim’s line of thinking and the one who’s been forgiven little goes down Greg’s.
LikeLike
Chris, how Tillichean:
So much of what I read out here takes me back to the debates in my senior year high school philosophy class, studying Tillich, Sartre, Skinner, Alan Watts, Zen and Motorcycle Maintenance, I could go on. I miss those days..
Glad you found OLTS, not sure how long you’ve been reading, but you’re awesome. Fwiw.
LikeLike
D.G.,
You judge fruit by its content, not its label. When those on the left show patience, kindness, love, and a desire for justice, I celebrate that as much as I do when I see the same on the right. But I am not going to look at the label and assume what fruit is or is not there.
LikeLike
Curt,
How many on the left that you have met show patience, kindness, love, and a desire for justice for:
(A) Christians
(B) The Unborn
The Democratic Party is the home of the American Left. How many pro-life politicians are Democrats?
LikeLike
Curt,
Why do so many on the left appear to be substituting a love for the planet and a love for animals for a love for people?
What is your theory on that?
LikeLike
Erik Charter
Posted February 26, 2015 at 4:11 pm | Permalink
erik says: “Greg,
On the entertainment issue, certainly technology is a factor in that. Mass media was not available in past centuries to the degree it is today.
Oh I don’t blame technology at all. Or even mass media. Both are neutral in themselves and have tremendous potential for righteousness. Neither can they be made the scapegoat for sin. The heart of man has been a self serving, self exalting, hedonistic “idol factory” since the third of Genesis. We are no more wicked now than the antediluvian crowd of which it is said “that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”
All throughout history we find the human race enthusiastically wallowing in bloodthirsty, blasphemous debauchery. The sicker and more vile and perverse and barbaric the better. Confirming Romans 3 in other words. (differing seasons of common grace temper this from time to time). Man, being what he is, is certain to use whatever technological advances he devises in the continued service of these depraved pursuits. That’s to be expected. What’s different now is that some of these recent advances such as photography and cinema present the most powerful tools of total influence and manipulation we’ve ever known. It has been long acknowledged and not even seriously questioned that especially skillfully produced audio visual motion picture technology can completely immerse a person in whatever influences and values the producers choose. It’s power to shape their thoughts and beliefs is unprecedented. They will TELL you that themselves. Scorsese will look right in the camera and SNEER at how he knows he’s manipulating his viewers.
Erik says: “I’m not sure 18th & 19th century Americans would have been more virtuous than 21st century Americans given an equal playing field.”
Please see above ^
Erik says: “Consider that “Fanny Hill” was written in 1748. I imagine some copies made it over to the new world.”
Both of which make my point. Hedonistic immorality is nothing new and nobody is immune. The west is populated with Adam’s children too. Also, you’ll see that that book was condemned and banned in the U.S. until… guess when. The early 1960’s. Exactly when Hollywood also threw off her 30 year run of self censorship.(that’s a story in itself.) Of course no society has ever been or ever will be free from immorality, but I’m talking what is normative in the public conscience. Which is a direct consequence of and sometimes in proportion to, the presence of a credible faithful Christian church.
That’s the most critical point of all in this discussion. The greatest difference now is that today’s CHURCH now openly embraces what the world once recoiled from as filth. In fact today, real people are employed to publicly “perform” what was only recorded in literary form back then. The world is SUPPOSED to do that. Christ’s church is SUPPOSED to know the difference between that and eating sweetbreads. (I just refuse to believe that you are not better than this Darryl, I mean that.)
Erik says: “I do agree it’s a slippery, downhill slope….”
We’re talking about different slopes Erik. I’ll explain more below.
Erik says: “I watched a doc on Netflix about a guy who made “sexploitation” films in the 60s. The kind of stuff that would play in Times Square. The films he made were plot driven, had some nudity and sexuality, but were by no means hardcore porn. Once “Deep Throat” came along in 1972 he was basically put out of business since he had no desire to write that kind of stuff. He still directed some of it, but under fake names.
From hardcore we’ve now gone to gay hardcore and when that’s not perverted enough, some turn to child porn (as I noted in a recent blog post). It does make one ask what the bottom is when it comes to this kind of thing.”
Ya know what the most deceptive and dangerous thing about pornography is Erik? It is a magnificent, masterful Satanic diversion. Of course it’s evil. NO Christian will deny that. And THAT is it’s primary purpose to the enemy where the church is concerned. Yes, even more than hooking her members. We wail and bemoan and denounce the horrible scourge of especially internet porn (and rightly so) and then grab our popcorn for an evening with it’s cousins in Hollywood. Straight up porn gives the church a false standard with which to congratulate herself on her moral outrage over a universally recognized evil. Today’s church thinks God shares THEIR rationalizations about “art” and “storytelling”.
The standard is the WORD and for us historic reformed orthodoxy. NOT XXX pornography, as if as long as it’s not that, God approves. It’s ALL porn, and would have been recognized as such even among the pagans in this country until 50 years ago. In the case of Hollywood, the devil gets to watch Christians pay people to blaspheme the name of the Lord our God too. As well as filling ourselves with gruesome bloody violence on top of everything else.
It’s the perfect weapon. He has seduced fools into thinking they are resisting the most powerful propaganda machine ever. “Doesn’t effect me” they say. (SURRRRRE it doesn’t, I’m witnessing it on this very site) As if it’s all about THEM. Victories number one and two. He has church people paying other people to do what they would NEVER want them or their loved ones to do themselves. Victories number three and four. Not only are the media addicts destroying their moral credibility as a testimony of God’s righteousness to the lost, but they are actively financing the damnation of those to whom they are commanded to portray Christ and be to them salt and light. Victories five and six.
With that, the serpent of old and father of lies takes his well earned bow.
Denouncing “porn” while embracing the mainstream entertainment industry is like pouring sewage through a strainer. You may filter out the biggest stuff, but what’s left is far more dangerous because it’s still deadly poison, but willingly drunk. In fact we pay to drink it.
LikeLike
Erik quotes me as saying:
Greg – FAITHFULNESS is the point. Today’s American church is in a torrid panting love affair with the world and the things therein.
And then responds with:
Erik – Have you ever looked at the records of church discipline from consistories of Reformation era churches? Of Puritan era churches?
Compare that to the church discipline records of today and get back to me 😉 Also what do you think the reformation era records would look like in today’s media enslaved OPC and PCA.. etc? IF those same men were at the helm with 16-18th or even 19th century sensibilities? Just transport them forward in time. Come on now brother.
I don’t think we have a golden age to point back to — ever.
Neither do I. See my latest please.
Curt, Zrim (anybody else?) Forgive me I have work. I’ll get to you guys.
Being Erik’s new boy, I have to take care of him first LOL!! (no, that did not actually bother me Erik 🙂 )
LikeLike
Greg – Both are neutral in themselves and have tremendous potential for righteousness.
Erik – If mass media has “tremendous potential for righteousness”, why have televangelists been so bad historically?
Has radio been much better? Video? DVD? Podcasts? Internet?
LikeLike
Greg – The heart of man has been a self serving, self exalting, hedonistic “idol factory” since the third of Genesis. We are no more wicked now than the antediluvian crowd of which it is said “that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”
Erik – You seem to be contradicting your statements about the church going downhill in the 1960s.
LikeLike
Greg,
People are disciplined for pretty much the same things as in the past — marital infidelity, divorce, not attending worship, not heeding elders. Sin hasn’t changed.
LikeLike
Greg,
So you’ve established in the past that you think nudity in film is out of bounds.
What is in bounds in terms of film and non-film related arts, entertainment, & recreation?
Is every adult bound to only engage in activities that are fit for their minor children? Are people never allowed to mature in this area?
Hart throws out “The Wire”, a show that many of us here are a fan of. Kenneth shared maybe 10 minutes of sexual-themed clips — in a series that spanned 5 seasons. Is a Christian bound to not watch 5 seasons of a show for the sake of 10 minutes?
What other areas of life are we bound to completely avoid because there may be some objectionable material?
Is everyone in our workplace sanctified? Is everyone in our church sanctified? Do we avoid work & church entirely so we can avoid unsanctified people?
LikeLike
These are serious questions. We see Jews and Muslims drawing lines in the areas of avoidance of “unholiness” that we do not draw. Do we need to be more like them?
LikeLike
Andrew – thank you. I’ve been an Old Life addict since August of last year. The regulars here are a riot and the interaction is all over the map from very helpful and insightful to down right insane – but you already know that. I love it.
LikeLike
Chris, guilty as charged, insane these comments get, it’s true.
Guilty, that is, but for my Savior:
Greg,
It seems to me that you have a bit of a subjective view of the holiness and efficacy of the church whereas many of us here have more of an objective view of the holiness and efficacy of the church.
We would see the marks of the church as biblical preaching, biblical administration of the sacraments, and the practice of church discipline.
Your view seems to be more along the lines of holy living on the part of church members (as you define it) = a holy church = an effective church, particularly in regards to evangelism.
You focus on Hollywood as a primary cause of today’s church lacking holiness.
Rewind 150 years, though, to a time when you would probably would say the church was in much better shape. What would the views be of the average white church member of that era about black people? About black Christians? The answer is, those views were probably not very holy. And this was 30-35 years before Edison even invented the movie camera.
How do you answer this critique?
LikeLike
Greg,
My point is that people are always messed up about something, Christian people are always messed up about something, the world is always messed up about something, and the church is always messed up about something.
It’s called life in this age between Christ’s coming and Christ’s return.
LikeLike
Eric, you mean I’m not more holy if I do not touch, do not taste, do not handle and other such regulations of false humility according to the doctrines of men?
LikeLike
Chris,
Something along those lines.
I’m aiming for more of an earthy, Bryan Crossity kind of piety…
LikeLike
Chris,
I would also note that Greg’s “Hollywood” could easily be replaced with “alcohol” during the temperance movement of the early 20th century.
It’s easy to identify a scapegoat for our sin, even as Christians, but the truth is that the sin lies within us, even without provocation from outside sources.
Last time we got to this point in the debate Greg became quite animated and I would argue, abusive, especially to D.G. I’m anxious to see how he reacts this time as my aim is not to anger or provoke him. I do think he means well.
LikeLike
The Christian Curmudgeon touched on these topics of late. I’ll link to Part II, but part I is good as well:
http://thechristiancurmudgeonmo.blogspot.com/2015/02/what-is-christian-part-ii-are-you.html
LikeLike
Erik, that was good stuff from the CC, thanks for posting.
LikeLike
Erik,
Quite a few for Christians, some for the unborn. But every group has those whom they relegate to insignificance, and that includes politically conservative Christians. How many politically conservative Christians show patience with Palestinians or with the unemployed or with those whose homes were foreclosed on?
The lesson behind the parable of the two men praying coincides with the lesson from Romans 2:1ff. This idea of not letting one’s justice concerns make one feel morally superior to others is one of the greatest hazards of all religious people as well as all who are involved with causes.
LikeLike
I’m going to have to determine whether I’m really wasting my time here or not. Erik you are paying less attention to me this time than you did before where we were bludgeoning each other. I have already addressed, in this thread, like 70% of what you’re asking me in these last few comments. I’m a terrible typist and it requires a considerable time commitment to compose one of these comments. Only to have you come back at me with responses indicating that you haven’t paid attention to them.
Intelligence was never one of the things I questioned about you, so don’t take this the wrong way. You are either one thousand times sharper than I even gave you credit for, or your views in these areas have not really changed in any truly substantive fashion. Not really.
The former would be extraordinarily impressive to say the least. The latter would be one of my greatest heartbreaks in a long time. (you have no idea)
This may be a really good time and place to expose the post modern mangling of the so called liberty passages as per Chris Townsend above. Maybe. I have heard every conceivable version of their abuse intended to support carnality and worldliness, especially as relates to people’s servile addiction to media entertainment Those passages have ZEEROH application there. None.
I don’t know. I’m inclined to continue, but I don’t know. It would without exaggeration be a part time job to answer just what’s been thrown at me on this page. Which I do have answers for. (including slavery )None of this new. It wasn’t new a year ago.
LikeLike
Erik,
Yes, internationally. That means eliminate the UN Security Council veto so you have one nation, one vote.
Regarding Islamist extremists, I find their resistance to that idea to be the same as those from any conservative religious group. That is because conservative religious groups tend to be very authoritarian.
BTW, you really haven’t addressed the issue of government pensions and how they are against one person, one vote. In fact, if private sector pensions depended on one person, one vote, what do you think would happen?
LikeLike
Curt, Zrim and anybody else, I apologize.
LikeLike
Greg,
Would you unpack your views on slavery for starters?
LikeLike
Curt – How many politically conservative Christians show patience with Palestinians or with the unemployed or with those whose homes were foreclosed on?
Erik – I’m always willing to listen.
It’s pretty much just dispensationalists who think they have a stake in the Israel vs. Palestinian debate.
I haven’t heard one thing about this in a decade in a Reformed church.
LikeLike
Curt – The lesson behind the parable of the two men praying coincides with the lesson from Romans 2:1ff. This idea of not letting one’s justice concerns make one feel morally superior to others is one of the greatest hazards of all religious people as well as all who are involved with causes.
Erik – That’s just a liberal trope.
What it’s about is discerning shit from Shinola.
LikeLike
Greg,
Just view it as a long, ongoing conversation. No one expects you to say everything you have to say in a day.
LikeLike
Greg,
I think your problem is that you think that me changing my mind about something means that I somehow fit into your mold of what someone who changes their mind about something looks like.
You have a lot of preconceived notions that you take for granted that you assume we share. We don’t necessarily do that, which I why I’m trying to help you unpack all that.
You say you’re reformed, but I think you pick up a lot from the milieu in which you worship, which I believe you have said is an African American, presumably revivalist-type church. That impacts how you view the faith, whether you fully realize it or not.
If I’ve misunderstood you, take your time and point out where and how.
LikeLike
Curt – Regarding Islamist extremists, I find their resistance to that idea to be the same as those from any conservative religious group. That is because conservative religious groups tend to be very authoritarian.
Erik – Yeah, the OPC is just the American version of ISIS.
Now we’re really starting to understand how you think.
LikeLike
Curt – BTW, you really haven’t addressed the issue of government pensions and how they are against one person, one vote. In fact, if private sector pensions depended on one person, one vote, what do you think would happen?
Erik – Public employee unions take union dues from members and turn around and give donations to politicians who approve generous pensions for the public employees who they are supposed to be overseeing for the benefit of taxpayers.
This is as crooked as anything you accuse corporations of doing, which renders you no more above the fray than anyone else.
LikeLike
Erik,
What you haven’t done is prove that they are against the concept of one person, one vote. Some such pensions are part of a state’s constitution which would imply that they were determined using a democratic process. Other gov’t pensions are not but that implies nothing. And what you have done is approached the subject of the need for gov’t funds from one direction: competing gov’t commitments. You haven’t addressed gov’t pensions from the tax resource side nor have you addressed the availability of private sector pensions based on one person, one vote decision making by employees.
Finally, I never said that the OPC was equal to ISIS. All I said was that the authoritarianism of religious conservatives influences them to oppose one person, one vote. Saying that does not imply that religious conservative groups are identical in every way. So I am not sure of the purpose of your note.
LikeLike
Curt,
You’re the protester, not me.
Individuals vote for conservatives and individuals vote for liberals.
The private sector operates according to the rule of law, as does the public sector.
Not sure what you’re protesting.
LikeLike
Curt,
Prove to me where an individual has been able to cast multiple votes.
Hasn’t happened that I know of since Kennedy was elected and that was Democrats.
LikeLike
Erik,
You ask questions or raise issues but are avoiding issues. Again, prove how gov’t sector pensions are against the one-person, one vote system. You’re the one who is making that claim.
In addition, you’ve only addressed gov’t pensions from the competing for gov’t resources side, you haven’t addressed gov’t pensions from the tax resource side nor have you addressed the availability of private sector pensions based on one person, one vote decision making by employees.
When you are talking about multiple votes, that applies to publicly owned companies in the private sector. There, shareholders vote and there you have a one share, one vote system. That is different from a one person one vote system. But I am puzzled why you asked about one multiple votes.
LikeLike
Curt – You ask questions or raise issues but are avoiding issues. Again, prove how gov’t sector pensions are against the one-person, one vote system. You’re the one who is making that claim.
Erik – No, I say they’re crooked just like some things that corporations do are crooked.
But to play your game, public employee unions buying Democrat politicians is a violation of the one-person, one vote system.
LikeLike
Two quick things for now Erik. (working at church) I have picked up nothing from the church I’m in. (that’s a long story, not for here)
Please define “pietist” and “revivalist” for me. YOUR definitions please. These issues are only complicated for people who really want them to be.
Chris Townsend, you’ll have to forgive me. Nothing personal, but I don’t know you and you are way down on my list right now.
LikeLike
Erik,
You are avoiding issues. You haven’t answer the pension issues I’ve raised. You said something about unions but that has nothing to do with state pensions, for example. As I wrote, some places, pensions are written into the State Constitution and apply to all state employees.
In addition, your stereotyping of unions is not based on adequate information.
LikeLike
Curt,
What are the pension issues you have raised?
You’re not a very concise or precise writer so I very well could have missed them.
LikeLike
Greg – I have picked up nothing from the church I’m in
Erik – That’s probably not good. LOL
The piece I posted earlier from the Curmudgeon is a really good primer on the pietist/revivalist mindset. I would sum it up as elevating the subjective aspects of religion over the objective. I’ll link to that piece again here. I think there are also aspects of elevating the doctrine of sanctification over the doctrine of justification.
http://thechristiancurmudgeonmo.blogspot.com/2015/02/what-is-christian-part-ii-are-you.html?spref=fb
LikeLike
Curt,
Let me give you a summary.
The left has an agenda that favors the public sector (and public sector employees). Leftists buy politicians who will advance their agenda.
The right has an agenda that favors the private sector (and private sector employees). The right buys politicians who will advance their agenda.
Voters choose between these two sides based on their perceived self interest.
You think you’ve identified the purer, less self-interested, more moral, more Christian, side.
I think you’re kidding yourself.
That’s where we’re at.
LikeLike
Curt,
If you don’t think the expense of public sector pensions is not a serious issue that states are dealing with, read the newspaper.
Even Democrat politicians are beginning to see the need to scale them back.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-illinois-pension-reform-met0114-20150113-story.html
Illinois has a $105 billion unfunded pension liability for state workers.
Like poor public schools, this is an issue that the left would like to just hide their heads in the sand on, but neither issue is just going away.
LikeLike
(in a REAL hurry here)
Erik quotes me as saying: “I have picked up nothing from the church I’m in”
and then sarcastically(it seems, though I could be wrong) responds with:
“That’s probably not good. LOL”
I meant in relation to the things you mentioned Erik. My theology was largely hardened 25 years ago. I’ve been in this church for 5. I have godly reasons for being there. You assume at your own risk. I’ll tell you about it one day.
Erik says: ” I would sum it up as elevating the subjective aspects of religion over the objective. ….I think there are also aspects of elevating the doctrine of sanctification over the doctrine of justification.”
Really? That would would most assuredly not be me. I can’t believe we haven’t gotten further than this.
Erik: “The piece I posted earlier from the Curmudgeon is a really good primer on the pietist/revivalist mindset.”
I read it in a spare few minutes I had here. We need to talk Erik. Waddaya say we have the “piestist” discussion at his place? There is so much right and so much wrong with that piece man.
You said above:”You have a lot of preconceived notions that you take for granted that you assume we share. We don’t necessarily do that, which I why I’m trying to help you unpack all that.”
I will believe whatever that bible actually says. NO MATTER WHAT it costs me. How bout you? Do we have different standards there? Or is that simpleton fundy pietism too.
I’ll play. You can help me unpack. That is not sarcasm either.
LikeLike
Erik,
You asserted that pensions violated the one person, one vote rule. You asserted it without showing it.
Second, leftists are anti-capitalists. Thus, in America, there is left buying of politicians. Why? Because pushing the Left’s agenda is not a marketable skill. However, there are the liberals and the difference between them is that the liberal form of capitalism is like the local train that serves amenities. The right’s form of capitalism is like the express train that serves no amenities.
Yes, there is a buying of politicians, but we have to ask if that is more due to a failure in implementation than in design. What allows money to rule in politics is citizen apathy.
Finally, your statement about state pensions is hardly proved by example. Because again, one has to ask if the reason for the shortfall in funding is due to the pensions themselves or the failure in raising revenues through taxes. Now let’s think about this. The private sector has been doing away with pensions because it violates the maximize profits ethic. So how do people secure their retirement. They invest either directly or indirectly. But that results in these investors living off the wages of the workers. And because of the financial dependence, those whose income depends solely on investments will regard the workers as disposable objects. For if others are willing to do the same work for less pay, the current set of workers are often sacked. So in such a situation, how concerned will investors be in the workers being paid a fair and livable wage? Remember that in the land of supply and demand, fair and livable are not issues; only numbers are.
LikeLike
Greg,
Just keep it here. The regulars here know the Curmudgeon.
We probably don’t disagree too much on what the Bible says. Where we likely disagree are the practical applications and the pastoral approach to take when someone doesn’t do what the Bible says.
LikeLike
Erik,
Made an error in my last note to you. I meant to say that there is NO Left buying politicians. WHy? It isn’t marketable.
LikeLike
Your imagination can assign characters:
LikeLike
Curt,
To be honest, I have no idea what you are talking about with the “one person, one vote rule”. Please define it and tell me how you believe it is being violated.
LikeLike
I view the Curmudgeon as one of the best Christian blogs. Don’t always agree with it. But the management there has good articles and responds well to comments
LikeLike
Curt,
if you’re collecting a pension aren’t you living off workers, too? If I went to the office of your pension fund I imagine I would find investment managers who invest in capitalistic enterprises on your behalf.
LikeLike
Erik,
you’re not familiar with idea of democracy where decisions are made by voting and each person gets one vote?
BTW, aren’t those people who live pensions living off their previous work? And that doesn’t include the deductions for pensions and how that money was used by those handling the deductions.
And there is another difference. Workers are voters who could use the vote to overturn. But workers in the private sector do not have a voice or sufficient voice to do the same. That is because either workers are completely at the mercy of shareholders or are not given an adequate number of shares to compete with the major shareholders.
And yes, I know that my deductions for pension are used in a capitalist system. The point being that I can limit the amount I depend on that, but I can’t eliminate the connection. BTW, I was required to sign up with a retirement plan. It wasn’t a choice.
LikeLike
D.G.,
I know you like Machen. And he makes a valid point in saying that when Christianity is fashioned in order solve worldly problems, it ceases to be Christianity. And he says that because has Christianity is so remade, it loses its revelatory basis. Fair enough.
But there is another threat to the revelatory nature of Christianity as well. That comes from the syncretic joining of one’s culturally determined political values with one’s Christian faith. And what needs to be done regarding Machen is to separate his political views from his theology so that we can use his theological views more objectively in discussing socio-political issues. In addition, recognizing that the Social Gospel is not a monolith would help as well.
LikeLike
Erik says: Greg,
Just keep it here. The regulars here know the Curmudgeon.”
Ok, but it’s tough having a conversation in the midst of 5 others. I’ve been to his site before. I don’t remember how or why I got there, but he would have been perfect in this conversation too.
Erik says: “We probably don’t disagree too much on what the Bible says. Where we likely disagree are the practical applications and the pastoral approach to take when someone doesn’t do what the Bible says.”
The same bible tells us what to do Erik. Can you explain this further please? There is not one single new thing you’ve brought up. I dealt with it all between last time and now and most of it in the last 24 hours. I really WANT to have this dialog with you, but I am spending tons of time on these comments and you are not absorbing them somehow. Could be my fault to some degree too.
Please tell me about my most egregious error so far. Let’s start there.
LikeLike
Curt,
Who is getting more than 1 vote?
A taxpayer guaranteed pension that delivers regardless of investment returns is a raw deal for taxpayers.
You’re part of an oppressive group.
LikeLike
Greg,
“Band of Brothers”: 10 parts, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, Damian Lewis. Maybe the best thing I’ve ever seen. 1 nude scene that lasts 5-10 seconds. Off limits to Christians?
LikeLike
Greg,
“Band of Brothers”: 10 parts, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, Damian Lewis. Maybe the best thing I’ve ever seen. 1 nude scene that lasts 5-10 seconds. Off limits to Christians?”
First? Please don’t try to impress me with pagan names. I couldn’t possibly care less. To me, they are sinners who need Jesus. Just like the homeless shlubs were going to minister to in the corridor, downtown tomorrow. I don’t want any of their autographs. I want them to be saved from their sin. Whether in Hollywood or the ghetto. Same people.
Yes, it’s off limits. Unless you think you can convince God that a totally avoidable and ultimately meaningless piece of entertainment justifies you paying somebody to sin. Just a little though. We’re back to the same arguments. What if it were you, your wife or children? Would Jesus say:
““Band of Brothers”: 10 parts, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, Damian Lewis. Maybe the best thing I’ve ever seen. 1 nude scene featuring the Charter family that lasts 5-10 seconds, good art and good story outweighed the bad, so I didn’t mind?”
Is that what the God who reveals Himself in the bible would say? Would He swoon at the name of some Godless celebrities? How many times was His name blasphemed during that series? How much gruesome utterly unnecessary violence did you intentionally put before your eyes and into your heart. Please tell me how the Lord was glorified in your life because of having seen that show that mine was not because I haven’t. Or ANY show or movie. Scripture please.
You are proving my point in spades Erik. NOTHING else in history has been able to induce this kind of flagrant open moral compromise. What DID the church do for all those centuries without tv or movies? There are NO exceptions with the spotlessly pure Lamb of God. Not Schindler’s List, not 12 Years a Slave, none.(those are always big ones with the media addicts) Again. Please tell me how the Lord was glorified in your life because of having seen that show that mine was not because I haven’t. Or ANY show or movie. Scripture please.
LikeLike
Greg,
You’re going to minister to the homeless.
Would you ever go minister to sinners in a strip club or a gay bar? Why or why not?
LikeLike
Greg,
Could I impress you with the name “Tim Keller”?
LikeLike
Greg,
So now you’re as opposed to violence & language as you are to nudity?
How much literature does this rule out? Should Christian colleges offer degrees in English that include serious literary study of works with adult themes?
LikeLike
Greg,
How do you evaluate this defense of Jason Stellman’s use of the word “fuck” in his podcasts:
Bryan Cross
February 7, 2015 at 7:45 AM
Erik,
Though I haven’t listened to all the podcasts, the only thing I disagree with Jason about, so far as I know, is his claim that the rest of us at CTC are better Catholics than he is. Also, morality does not include all cultural taboos or norms. In a fundamentalist paradigm, saying ‘fuck’ is a sin. But not in the agape paradigm, within which ‘fuck’ can be said while loving God above all else as Father, and loving one’s neighbor as oneself for God’s sake. Jason gets this, which is why he is rightly comfortable in his earthy humanity, as was Chesterton, O’Connor, Waugh, Greene, and Percy. (Just read Percy!) The saints are very diverse; no two saints are identical. Each has a different set of gifts, a different style, a different personality. Not only is there room within the Church for all these different styles, but we each benefit from them all, and in this way we need and appreciate these different styles and gifts, because they exemplify different facets of the Good, which none of us individually fully exemplify. In short, in the Body of Christ we all (myself included) benefit from what is unique in Jason’s style. So not only is Jason a friend and brother (though I’m a lousy friend on my end when he’s in need), I’m grateful for everything about him that is different from me.
Also, if you can get a little distance, read through this thread again as if through the eyes of a third-party (if you can), and ask yourself what it means when a self-professed agnostic is so much more kind, giving, long-suffering, gracious, charitable, and (dare I say it) Christ-like, than yourself. What does it say about your paradigm when an agnostic so clearly and obviously out-loves you? Something in 1 Cor 13 seems pertinent. But 1 Cor 13 came after the Damascus road, when a man infatuated and obsessed with the laws, and in the name of the law breathing murderous threats and seeking to stamp out those even in far away places who had entered into the agape paradigm, came face to face with Agape Himself. He discovered that Agape Himself was that to which all those laws pointed. And there and then this man was lifted into a higher paradigm, the agape paradigm, according to which laws are for persons, not persons for the law, because the telos of the law is love, which is irreducibly both Personal and Inter-Personal. If the measure is love, then everything without love becomes a clanging cymbal, not only empty, but off-putting. And a paradigm that breeds and applauds love-less behavior by that very fact refutes and destroys itself, in spite of itself. So if you find yourself in a paradigm in which love-less behavior is bred, encouraged, and applauded, where individuals are continually attacking and devouring one another, where genuine insults (not the affectionate sort) are the norm, where getting the speck out of the neighbor’s eye is everyone’s obsession, then it might be time to reconsider seriously whether you’ve taken a wrong turn at some point.
In the peace of Christ,
– Bryan
LikeLike
Erik: Greg,
Could I impress you with the name “Tim Keller”?
Are you intentionally not listening to me? 🙂 I already said I can’t stand Keller. You’ll impress me even less with the names of celebrity preachers. (though not all are the same) TGC is a headquarters of deception in the church today. What good they do is the vehicle to smuggle in the bad. The SBC is almost totally apostate and the sooner the faithful left in her midst depart, the better. I AM NOT A TRANSFORMATIONALIST. I hope this is clear now 😉
Erik says: “Greg,
So now you’re as opposed to violence & language as you are to nudity?”
You know what might help Erik? Seriously? Go back and reread that sweetbreads thread from a year ago. None of this is new brother. Secular cinematic media entertainment unless VERY tightly managed in a godly biblical fashion is a crippling, corrupting cancer on society and especially the body of Christ on every level. The higher the quality the more dangerous it is. That’s how it works. This would have been a no brainier for he Westminster Assembly. Don’t you dare even TRY n tell me that you don’t KNOW that that is true.
Erik says: “How much literature does this rule out? Should Christian colleges offer degrees in English that include serious literary study of works with adult themes?”
First question as always is, what if no Christians studied literature at all? Not saying they shouldn’t but it’s always interesting to watch people fall out in contorted convulsion at the very suggestion of such a thing. I’ve read exactly one work of fiction (recently) in the last forty years (except Pilgrim’s Progress) and nobody can tell me, again, how I’ve been made less useful to God because of it.
Number 2. How many real people are paid to sin in the production of literature? The bible is riddled with sin. God’s divine prerogative of wise historical NON VISUAL reportage. Why do you think a sovereign God would inscripurate His mind in WORDS for us instead of pictures or movies?
The 38th chapter of Genesis, much of Judges, the 23rd chapter of Ezekiel and the entire SofS for starters. Would be an abomination to have real people explicitly portray for us. You really don’t understand that? The difference between “Adam knew his wife” and having a man and woman have sex on screen? I think you do.
I’m gonna be gone for a good while until later. That street mission I was telling you about. Does actually preaching the gospel to lost people instead of paying them to sin for me make me a pietistic revivalist Erik? Is God going to tell me I should have stayed home and watched “Band of Brothers” instead? Make no mistake my friend. I do what I do because I’m grateful to a merciful mighty God for taking this prodigal back after I sinned right in His face after knowing Him and knowing better. NOT because I think it makes me better than anybody else.
LikeLike
Erik asks:
Greg,
How do you evaluate this defense of Jason Stellman’s use of the word “f**k” in his podcast”
I’ll have to do it later, but yes, I have had EXTENSIVE debate on God’s glorious gift of spoken communication. There is an airtight case to be made here too for those who care more about pleasing the Lord and representing Him faithfully than they do about their own selfish view of liberty. This is not that complicated ether. Are you going somewhere here or are you just luring me into stating my views on EVERYthing for some purpose you have? 😀 That’s ok. I’m game.
LikeLike
On film history, Mark Cousins’ magnum opus, “The Story of Film: An Odyssey”, is really impressive. The whole thing can be streamed on Netflix:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0184108/
LikeLike
Greg,
Just a conversation. I have no agenda.
LikeLike
Greg,
One critique I would make, not so much with you here, but on the approach that you seem to take elsewhere, is as follows:
When you go to someone loaded for bear, thinking you have an “airtight case” for X, it’s usually not very effective. I know you do this with Christian movie critics.
It’s like when I went after the Drunk Ex-Pastors in order to get at Bryan Cross. Next thing I knew, Kenneth was drawn in and shortly thereafter I was on a ride on the crazy train.
People don’t react well when they figure out you are targeting them and setting out to make them look bad — and for good reason. When we attack people this way we disrespect them and don’t treat them as fully human. We treat them as means to our own ends — as pawns that we are using to prove our point that we think is important to God. God doesn’t need us to make his case for Him in this way.
If we really care about people we’ll be more patient and kind. Not everyone is going to agree with us — some never will, some won’t for a long time. Lets not give them an excuse for that by being obnoxious and overaggressive.
LikeLike
If Curt doesn’t live someplace here in NE Illinois I’ll be very surprised. The issues he raises and the way he articulates them are one and the same as what I endure almost every day on the evening news broadcast.
LikeLike
Greg – Secular cinematic media entertainment unless VERY tightly managed in a godly biblical fashion is a crippling, corrupting cancer on society and especially the body of Christ on every level.
Erik – What would be some examples of the former? Have you seen the movies made by the Kendrick Brothers?
https://kendrickbrothers.com/
I like their movies, but would you agree that a lot of “Christian movies” throughout history have been pretty bad in terms of writing & production values? A recent example would be Kirk Cameron’s “Saving Christmas”. Christians get (rightly) mocked because of things like that.
LikeLike
Greg – This would have been a no brainier for the Westminster Assembly. Don’t you dare even TRY n tell me that you don’t KNOW that that is true.
Erik – There were plenty of characters at the Westminster Assembly. Fortunately their worst ideas got filtered out.
LikeLike
Greg – . I’ve read exactly one work of fiction (recently) in the last forty years (except Pilgrim’s Progress) and nobody can tell me, again, how I’ve been made less useful to God because of it.
Erik – Do you know Richard Smith?
You’re not the best at recognizing satire, irony, nuance, or jokes. If you read more literature you might be a little sharper in that area. I agree it’s not a requirement of life, though.
I think reading literature also helps with empathy.
LikeLike
Greg – Does actually preaching the gospel to lost people instead of paying them to sin for me make me a pietistic revivalist Erik?
Erik – It depends. Has anyone ordained you to preach the gospel?
LikeLike
Erik,
In the private sector, anyone who owns more than one share of stock. And major shareholders make out better than the rest.
As for the public sector, those who can buy parties and candidates can control whom we can vote for, especially when we limit ourselves to voting for the them and not-them candidates.
Now, why are you asking this question? I thought I’ve already mentioned about stockholders before.
LikeLike
Erik, I just counted. You have either directly asked questions or made made statements requiring a response 17 times on the last page and this one. Do you realize that? They’re pretty much all substantive and of good quality though many I have answered already. Do you have any idea what it would take for me to do justice to all those? I promise you I have answers to them all. Every last one.
Could I please prevail upon you though to pick a direction and stick to it, while I attempt to decipher what would be the most valuable for me to address of the rest of all these in the meantime.
They’re all seriously good, but they’re also all over the place. I am going to consider myself honored for the time being, by your apparent interest in my thought until inescapable evidence to the contrary presents itself.
For the moment I cannot resist this:
You quote me as saying: “Does actually preaching the gospel to lost people instead of paying them to sin for me, make me a pietistic revivalist Erik?”
And then respond with: “It depends. Has anyone ordained you to preach the gospel?
First off, this is where you intend to expose my non-commitment to Presbyterian ecclesiology and thereby negate my claim to being reformed. I reject that. Utterly. That is denominational elitism and unless one is prepared to embrace apostolic succession, monolithic church government is in the eye of the protestant beholder. Nuthin wrong with it, but impossible to be dogmatic on,
In this regard there are several Presbyterian denominations (AND “reformed” baptists) who are in fellowship, all with their own presbyteries and presbyters (not the baptists). That’s fine, but it doesn’t do much to enhance one’s motivation to see one as any more valid than the others.
Furthermore, where in the scriptures are we told that nobody can testify of their new life in Christ and encourage others to trust Him too unless they are ordained by a Presbyterian body? The woman at the well pretty much lays this to rest. “Come see a man…”. That’s what we did today. We took new life in the risen Christ to those enslaved in sin and death. You are prepared to make a biblical case for God’s displeasure in this, but His blessing in “Band of Brothers”, “The Wire” and “Boardwalk Empire”?
LikeLike
Curt,
So what if people own more than one share of stock. What does that have to do with elections for political office?
Exactly who do you think people would want to vote for if money was not a factor in politics? You seem to assume that they would want to elect people that you like. Why?
LikeLike
Curt,
I think you fail to realize that you don’t have much to offer people who run their own business or who work for people who run their own business. It’s like the union organizer who tries to recruit people who are happy with their jobs and pay. Happy workers have no use for them or you.
LikeLike
Greg – Could I please prevail upon you though to pick a direction and stick to it, while I attempt to decipher what would be the most valuable for me to address of the rest of all these in the meantime.
Erik – It depends on your responses. No one says you have to answer anything I ask. You’re not getting graded.
LikeLike
Greg – Furthermore, where in the scriptures are we told that nobody can testify of their new life in Christ and encourage others to trust Him too unless they are ordained by a Presbyterian body?
Erik – I never said anything about a Presbyterian body. I’m not even a Presbyterian. The Apostle Paul says a lot about the qualifications of teachers and overseers, though. Who are you accountable to who will vouch for your qualifications to be a teacher and what do those people believe?
LikeLike
Greg – In this regard there are several Presbyterian denominations (AND “reformed” baptists) who are in fellowship, all with their own presbyteries and presbyters (not the baptists).
Erik – Let’s leave Tim Keller, John Piper, and Mark Dever out of this…
LikeLike
Curt – You are prepared to make a biblical case for God’s displeasure in this, but His blessing in “Band of Brothers”, “The Wire” and “Boardwalk Empire”?
Erik – Apples and oranges.
Not saying you’re a bad guy, but people get as messed up by unbiblical Christianity as they do by Hollywood. Just look around.
LikeLike
Curt,
Surely you realize that resetting the world according to your ideals would involve massive violation of private property rights.
Since as a pensioner you are benefitting from stock ownership are your property rights among those that you are willing to surrender?
LikeLike
I’m 45 years old and never in my life have I felt like I’m somehow entitled to other people’s property.
I never ceased to be amazed at how many people are around who seem to think constantly of how they are entitled to other people’s property.
Maybe that’s why God gave us that commandment against coveting.
LikeLike
Real quick Erik. A Hollywood embracing church IS messed up Christianity and the more solid the rest of their theology, the more messed up and dangerous it is.
Who ordained the woman at the well? Not that I necessarily make light of ordination, but it is not producing very impressive results these days.
LikeLike
Greg,
If the woman at the well is normative does that mean we should be ordaining women to the ministry?
I don’t think in NAPARC churches have formally “embraced Hollywood”. They do allow their members a degree of Christian liberty, however.
LikeLike
Erik:
Greg, If the woman at the well is normative does that mean we should be ordaining women to the ministry?
I am an incurable complementarian (for lack of a better word). Egalitarianism is wickedness. We’re not talking church office. At least I’m not. I’m talking about testifying of what Jesus has done FOR and IN you? Anybody can do that. Even a Samaritan woman.
There’s NEVER one without the other. Your curmudgeon friend is quite Lutheran, no matter how Anglican his pew is. Forensic justification is a biblical reality no doubt, it ALONE justifies. It is however never not accompanied by regeneration (which occurs 9 times in the WCF) and sanctification which WCF, could not possibly be clearer about.
Consider the 12th of Cranmer’s (well, mostly Cranmer) 39 articles:
XII. Of Good Works.
Albeit that Good Works, which are the fruits of Faith, and follow after Justification, cannot put away our sins, and endure the severity of God’s judgment; yet are they pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ, and do spring out necessarily of a true and lively Faith insomuch that by them a lively Faith may be as evidently known as a tree discerned by the fruit.”
Who cares about the 39 articles any more than anybody cares about the larger catechism these days though huh?
Oh but you will almost certainly say to me that both he and you agree with the 12th article AND WCF XIII. Only that who is to decide when these works do properly evince said justification? I believe the pastoral principles are far simpler and surer than either he or you are making them. I really do. I can tell you why if you like.
Erik: “I don’t think in NAPARC churches have formally “embraced Hollywood”. They do allow their members a degree of Christian liberty, however.”
If the sensibilities I’m seeing are typical, they don’t know the difference. Anything that is allowed to produce the practice of sin is an idol. 99% of anything the entertainment industry produces was done so sinfully and is therefore sin to consume. Period. Any outfit that allows the greatest God hating filth factory in history to reign in the lives of it’s congregants has no credible biblical discernment.
It is embracing in deed though maybe not in word. The OPC and PCA are at least as bad. That’s why they’re pretty much useless, spiritually castrated caricatures of what Reformed divinity once was. Great theology and decomposing morality. A biblical church has both great theology and a hunger for actual holiness. That crystal clear biblical and historical reformed reality is routinely written off as “pietism”.
I see antinomian, forensic only (might as well be) soteriology that paves the perfect path to grotesque worldliness. The neo-cals (most of em) are at least as bad AND have idiotic anti biblical culture worshiping problems of their own. I believe 2K is true. But not the way it is practiced much of the time.
I’ve been doing my best to answer you Erik. I don’t mind all the questions. That’s not the point. It’s just frustrating having to pick which of them to answer when they’re all so good. Can I ask that you answer the single one I’ve asked you and have not gotten a response to please?
Aside from said frustration, I’m enjoying this conversation. 🙂
LikeLike
Greg,
I would say the Lord was glorified because I gained a much better understanding of the bravery & sacrifices of our troops – my countrymen – in WWII. They weren’t sinless men. They swore and fornicated, but i owe them thanks nonetheless.
LikeLike
Greg,
I’m mostly influenced by the Three Forms. Less pietistic & revivalistic influence. Continental Europeans closer to the earthiness of Catholicism. Earlier than the Westminster.
LikeLike
Greg,
On BOB. Damian Lewis as Dick Winters is one of the best portraits of leadership ever captured on film. Very influential in my life.
LikeLike
Greg,
What church(es) have Hollywood right? Are you a fan of the Protestant Reformed?
LikeLike
Erik:
Greg,
I would say the Lord was glorified because I gained a much better understanding of the bravery & sacrifices of our troops – my countrymen – in WWII. They weren’t sinless men. They swore and fornicated, but i owe them thanks nonetheless.
Would you like to compare notes sometime about who knows more about who did what in WWII Erik? Or Korea, or Vietnam? (I didn’t say I haven’t read non fiction) I have WWII Vets as computer customers who I took my children to meet for the expressed purpose of knowing a bit of that generation as a living object lesson in common grace. I go to Hollywood for nothing except a reminder that the spirit of Sodom and Gomorrah will always be with us. https://www.facebook.com/Tiribulus/posts/785858074824863?pnref=story
Erik: “…Less pietistic & revivalistic influence…
That must mean by the definitions I’m seeing, more worldly and carnal with less concern for the lost. Gotcha. (I know the three forms though)
Erik: “On BOB. Damian Lewis as Dick Winters is one of the best portraits of leadership ever captured on film. Very influential in my life.”
Which is a cryin shame Erik and further makes my point. I am entirely unimpressed with the fruit of this influence. God has far better for you brother. It will require actual repentance though. Yes, that really is a biblical truth well treated in the WCF, which at least you don’t really claim to believe anyway.
Erik asks: “What church(es) have Hollywood right?”
None that I know of. Not even fully my own. Individuals and congregations here and there. 7000 who have not bowed the knee to Baal. This is called “apostasy” and the devil has had unprecedented spectacular success with the sensory immersive servile addiction to art and media and entertainment. It’s fruit is everything I see in the multitudes of people I’ve talked to about this in the last couple years especially.
A polluted, powerless, hypocritical, morally docile church that is the cuddly panting lapdog of the world.
LikeLike
Tiribulus,
Hannah Barbera is kosher on your planet?
LikeLike
Erik,
Sure you realize that you don’t realize what setting the world to what I think would should set it involves. You seem to be stuck that I am setting the world more according to an ideology than a practice.
In addition, how valid are our current “property rights” anyway? First, these “property rights” do not make a distinction between property used for private use and property used for business use. This distinction is important since the set of interdependencies involved are different.
LikeLike
Greg,
Good news. No anal sex in BOB.
LikeLike
Mr. Day,
You are a hoot.
LikeLike
Greg,
As a pietist did you embrace the ministry of Doug Phillips?
As a revivalist what are your thoughts on Charles Finney?
As an evangelist what are your thoughts on Jimmy Swaggart & Jim Bakker?
LikeLike
Erik,
Ask him why he likes quake and unreal tournament.
I dare you. Me? I saw him at the gym. No pile drivers desired here, yo.
LikeLike
Mr. Smith,
Is your language here about the bride of Christ honoring to her husband?
LikeLike
Greg,
Do you consider yourself a prophet or a leader of the 7,000 faithful?
What are your thoughts on the influence of Jews in Hollywood?
LikeLike
Honoring much?
I humbly request you elaborate and explain further your reasoning. Mr. the Terrible.
LikeLike
Erik,
Something else, do you realize what Marx meant by the abolishing of private property?
LikeLike
Curt,
O.K. How would you institute Marxist redistribution without hurting people and stealing things?
Do you admire how Castro carried out his revolution in Cuba? How Lenin carried out his in the USSR? Chavez in Venezuela?
LikeLike
Monty Python Communist Quiz sketch: http://youtu.be/vZ9myHhpS9s
LikeLike
Andrew,
My feeling is that you know as much about my politics as Erik does. And that is not very much.
LikeLike
Curt,
Tell me what you think Marx meant.
Would you & I still own our homes under your ideal system? Lots of people don’t so is it fair that we do?
LikeLike
Mr. Day,
You are in your sixties and retired?
Yeah, maybe you’ve read more. Doesn’t mean you could beat vd’t at Jeopardy or me at golf.
I say again: hoot.
LikeLike
Greg,
If a healthy church is represented by a dog, what kind of dog would it be?
Could a healthy church instead be represented by a cat or other mammal?
LikeLike
Mr. Day,
And if you are right, that I need an education from you, will you please direct me on your blog so that I may learn?
With all due respect, you know little to nothing about me, and I intend to keep it that way.
LikeLike
Erik, I’ve played both Quake and Unreal Tournament.
If Greg is anywhere near as discerning as he is about Hollywood, as he is with video games, then you can be sure his private life may have some skeletons which he would rather us not discuss in public (who doesn’t have that)?
I just find it ironic his stance, and how he publishes himself publicly, being that he admits to the extreme violence advocated in his taste of computer games.
LikeLike
And Curt, as as fundamentalist, I would challenge you to study up on the topic of religion.
Fundamentalism is not really a healty expression, in my humble opinion.
You may know more about politics. This blog, however, tends to focus on religion. Did you know that?
LikeLike
Greg,
Skip the Swaggart & Bakker question above. Everyone agrees on them.
Here’s a twist: What do you think of violent sports like MMA and the NFL as entertainment? Of female MMA?
http://mobile.abs-cbnnews.com/sports/03/01/15/watch-rousey-retains-ufc-title-after-only-14-seconds/
LikeLike
Greg,
I’m going to ask you some church related questions. My goal isn’t to pick on your church, which you have told us in the past is not reformed or even one that practices infant baptism, but to get an idea how you view things in relation to one another.
How serious is the 2nd commandment against images and how should that be applied in churches?
How serious is the 4th commandment on the sabbath?
How serious is the Regulative Principle of Worship regarding how a church service is carried on, the type of music that is used in worship, etc.?
How serious is the form of church government and how the sacraments are administered and to whom?
How do you answer the critique that you have chosen to place less emphasis on these things in your choice of a church while placing more emphasis on Christians engagement with Hollywood? What would you say to someone who says that your neglect of the former makes your critique of the latter suspect? I don’t personally say that, I can separate the two, but many Presbyterian & Reformed people will not be as charitable to you. The thinking will be, if a guy does not get church and worship right, he can’t be trusted to get morality right. His skewed views on the one will skew his views on the other.
LikeLike
Greg,
In short, a serious Presbyterian & Reformed person could make as fiery a critique against you as you are making against them.
“Greg is not in a true Christian church, therefore Greg may not be a Christian, therefore Greg’s critiques of true Christians and Christian churches are likely invalid or at least highly suspect.”
Now one could just dismiss this as an ad hominem attack, but it does touch on the judgment of an accuser who is making accusations related to a debatable matter. The Presbyterian or Reformed skeptic would likely not give you the benefit of the doubt.
LikeLike
Greg,
One guy who comes to mind who preceded you was Reformed Baptist Richard Smith. He was an Edwards enthusiast who believed that there were very few Christian churches left because Churches did not practice the type of preaching and spiritual introspection prescribed by Edwards. He was a minister who was not currently in ministry because, basically, no church fully appreciated him.
Interestingly, his thoughts on reading fiction were basically identical to yours.
Others have come here with stinging critiques of Presbyerian & Reformed churches who had no church affiliation of marginal church affiliation themselves – Tom Van Dyke & Mark McCulley are two who immediately come to mind.
LikeLike
Erik, I haven’t read much Churchill, but the story goes that he wrote letters to an admiral friend, letters upon letters upon letters.
Until the admiral realized all Churchwill was doing was mining him for ideas for his books.
As much as we make fun of Nacho (MJ), I still like this:
So you get the laymen around here who like to pontificate, that’s one level.
Then you get church laymen.
Then you get members of churches.
Members of Naparc churches.
Officers in Naparc churches.
And then you get ministers in Naparc churches.
DGH is not afraid of criticizing ministers (those whom I believe are at the top).
Someone has to provide oversight, right?
Then there’s vd’t, he does what he wants. And how.
Ultimately, the discussions fall into the categories of people in the same categories above talking to each other, or members of different categories talking across to one another.
And then there’s the fact that DGH actually pays the $4 per month or whatever(or some P&R person does) to keep this website up.
It kind of all ends with Scripture for me (well, the Holy Spirit working through the reading and preaching of said Writ) so I just like to post that and watch we squirrels of Darryls blog fight over the nuts that are left dangling around by whomever chooses to post the next comment
The only one remaining is Del Boy, and one does not get in a internet knife fight with HIM, no sir:
Andrew,
Good observations.
What we’re into here are debates over the relationship of orthodoxy to orthopraxy, law to gospel, justification to sanctification, church discipline to christian liberty,right worship to right living, doing things with decency & in good order to doing things as free agents on the internet, and churches to the actions of church members.
LikeLike
Greg,
In your criticisms of the PCA and the OPC regarding Hollywood, can you point to any affirmative, official statements that those church bodies have made about Hollywood?
Or is your criticism based on anecdotal evidence that you have compiled in your dealings with people who claim to be members of those churches?
If I go into your community and interview members of your church (or group of churches, if your church is affiliated with a larger body) would it be accurate to say that the content of those interviews would necessarily be identical to the official positions of your church or church body?
For instance, if there is a teen pregnancy in your church, do I assume that your church affirms teen pregnancy as a positive good? Or if someone in your church struggles with drug addiction, that your church favors drug addiction? Or if members of your church go to watch the Tigers play on Sunday, that your church favors worldly activities on the Lord’s Day?
LikeLike
Thanks Erik.
And Healthy living (still smoking?)
Pick something please Erik. What will be most useful to you that I should address. As usual, I have answers for this entire blitzkrieg. What would you like me to hear about?
I’m at church now though. So I’m not ignoring you when it takes a while to answer.
LikeLike
Greg, nothing I wrote demands your response.
Get off the blogs while at church (maybe for all the Lord’s Day, that’s just me and my church tho..) and don’t worry about these matters. They will resolve in time, as will everything else.
Peace.
LikeLike
Greg,
The heart of what I’m trying to discern is:
(1) Are you a crackpot who should be ignored (this seems to be the approach that everyone but me & Andrew are taking)
or
(2) Are you a prophet with a serious message for Presbyterian & Reformed people.
Figuring that out requires hearing your answers to a lot of questions.
LikeLike
Erik,
Good comment. He should really seek out his local NAPARC pastor.
We’re all equally schlubs, who should be off our phones and with our families. We cant render good judgments with people we only know from the interwebs anyway.
Golf, Greg? Started that yet?
LikeLike
Chances are, we are either down by the river, or at the local grocery store. I’ll admit he is at church, that’s good.
Greg, you need to talk to Tom Van Dyke, knock some sense into him next time his name pops up. Might do both of you some good.
LikeLike
Erik says:
Greg,
The heart of what I’m trying to discern is:
(1) Are you a crackpot who should be ignored (this seems to be the approach that everyone but me & Andrew are taking)
or
(2) Are you a prophet with a serious message for Presbyterian & Reformed people.
Figuring that out requires hearing your answers to a lot of questions.
We’ll be leaving for home shortly. Service just ended. Being online is part of my tech job here. Assuming for the moment you are being serious Erik? I’m not sure how to respond to something like this. Nobody has ever said anything quite like that to me before. I never saw myself like that either. I’m just a grateful guy who loves God. In any case, I’ll continue to do my best to answer your questions.
No offense Andrew, but I’m only one guy. I’m not slighting you or anyone else intentionally.
LikeLike
Maestro, don’t let it turn into schadenfreude.
LikeLike
I am also struck by how Christian talk of cultural engagement has coincided with a watering-down of Christian standards of behavior and, ironically, thought. I have lost count of how many times I have been told in recent years that Christians should be able to watch any movie, providing they do so with a critical, Christian eye. There are several obvious problems with that kind of statement. For a start, such a categorical, sweeping statement has little, if any, scriptural or exegetical foundation and indeed seems not to take any account of texts such as Mt. 5: 27-30, Eph. 5: 1-3, Phil. 4: 8, etc.
Second, even those making the case rarely mean exactly what they say: ask them if Christians can therefore watch child pornography, and none that I have spoken to have been prepared to go that far, except in the necessary cases of those professionally involved in the detection and prosecution of paedophile crime. No, Christians shouldn’t watch child porn, they’ll say; but the problem, of course, is that definitions of what is and is not pornography, even child pornography, are changing all the time and are driven, by and large, by the wider culture which increasingly mainstreams such material. Witness the new Kate Winslet movie, involving a sex scene between her character and a fifteen year old boy. Specious distinctions involving the actual age of the actor notwithstanding, it is arguably child pornography.
Frankly, there are films rated PG-13 today which my grandparents would have considered as porn. Is the standard of what is and is not obscene set by biblical truth or by cultural accommodation? Talk of `Christians can watch anything as long as they do it critically’ is as daft, unbiblical, soft-headed, ill-thought-out, and confused as anything one is likely to come across. In fact, I have a suspicion that for some it might simply function as a rationalization for watching whatever they like and not having to feel guilty about it, the Christian voyeur’s equivalent of the `I only do screen nudity and sex when the script demands it’ excuse of so many `serious’ actresses whose bank balances have been boosted by the occasional flash of on-screen flesh. CARL TRUEMAN
LikeLike
Greg,
I don’t disagree with Trueman, but note that he does not include a generic condemnation of “Hollywood” as if it is a monolith, nor does he include a blanket condemnation of entire bodies of churches.
This is where I think that, in your zeal, you go to far and lose credibility with your hearers.
One thing you said earlier that I wanted to follow up on: You don’t read fiction, but you read nonfiction. Does this mean you would watch Hollywood documentaries but not conventional Hollywood movies?
And if “visual” is entirely the problem, this gets me back to your choice of churches. Do they have any photos of Christ or heavenly things on their walls? Why would you tolerate that if you are sensitive about improper images?
LikeLike
Greg,
If you are willing to sacrifice vital Reformed tenets in terms of worship & theology, how are you a credible critic of Christians who sacrifice Reformed tenets in terms of entertainment?
Which is the more serious matter eternally? One of these is passing away and one is not.
LikeLike
Erik,
Rather than telling you, I’ll let you read for yourself. He answers both in this article that addresses the Jewish Question in Germany.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/
LikeLike
no one wins an e-knife fight with Carl
LikeLike
Curt,
I’m not wasting my time reading that much Marx, even in the bathtub.
LikeLike
Erik,
It is just one article and it’s there. Because of my seminary’s emphasis on studying the original languages so you can read the Greek and Hebrew, I also tell people that if they want to know what a particular person or ideology says, you read their documents rather than what other people say about them. It’s up to you, no problem.
LikeLike
Curt,
Your (ahem) seminary (ahem)?
Do tell.
LikeLike
Erik says: “I don’t disagree with Trueman”
But God approves of us watching pornographic shows now? Trueman is right. Today’s PG-13 was yesterday’s porn and it’s sliding fast. How can you say you agree with my contention that paying these performers to sin is itself sin and then defend that very practice? I’m asking. Not yelling. What am I to think?
Erik says: “but note that he does not include a generic condemnation of “Hollywood” as if it is a monolith,”
A comment of mine from another website:
“If there is some piece of entertainment that was not sinful to produce and therefore not sinful to watch, then go ahead.
It might EVEN have a nice common grace message. Like UP for instance. Fine. Praise God!! But please spare me the tortured, contorted view that somehow GREAT PROFOUND otherwise unavailable edification and evangelism tools are found there in the world that were unavailable to the church for a few thousand years until the invention of tv and movies.
Portraying sin is a lot trickier, but it CAN be done. (another story)”
Again Erik. I have said, and recently right here on this site that it is not sin to see even secular entertainment in itself. Didn’t I?
If there is ANY content whatsoever at any point that I could not thank God, for myself and or my family having performed, if it were us, that is then the opposite of loving my neighbor as myself and rank hypocrisy for me to pay others to do it for me. It’s simple, it’s biblical and it’s universally binding on all Christian consciences for all time., the violation of which is ALWAYS sin. The real kicker is though is that it’s SO easy. Ya just don’t watch it. UNLESS you’re an addict. Which explains the vast majority of people when it comes to tv and movies. I’m being dead serious. I deal with junkies and drunks all the time and it’s the same conversation. Just swap in tv and movies.
Erik says: “nor does he include a blanket condemnation of entire bodies of churches.”
There are of course solid people and congregations in the conservative Presbyterian and reformed denominations. Some of the Lord’s 7000 (not a literal number ok? You get the point) reside there. I do see VERY broad compromise and worldliness on a grand scale in those groups though.
Erik says “This is where I think that, in your zeal, you go to far and lose credibility with your hearers.”
Point taken. Christ is not fully formed in me yet either. I am certainly still growing in wisdom.
Erik says: “One thing you said earlier that I wanted to follow up on: You don’t read fiction,
Not on purpose. It just never interested me. I didn’t make a decision not to read fiction. It just never really occurred to me.
Erik says: “but you read nonfiction.”
I love theology, philosophy and history.
Erik says: “Does this mean you would watch Hollywood documentaries but not conventional Hollywood movies?”
I MIGHT watch anything that wasn’t sinfully produced. Including Hollywood movies. I like non reenacted DOCUMENTARIES, (that show was great) but am always suspicious until I can do some additional research with anything that is substantive and questionable. People lie and do it with a camera and microphone like nowhere else.
Erik says: “And if “visual” is entirely the problem,”
No Erik 🙂 “visual” is not ENTIRELY the problem and if used righteously is not a problem at all. I’m gonna stick this out with you. God help me if I’m, wrong.
Erik says: “this gets me back to your choice of churches. Do they have any photos of Christ or heavenly things on their walls?”
None.
This church is a pretty unusual so called “black” church. The leadership are five pointers and my senior pastor did not support Obama for president either time. These people have loved myself and my family like no other church I’ve been in. They respect me and I have considerable influence. My senior Pastor applied at Westminster east for his PHD in apologetics on my recommendation and Oliphint turned him down unless he re-earned his masters there as well first. I was crushed. OH how I wanted him to be exposed to that kind of learning and environment. God said no. Not my call.
Erik asks: “If you are willing to sacrifice vital Reformed tenets in terms of worship & theology, how are you a credible critic of Christians who sacrifice Reformed tenets in terms of entertainment?”
Which “reformed” tenets am I giving up Erik? I’d like to think, by the grace of the Lord, I’m a pretty decent lay theologian and Christian philosopher. Only very rarely are my at least Calvinist/Covenant creds questioned. I want to positively impact this church full of people I love. I have one VERY sound outside counselor (rock ribbed reformed baptist) who took me through this same line of questioning. We spent an hour on the phone and now he is a full supporter. I’ll introduce you if you like.
Erik asks: “Which is the more serious matter eternally? One of these is passing away and one is not.”
There is nothing damnably wrong at this church though I certainly have my disagreements. The entertainment industry is the most powerful force in the history of the earth. No government even, has ever secured the docile ENTHUSIASTIC surrender and submission of so many so deeply. I say again: Unless VERY tightly managed in a wise and godly biblical fashion it is a crippling, corrupting cancer on society and especially the body of Christ on every level. The higher the quality the more dangerous it is. Just like dope. The influence of media entertainment will NEVER pass away. Innumerable multitudes will take it with them to the judgement. Both as producer and consumer.
It took me an hour and a half to compose this comment. I wonder how much of this one I’ll have to repeat now too 😦
LikeLike
Please click my name just above. The comment now awaiting moderation is there. That’s because it has too many links. (3, mostly for illustration) Dr. Hart is not moderating me on purpose.
Thanks….
It took me an hour and a half to compose that comment.
LikeLike
Greg,
Give an example of how “Today’s PG-13 is yesterday’s porn.”
As Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said, “I know porn when I see it”, and I haven’t seen porn in PG-13 movies that I can think of.
LikeLike
Then you do disagree with Trueman after all?
The notebook. Off the top of my head because it came up a while back in a discussion.
Did you get a chance to read my comment? http://tiribulus.net/wordpress/?p=273#comment-7113
By tomorrow Dr. Hart will have published it. It just had one too many links is all. I wasn’t sure at first if I would stay in moderation until he cleared that one, but it doesn’t look like it.
LikeLike
In this episode Erik has the patience of Job and Greg has reformed street creds:
LikeLike
Greg,
I started it but didn’t get too far yet.
“The Notebook” has sexuality but I don’t think it’s porn. Not enough nudity to be porn. If someone went to a 70’s porn theater and they showed “The Notebook”, raincoat-wearing men would descend on the box office demanding refunds.
Not even sure our grandparents would call it porn.
LikeLike
Greg,
This is where I think exaggeration hurts you.
If you would have gone with “R” and not PG-13 I would have agreed with you (In some cases). Elements of soft core porn have moved into R rated movies.
LikeLike
Greg,
I agree that people saying they watch movies for the purposes of evangelism is lame. I’m also not crazy about pastors using them as sermon illustrations and am totally opposed to pastors showing clips in worship services.
LikeLike
Greg,
I asked you awhile back about The NFL. Do you think that Christians should not support that because those who participate in it are harming themselves physically? Serious question.
LikeLike
Greg,
I do think you’re a decent guy and you’re doing what you think is right on this topic. I respect that even if I disagree on some points. I understand your church situation as well and don’t condemn you for your choices.
LikeLike
Erik,
Westminster Theological Seminary.
LikeLike
Curt,
You went there?
LikeLike
Erik,
Yes, before making of other campuses. My professors included Clowney, Knudson, Frame, Davis, Sloat, and Dillard. Had a couple of personal conversations with Van Til.
LikeLike
Carl Trueman says above: “Frankly, there are films rated PG-13 today which my grandparents would have considered as porn. Is the standard of what is and is not obscene set by biblical truth or by cultural accommodation? “
Erik says above: “I don’t disagree with Trueman, but note that he does not include a generic condemnation of “Hollywood”
Erik then says: “Give an example of how “Today’s PG-13 is yesterday’s porn…. I haven’t seen porn in PG-13 movies that I can think of.”
And:
Erik says: “This is where I think exaggeration hurts you.
If you would have gone with “R” and not PG-13 I would have agreed with you (In some cases). Elements of soft core porn have moved into R rated movies.”
I was citing Trueman whose grandparents would have absolutely called “The Notebook” pornography and it would have never EVER survived the state censorship boards of the 1930’s through 1950’s. It would have been declared obscene on the spot. Come on now, you know this.
LikeLike
Erik asks:Greg,
I asked you awhile back about The NFL. Do you think that Christians should not support that because those who participate in it are harming themselves physically? Serious question.”
Every technological and rule making measure is taken to prevent and avoid injury in football. Injuries that do occur are almost always unintentional and not necessarily worse in most cases than in some other occupations. The object is to score touchdowns. Not harm your neighbor. Even so I don’t watch much sports and honestly can’t remember who was in the super bowl or who won. Used to be a humongous Red Wings fan, but it just drifted off my radar.
Boxing and especially MMA are another story. Victory is DEFINED by harming and disabling your opponent. Even though Paul uses a boxing illustration, I can’t get myself to believe that the Lord smiles upon such activities, try as I might because I like them both.
I haven’t played video games in several years. I also can’t get myself to believe that God likes me doing in a game what would be sin for me to do (or think or say) in real life. There may actually be SOME nuance here, but even in say… WWII games. Is it a godly thing to take pleasure and fun in doing what SHOULD be horrifying and only done when absolutely necessary in real life?
LikeLike
I hesitated to do this, but some of the major questions that I think Andrew asked as well are in these comments and I didn’t want them to get lost at the bottom of the previous page.
=========================================================
Erik says: “I don’t disagree with Trueman”
But God approves of us watching pornographic shows now? Trueman is right. Today’s PG-13 was yesterday’s porn and it’s sliding fast. How can you say you agree with my contention that paying these performers to sin is itself sin and then defend that very practice? I’m asking. Not yelling. What am I to think?
Erik says: “but note that he does not include a generic condemnation of “Hollywood” as if it is a monolith,”
A comment of mine from another website:
“If there is some piece of entertainment that was not sinful to produce and therefore not sinful to watch, then go ahead.
It might EVEN have a nice common grace message. Like UP for instance. Fine. Praise God!! But please spare me the tortured, contorted view that somehow GREAT PROFOUND otherwise unavailable edification and evangelism tools are found there in the world that were unavailable to the church for a few thousand years until the invention of tv and movies.
Portraying sin is a lot trickier, but it CAN be done. (another story)”
Again Erik. I have said, and recently right here on this site that it is not sin to see even secular entertainment in itself. Didn’t I?
If there is ANY content whatsoever at any point that I could not thank God, for myself and or my family having performed, if it were us, that is then the opposite of loving my neighbor as myself and rank hypocrisy for me to pay others to do it for me. It’s simple, it’s biblical and it’s universally binding on all Christian consciences for all time., the violation of which is ALWAYS sin. The real kicker is though is that it’s SO easy. Ya just don’t watch it. UNLESS you’re an addict. Which explains the vast majority of people when it comes to tv and movies. I’m being dead serious. I deal with junkies and drunks all the time and it’s the same conversation. Just swap in tv and movies.
Erik says: “nor does he include a blanket condemnation of entire bodies of churches.”
There are of course solid people and congregations in the conservative Presbyterian and reformed denominations. Some of the Lord’s 7000 (not a literal number ok? You get the point) reside there. I do see VERY broad compromise and worldliness on a grand scale in those groups though.
Erik says “This is where I think that, in your zeal, you go to far and lose credibility with your hearers.”
Point taken. Christ is not fully formed in me yet either. I am certainly still growing in wisdom.
Erik says: “One thing you said earlier that I wanted to follow up on: You don’t read fiction,
Not on purpose. It just never interested me. I didn’t make a decision not to read fiction. It just never really occurred to me.
Erik says: “but you read nonfiction.”
I love theology, philosophy and history.
Erik says: “Does this mean you would watch Hollywood documentaries but not conventional Hollywood movies?”
I MIGHT watch anything that wasn’t sinfully produced. Including Hollywood movies. I like non reenacted DOCUMENTARIES, (that show was great) but am always suspicious until I can do some additional research with anything that is substantive and questionable. People lie and do it with a camera and microphone like nowhere else.
Erik says: “And if “visual” is entirely the problem,”
No Erik 🙂 “visual” is not ENTIRELY the problem and if used righteously is not a problem at all. I’m gonna stick this out with you. God help me if I’m, wrong.
Erik says: “this gets me back to your choice of churches. Do they have any photos of Christ or heavenly things on their walls?”
None.
This church is a pretty unusual so called “black” church. The leadership are five pointers and my senior pastor did not support Obama for president either time. These people have loved myself and my family like no other church I’ve been in. They respect me and I have considerable influence. My senior Pastor applied at Westminster east for his PHD in apologetics on my recommendation and Oliphint turned him down unless he re-earned his masters there as well first. I was crushed. OH how I wanted him to be exposed to that kind of learning and environment. God said no. Not my call.
Erik asks: “If you are willing to sacrifice vital Reformed tenets in terms of worship & theology, how are you a credible critic of Christians who sacrifice Reformed tenets in terms of entertainment?”
Which “reformed” tenets am I giving up Erik? I’d like to think, by the grace of the Lord, I’m a pretty decent lay theologian and Christian philosopher. Only very rarely are my at least Calvinist/Covenant creds questioned. I want to positively impact this church full of people I love. I have one VERY sound outside counselor (rock ribbed reformed baptist) who took me through this same line of questioning. We spent an hour on the phone and now he is a full supporter. I’ll introduce you if you like.
Erik asks: “Which is the more serious matter eternally? One of these is passing away and one is not.”
There is nothing damnably wrong at this church though I certainly have my disagreements. The entertainment industry is the most powerful force in the history of the earth. No government even, has ever secured the docile ENTHUSIASTIC surrender and submission of so many so deeply. I say again: Unless VERY tightly managed in a wise and godly biblical fashion it is a crippling, corrupting cancer on society and especially the body of Christ on every level. The higher the quality the more dangerous it is. Just like dope. The influence of media entertainment will NEVER pass away. Innumerable multitudes will take it with them to the judgement. Both as producer and consumer.
It took me an hour and a half to compose this comment. I wonder how much of this one I’ll have to repeat now too 😦
LikeLike
Carl Trueman says in the quote above: “Frankly, there are films rated PG-13 today which my grandparents would have considered as porn. Is the standard of what is and is not obscene set by biblical truth or by cultural accommodation? “
Erik says above: “I don’t disagree with Trueman, but note that he does not include a generic condemnation of “Hollywood”
Erik then says: “Give an example of how “Today’s PG-13 is yesterday’s porn…. I haven’t seen porn in PG-13 movies that I can think of.”
And:
Erik says: “This is where I think exaggeration hurts you.
If you would have gone with “R” and not PG-13 I would have agreed with you (In some cases). Elements of soft core porn have moved into R rated movies.”
I was citing Trueman whose grandparents would have absolutely called “The Notebook” pornography and it would have never EVER survived the state censorship boards of the 1930’s through 1950’s. It would have been declared obscene on the spot. Come on now, you know this.
LikeLike
February 2nd 2014 at 1:29pm in the sweeetbreads thread I said THIS
=========================================================
WORDS, and the ability to speak them are precious and sacred. Regardless of the exact theological implications upon the ordo salutis, confession is made with the mouth unto salvation. (Romans 10:9-10) God created by the command of His WORD(Genesis 1:3, Hebrews 11:3 and John 1:2). Jesus Christ is the living WORD of almighty God. (John 1:1-14) Spoken communication is a major component of the Imago Dei whereby we bear His very image. (Genesis 1:3 and 1:27) That is why he commands in Ephesians 4:29 “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” Should we intentionally pay God’s money to hear unbelievers thoughtlessly and many times blasphemously speak that which we are commanded never to say ourselves?
And to anyone who may call legalism here, do please hear the incarnate WORD of God:
Every careless WORD (ESV). Is the consumption of such “culture” conducive to transformation from the world by the renewing of one’s mind or conformity to it? (Romans 12:1-2) If we are not supposed to blaspheme, take the Lord’s name in vain or let ANY corrupting talk come out of our mouths, then why pray tell would we pay sinners to do it for us?
=============================================================
I came into that conversation on page 2. That comment is still the very first one on page 3 of a discussion thread that went on for 12 pages and 542 comments. That’s where I copied it from just now. Language was a major concern of mine right from the start. Nevertheless, anyone who took the time to read that discussion will see me accused of being enraged, and violent and menacing and dangerous and a pervert and porn addict. Not to mention “PIETIST!!”
Dr. Hart went so far as to accuse me of using a false identity to infiltrate his site as somebody else. Providentially, his crew had already torn the web apart trying unsuccessfully to dig up dirt on me and found my Facebook page in the process where much to their horror and dismay, I was seen to be inescapably exactly who I said I was and above reproach there as well. All of this is still there. Take a look
I still do very much appreciate Dr. Hart’s willingness to desower me and allow this conversation in his house. It is his after all.
LikeLike
Greg, hope your morning devotion brought you some of your favorite Scripture this morning, and your breakfast sent down smooth. Have a nice week, friend.
LikeLike
Thank you Andrew. To you as well. There is nothing sweeter than awakening in the knowledge of being eternally and sovereignly elected as a grunt in the army of the most high God.
This morning is from John 17, sent by a friend last night. Jesus high priestly prayer.
“6 “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7 Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. 8 For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. 9 I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. 10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. 11 And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. 12 While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. 13 But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. 14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sake I consecrate myself that they also may be sanctified in truth.”
The only thing I care about is standing in my glorified state, never again having to fight the devil, my flesh or the world when I finally get to see that beautiful face and hearing Him say
You all can call that whatever you want, but I just can’t excited about a movie or television show slickly created by His enemies. I find this same attitude in many of the puritan divines and even the patristics. I VERY rarely find it in contemporary Presbyterian and reformed people or churches. I AM however pleasantly surprised on occasion.
(I sure fell from “awesome” pretty quick didn’t I Andrew 😀 )
LikeLike
Greg, go and live unafraid. Sin no more.
Or else I will post some Paul Tillich and tell you all you and Curt and all others attacking are looking for is DGH’s acceptance.
You are awesome.
In Christ,
Andrew
LikeLike
Curt,
Did you graduate? We’re you ordained as a minister? Did you pastor a church?
LikeLike
Greg,
There was a pre-code Era in Hollywood that included nudity. Gramps & Grams could have seen those films in theaters.
There is also foreign film. Europeans are not as Bashful as U.S. Americans on sexuality. Louis Malle’s “The Lovers” is as hot as “The Notebook” and that was the 50’s in the early days of the French New Wave.
LikeLike
Greg,
Do you think it was a good thing that The Catholic Church had a list of banned books?
LikeLike
Greg,
I think you’re inconsistent on the NFL. Men get paid a lot of money to entertain us and suffer irreparable long-term harm to themselves as a result. Same thing that movie stars do in your argument.
LikeLike
Erik says: Greg,
There was a pre-code Era in Hollywood that included nudity. Gramps & Grams could have seen those films in theaters.”
Yes, I understand that Erik. The heyday of Mae West for instance and even some homosexual elements were to be found in those early days. Of course. I thought you were a Calvinist. What do you expect from sinners playing with a brand new toy of never before heard of possibilities and power? The point is, CHRISTIANS, for the most part simply wrote it off as pornography. No matter what continent it was from. Serious Christians remained gravely stand offish and suspicious of Hollywood even AFTER the code was enacted.
I’m talking about the church brother. There’s’ been pornographic art FOREVER. Photography and film simply gave sinners a new incredibly effective medium with which to produce it. Imagine what ancient Corinth or Ephesus would have done with a movie camera. LOL!
The point is THE CHURCH is SUPPOSED to know better than to participate in such debauchery and she pretty much DID until the 1970’s. She has now degenerated to the place where what would have been unthinkable for the WORLD in the pre-code days is now CELEBRATED by Presbyterian elders as high art. While, anybody who dares question such outrage is written off as a “pietist”.
I’m not buyin the dunce act Erik. You get this. I KNOW you do do.
LikeLike
Erik says:
Greg,
I think you’re inconsistent on the NFL. Men get paid a lot of money to entertain us and suffer irreparable long-term harm to themselves as a result. Same thing that movie stars do in your argument.”
Develop that case please. I admittedly have not thought through football that thoroughly because it doesn’t come up that much. MMA I have. It became a huge controversy at Aimee Byrds’ blog actually.
Convince me I’m wrong about something and you will have my gratitude for helping me have more truth and less error than when we met. I will publicly thank you, and God for sending you. Sports are definitely another major idol in this country. (and others of course). The entire notion of CELEBRITY is an incredible idol. We call them that for God’s sake! Sports, movie and music “IDOLS”.
“Please join me in welcoming, idol of millions, _Mr. So and So!!!!!!!”
LikeLike
Erik asks:
“Greg,
Do you think it was a good thing that The Catholic Church had a list of banned books?”
Actually it was a Catholic who got the production code enacted. (that IS very slippery of you Erik, see I told you I’m not buyin the dunce act 🙂 )
Assuming you’re talking about a list on moral grounds and not a list of protestant works, the answer is no. It would be no in either case, but for different reasons. Lists of individual items are ineffective. I do believe lists of categories like in the larger catechism, are a useful thing as a gauge.
Abstaining from ANYthing does absolutely nothing to justify someone before the Lord. In fact, the belief that it does would bring the anathema of Galatians 1.
However, intentionally NOT abstaining from some things says quite a bit about where somebody is. Their declaration of such evil being good says even a whole lot more.
The irony is, a morally healthy society (comparatively speaking) will ban things that most of it’s citizens would denounce anyway. (the fanny book for instance)
LikeLike
Greg – Nevertheless, anyone who took the time to read that discussion will see me accused of being enraged, and violent and menacing and dangerous and a pervert and porn addict. Not to mention “PIETIST!!”
Erik – LOL
That last one is the worst…
LikeLike
Greg – I still do very much appreciate Dr. Hart’s willingness to desower me and allow this conversation in his house. It is his after all.
Erik – Good term – “desower”. You’re indeed the first at Old Life to be desowered.
LikeLike
I’ll never be sorry I met you Erik 😀
I have to go for a while though.
LikeLike
Greg,
Darryl’s pretty down on the NFL on the basis that they play on Sundays. Maybe if you could get behind that he could get behind you on movies.
My primary concern is all of the head trauma these guys suffer in an activity that is purely for entertainment. Probably won’t let my two boys play, although I did into college. Cross country is a way better lifelong sport and is way less political and entails interaction with fewer crazy parents as well. Plus they’re built like birds like their mom. Girls got my stocky build. Funny.
LikeLike
Erik,
No, I left a few hours short of the MAR. So I label that an AMAR–Almost Master of Arts in Religion. Have taught religion course where I taught Computer Science, IT, and Math courses. When teaching religion, it was a World religion course, I did use Vos and had them read some Van Til.
LikeLike
Erik says:
“Greg,
Darryl’s pretty down on the NFL on the basis that they play on Sundays.”
I actually respect that conviction and agree that a solid case can be made for the irreverence of watching sports on Sunday. That is a very unpopular view today. If he holds it for the right reasons (which he might), that would increase my respect for him greatly. I wish he would talk to me about that. I honestly just don’t care about sports. I don’t even have time for what I DO care about.
Erik says: “Maybe if you could get behind that he could get behind you on movies.”
Having him as an ally would be my great and humble honor. His learning and stature dwarf my own. I have no illusions in that regard. I would not however be able to hold a position for any other reason than being convinced of it’s gospel truth. My ears and my heart are open.
Erik says: “My primary concern is all of the head trauma these guys suffer in an activity that is purely for entertainment.”
I am frankly not well enough informed in this area and must suspend judgement until I am. I would read any links you have. It IS purely unnecessary entertainment. Some of the old divines and European Baptists would have condemned tiddly winks as a “worldly amusement” on that basis alone no matter what day it was played on..
Erik says: “Probably won’t let my two boys play, although I did into college. Cross country is a way better lifelong sport and is way less political and entails interaction with fewer crazy parents as well. Plus they’re built like birds like their mom. Girls got my stocky build. Funny.”
Well bless your heart Erik. That’s the most you’ve ever told me about yourself. Few things on my plate at the moment would gratify me more than seeing you finally disabused of the notion that I EVER had ANY ill intention for anybody here, including you. Truth be told, I thought for a long while that that was just a phony ad hominem excuse to dismiss the things I said. I don’t think I believe that anymore and yes there are lessons in there for me.
Your stance on football and your children is understandable and wise. Athletics (which isn’t necessarily the same as sports) are healthy and godly if wisely engaged in. It also IS funny how God likes to play Mr and Mrs. Potatohead with our gene pool isn’t it? 😀 He IS an artist.
FF a few years and put their faces on those of these “performers” my brother and ask yourself if God would consider it good parenting of you were to approve of them appearing even in that 15 second scene of BOB? Seriously. Those are somebody’s’ children. Would you recommend your church watch if it were your little girl? Or boy? Because of the great story of leadership? What would THEIR spouses think? Or children? No football, but this would be ok? I would weep bitterly if it were my daughter., who is now about the right age for that kind of role. 😦
LikeLike
Greg,
D.G. is consistent on The Lord’s Day and has been as long as I’ve known him
Even the cats have to stay inside and rest.
LikeLike
Greg,
That’s where I go back to the NFL comparison.
Men play for wealth and fame in spite of consequences. We pay money and consume.
Same thing with the film industry. No one forces an actor or actress to do a nude scene.
If we start applying these scruples too rigidly, Goodbye buying products manufactured overseas (Curt perks up). People there are often working in harmful settings (and for little pay).
LikeLike
Greg,
I will tell you one thing that bothers me a lot about film nudity, and it’s the same thing that bothers me about porn – when they get a low paid, unknown woman to do a scene that an established actress won’t do.That’s exploitative and wrong. Most girls who do porn make very little and suffer greatly for doing it. People are getting rich off them and that is just piling one sin on top of another.
LikeLike
I think Scorsese has gotten especially bad in this regard. He has lost whatever residual Catholic guilt he had and thrown caution to the wind, especially with “The Wolf of Wall Street”.
LikeLike
Another one that bugs me – so common it’s become cliche. Two guys meet for a talk – in a strip club. It never furthers the plot, other than to establish that the guys are low-lifes. If I never see another stripper pole in a movie I’ll be fine.
LikeLike
Way more convincing when not loaded for bear. Have to ask though, what is “desower”?
LikeLike
Doug Sowers got so annoying that DGH instituted “the sowers rule.”
Doug was free to post, but DGH deleted any responses so that no one could interact with him.
So if we become too obnoxious, DGH will delete all those who respond.
If this comment remains, you are having “the sowers rule” applied to you, Chris.
Make sense?
LikeLike
*if this comment remains, you are NOT having the sowers rule applied
THe sowers rule was applied to greg, so that all responses to him were deleted.
hope that helps.
LikeLike
One thing that maybe helps now is that Greg is in better health. Hard to be patient when you don’t feel well.
LikeLike
Chris says of me:”Way more convincing when not loaded for bear.”
These eight words carry more significance for me than you may ever know Chris. Thank you.
LikeLike
Ahhh – thanks for sparing me weeks to figure it out, Andrew. Oh man, poor health will certainly make patience very difficult. Hope the Lord has given you a good measure of increase in good health Greg and the grace to endure. I would agree with a lot of what you say Greg though I see some room for debate as Erik has demonstrated with his line of questioning. That and there has to be room for people to mature and think things through. Boy do I have stories of wonderful saints being patient with me.
One thing you said that struck me as odd was that the media had to be produced in a non-sinful way – Isn’t that impossible? Even the ploughing of the wicked is sin and all that. How could you eat twinkies or buy anything from the grocery store if that were the standard?
At any rate, I’m glad you and Erik engaged in this – interesting and entertaining dialogue.
LikeLike
Chris says: “Hope the Lord has given you a good measure of increase in good health Greg and the grace to endure.”
I appreciate that sir. The same to you as well.
Chris says: “I would agree with a lot of what you say Greg though I see some room for debate as Erik has demonstrated with his line of questioning.”
Example?
Chris asks: “One thing you said that struck me as odd was that the media had to be produced in a non-sinful way – Isn’t that impossible? Even the ploughing of the wicked is sin and all that. How could you eat twinkies or buy anything from the grocery store if that were the standard?”
February 6, 2014 at 1:57 pm Cletus Van Damme asked me that very question in the sweetbreads thread. Here is my answer:
========================================================
“Paul tells me in 1 Cor 5 that it is NOT possible for me to dissociate from all sinners without leaving the world. Though the context is dealing with “so called” brethren, the principle stands. I cannot function without food, clothing, a vehicle and shelter. God’s broader commands necessitate that I do business with those who do not know him and as such are sinners. It is not possible for me to research EVERY product I put my hands to so as to insure that no sin was committed in it’s production. When it comes to my attention in the reasonable godly living of my life that sin WAS DIRECTLY committed in it’s production OR that company publicly supports godless causes then I either do without that product or find another company. I don’t mean, is the CEO sleeping with his secretary. I mean DOES sleeping with his secretary produce the product.”
========================================================
Am I in other words, directly financing his sin in order to use his product? The fact remains that in the case of media entertainment, it did not even exist for the vast majority of human history and is a completely dispensable component of modern life. Handling it righteously by refusing to participate if doing so would facilitate the damnation of others and require your hypocrisy at the same time is an effortless exercise. Except when you’re hooked. I contend that television and movies are the most universally pervasive and powerful addiction in the history of God’s earth bar none. Television, especially brings the whole universe of blasphemous, greedy, uncontented, lust, pride, carnality and worldliness voluntarily right into the home. It’s brilliant.
Think with me for a minute the implications if that’s true. An addiction so universal that it’s very pervasiveness is what allows it to hide in broad daylight in our own living room. How could something EVERYBODY does be that bad? But just the commercials are designed to promote everything God is telling us to put to death in Christ.
It is not sin to own or watch a television. (or see a movie) However, I say yet again. Unless VERY tightly managed under immovable biblical principles, it WILL run and pollute one’s life and does. How many Christians today spend half as much time in the word and prayer and actually doing things with their family as they do staring passively at a television set filled with masterfully crafted propaganda produced by the enemies of their God?. Seriously think about that.
LikeLike
Here’s another earlier piece of that exchange from February 4, 2014 at 9:26 pm:
==========================================
Cletus Van Damme asks: Seriously interested. Where do you draw this line.”
If there was any sin committed in it’s production, then it is sin in every case to participate. We’re talkin about visual media entertainment here. Not unsaved farmers or auto manufacturers or other unbelievers who’s life is sin by definition. It is not sin to grow corn or make cars or cut hair or sell Avon.. It IS sin to be naked with somebody of the opposite sex not you spouse save only for such things as medical emergencies or related inescapable life circumstances. Then a higher principle and appropriate grace is granted?
LikeLike
ec, how about when they are meeting in a funeral parlor?
LikeLike
Dr. Hart, your posting a video like that makes me think of you a little like this now.
Greg, no thanks. I’ve got a wife, five children and two jobs. I don’t have time for much TV or movies and certainly no time to debate about it. LOL. One thing though, listen to this sermon. I think you would be greatly encouraged and may change your mind regarding the place of necessity in some of your examples.
Also, Greg, have you read Dr. Hart’s The Lost Soul of American Protestantism? You may have a personal awakening of sorts after reading that.
LikeLike
D.G.,
That reminds me. I wanted to ask Greg what the black church milieu is like in terms of gender. Was on what I think is his church’s Facebook page. Lots of photos of middle-aged & older black women. Very few black men. Explain that dynamic.
LikeLike
Greg,
Yeah, but that medical emergency excuse is always hard to pull off…
LikeLike
Oops – too many links in my original reply.
Greg, no thanks. I’ve got a wife, five children and two jobs. I don’t have time for much TV or movies and certainly no time to debate about it. LOL. One thing though, listen to this sermon. I think you would be greatly encouraged and may change your mind regarding the place of necessity in some of your examples.
LikeLike
Also, Greg, have you read Dr. Hart’s The Lost Soul of American Protestantism? You may have a personal awakening of sorts after reading that.
LikeLike
Dr. Hart, your posting a video like that makes me think of you a little like this now.
LikeLike
Erik says: “That reminds me. I wanted to ask Greg what the black church milieu is like in terms of gender. Was on what I think is his church’s Facebook page. Lots of photos of middle-aged & older black women. Very few black men. Explain that dynamic.”
We’re about 60/40 women to men. I’m not sure what page you were looking at.
Erik says: “Yeah, but that medical emergency excuse is always hard to pull off…”
I’m not sure what you mean. In what way?
Chris, I have to drive across town today. I will listen to your sermon in the car. BTW, are you saying no thanks to a debate? I wasn’t really challenging you, I was just answering your question. 🙂
LikeLike
Chris, woot.
LikeLike
ec, maybe the men are dead? Maybe women are less depraved.
LikeLike
I have some thoughts on the book recommendation, but they’ll have to wait until later.
LikeLike
Erik,
You simply do what you can. Don’t think in terms of what you must do for yourself. Think in terms of what you can do for others.
LikeLike
You simply do what you can. Don’t think in terms of what you must do for yourself. Think in terms of what you can do for others.
Or maybe for the glory of God.
LikeLike
Kent,
The more you approach loving your neighbor as yourself in the name of Christ, aren’t you glorifying God? And yet how many people who claiming to be glorifying in what they say and do don’t even think about trying to love their neighbor as themselves?
LikeLike
Curt, it’s drilled into us every Sunday morning service…
And impossible to avoid on every page of the NT in my daily readings.
LikeLike
Curt,
But what if others are annoying?
LikeLike
Don’t worry Curt, we beat ourselves up daily over our failure to live the Ten Commandments….
LikeLike
Kent,
It’s drilled into you. But having commands drilled into us is not the same as having a heart to follow the commands. And, btw, one of the biggest indicators we have of knowing our sinfulness is how patient and merciful we are with others. If we view others as being our equals despite their sins, that can be a good sign. But if it easy for us to look or speak down to selected people, that isn’t always the best sign.
LikeLike
Agreed Curt, and the more we think we are (and may be doing) right, the more self-aware we become of other sins. A clear conscience may really be a hardened one.
LikeLike
I’m gonna take the first good faith step Darryl. I don’t want to sound the wrong way, but you have NO idea how much money this is to me and how now couldn’t be a worse time to spend it. I am however going to order your book that Chris recommended. I have to have somebody do it for me and he can’t do it until tomorrow, but I will.
If the synopsis and reviews are any indication, you may be shocked to learn that you and I might not be as far apart on the areas that book covers as you think. Maybe not much at all. I am all the way in for confessionalism and have been making that case to some people offline even in the last 48 hours. What it seems you are saying there may be just the thing I have myself been pushing, overall. This is greatly abbreviated and of course there is much we do disagree on in other, though I believe directly related areas. Can we bury the hatchet and talk about some of that? Maybe we can help each other. I DO mean each other. Not me straightening you out. How could any ending be happier? God would be most pleased I think. Like Erik said. No time pressure. Just a conversation.
I will not bite. You know that.
LikeLike
Greg:
LikeLike
Chris said: “One thing though, listen to this sermon. I think you would be greatly encouraged and may change your mind regarding the place of necessity in some of your examples.”
Okay Chris. I listened to this twice. A perfectly good and sound and edifying reformed sermon on the divine conspiracy of eternal foreordination and foreknowledge between the Father and Son in election and redemption.
I enjoyed it very much. I don’t understand though what it has directly to do with what we’ve been talking about there. What did you mean by this:
“
LikeLike
Greg,
Take or leave my advice, it matters not to me, and I’m simply bored.
Stop thinking so much about theology and focus on those around you. If you have something specific you want to ask, do it. I listened to, it was a wonderful sermon, how thankful we ought to be that Chris shared that, shared about himself, etc etc etc.
If you or anyone had any idea how my combox statements I have penned up in my brain ready to go, it would frighten you. DGH does too. Stop thinking, and take it easy man. Or else I start posting liberal protestantism and piss everyone off.
Later.
LikeLike
I’ve been musing on your comment since last night Andrew. I truly mean nothing bad by this, but I don’t know what you’re talking about. It might be ALL me, but I can only be honest.
LikeLike
Greg, how are daily devotions going?
I use Max Lucado’s Grace for the Moment Daily Bible readings. You?
I use ACTS (adoration, confession, thanks giving, confession) to guide my prayer life.
I haven’t golfed in many months.
Back to my exercise and bible reading morning routine.
Bye.
LikeLike
Kent,
Then it should show in how we talk about and treat others.
LikeLike
AB
Greg, how are daily devotions going?
That’s a very piestistic question Andrew. I’m not particularly fond of the term “devotions”. Daily prayer and word time in the morning. I also have a whiteboard where I keep track of who and what to pray for so I don’t forget.
I’m not sure what to make of somebody who hangs out on this site recommending Max Lucado.
I don’t golf. Nuthin wrong with it, just not for me. I lift weights. You know that 🙂
I also still don’t understand Chris’s point in recommending that sermon.
LikeLike
For sure Curt. I have spent over a decade patiently discussing matters with people who are honestly asking for help or seeking an honest dialogue.
And a lot of time bearbaiting those who are just out to waste people’s time or hold people hostage with a monologue.
A few times people have leapt over that dividing line.
I remember all of them very well…
LikeLike
Greg – I’m not sure what to make of somebody who hangs out on this site recommending Max Lucado.
The student is becoming the teacher before our eyes…
LikeLike
Kent,
We all have buttons when pushed cause us to leap over the dividing line.
LikeLike
Greg:
According to the minister of the gospel preaching that sermon:
—Who did the giving?
—Who was given to whom?
—Why ‘gave’ vs ‘entrusted’?
—There were two reasons for giving a gift discussed – what were those reasons?
—What was the gift discussed by the minister?
—For which of the two reasons discussed for giving gifts was the gift given?
—On whom does the compact of redemption depend?
—Who’s commitment is important and why?
LikeLike
[nodding]
LikeLike
Chris asked and I’ve answered the following questions regard the sermon he linked.
=========================================================
—Who did the giving?
God the Father
—Who was given to whom?
The elect were given by the Father to the Son.
—Why ‘gave’ vs ‘entrusted’?
Because a gift is given. If merely entrusted it would not properly be a gift, but a sort of loan. Unless the act of entrusting were itself the gift, such as when a father allows his son to take the the car out for the night, for instance, but that’s not what is happening in this eternal divine conspiracy.
—There were two reasons for giving a gift discussed – what were those reasons?
A gift may be given to be a help to the recipient or out of love simply to please the object of that love.
—What was the gift discussed by the minister?
All of the elect, including me.
—For which of the two reasons discussed for giving gifts was the gift given?
The second. It is not possible for any of the persons of the Godhead to have an actual need.(huge mind numbing topic, aseity), but God IS love.
—On whom does the compact of redemption depend?
God the Father and God the Son (of course God the Holy Spirit as well.)
—Who’s commitment is important and why?
Clearly God’s. Because God cannot lie and is flawlessly faithful. His word being true and He being truth itself by definition. Everything we are not. Both as Children of the first man Adam and as willing rebels ourselves. The preacher didn’t say this explicitly, but God’s commitment to this compact is shown in the great kenosis of Philippians 2 which is what he was talking about nonetheless.
Now. How would you like to be a hip n groovy dood and tell me why you wanted me to listen to this fine exposition of gospel truth at this time? 😀
LikeLike
That sermon makes me glad to know Jesus Christ – I hope it did for you too. Wish I had time to elaborate more but I thought that sermon would have related to my statement easily enough. Sorry it didn’t.
Look forward to hearing from you after you read Dr. Hart’s book.
LikeLike
Chris: “That sermon makes me glad to know Jesus Christ – I hope it did for you too”
Yes sir it did. I’m grateful you posted it.
The only thing is, I still don’t understand this statement:
“may change your mind regarding the place of necessity in some of your examples.”
I am genuinely interested in what you meant though.
LikeLike
Greg,
Chris might be hinting that you dabble in works righteousness in some of your emphases.
Just a guess on my part.
LikeLike
In our experience people who get really jacked up about the Law, their own lawkeeping, and others’ lack of lawkeeping tend to fall into that whether they admit to it or even realize it.
LikeLike
Greg, there are a list of really destructive sins that don’t even .01% tempt me to partake in, like drugs or certain pleasures of the flesh. And they are really destructive because they cause you to forget you have a family and job and some responsibilities and that causes a domino fall of several lives.
But I don’t find I rail against them, it’s low hanging fruit to get righteous that I don’t want to spark up a crack pipe. And I have my own list of sins to be concerned about.
LikeLike
Erik:
In our experience people who get really jacked up about the Law, their own lawkeeping, and others’ lack of lawkeeping tend to fall into that whether they admit to it or even realize it.
Erik, please point to this “lawkeeping” language of mine.
In this very thread I said the following:
Abstaining from ANYthing does absolutely nothing to justify someone before the Lord. In fact, the belief that it does would bring the anathema of Galatians 1.
However, intentionally NOT abstaining from some things says quite a bit about where somebody is. Their declaration of such evil being good says even a whole lot more.
Lazarus is the perfect illustration. He played absolutely no part in raising himself from death to life. However once raised, he DID walk outta that tomb. Had he laid there stiff and stinking with no heartbeat or respiration, NObody would have believed he had been raised and quite rightly so. There are certain universally present characteristics among the living. That this goes for new life in Christ just as well, is so clear from scripture and historic reformed orthodoxy, that NO greater evidence for my entire case could possibly exist than this present discussion. Please give me a little while to assemble some additional exhibits.
In the meantime let me ask Kent his view of the PCUSA and ELCA and why.
LikeLike
Greg – Abstaining from ANYthing does absolutely nothing to justify someone before the Lord
Erik – So why choose campaigning against Christians consuming the products put out by Hollywood as the warp & woof of your ministry?
LikeLike
Greg – However, intentionally NOT abstaining from some things says quite a bit about where somebody is. Their declaration of such evil being good says even a whole lot more.
Erik – So why not just point to Christ and let the Holy Spirit work (or not work) as opposed to pointing to and harping on the sin? Can Christ not preserve & sanctify His own?
The Lazarus example is not good as it is allegory in the way you use it. Where do you get that from the text?
LikeLike
Greg,
Lazarus also croaked again, eventually. Did that mean he was spiritually dead as well?
LikeLike
Greg, turn your reasoning on yourself. Imagine someone talking about webbernet use the way you do cinematic consumption. Don’t look now, but the doctrine of liberty is actually your friend. Have you ever heard of distinguishing between wisdom and morality? And if you have, have you ever heard of talking of a moralist hiding behind wisdom?
LikeLike
24th Article of the Belgic Confession
We believe that this true faith being wrought in man by the hearing of the Word of God, and the operation of the Holy Ghost, doth regenerate and make him a new man, causing him to live a new life, and freeing him from the bondage of sin. Therefore it is so far from being true, that this justifying faith makes men remiss in a pious and holy life, that on the contrary without it they would never do anything out of love to God, but only out of self-love or fear of damnation. Therefore it is impossible that this holy faith can be unfruitful in man: for we do not speak of a vain faith, but of such a faith, which is called in Scripture, a faith that worketh by love, which excites man to the practice of those works, which God has commanded in his Word. Which works, as they proceed from the good root of faith, are good and acceptable in the sight of God, forasmuch as they are all sanctified by his grace: howbeit they are of no account towards our justification. For it is by faith in Christ that we are justified, even before we do good works; otherwise they could not be good works, any more than the fruit of a tree can be good, before the tree itself is good. Therefore we do good works, but not to merit by them, (for what can they merit?) nay, we are beholden to God for the good works we do, and not he to us, since it is he that worketh in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure. Let us therefore attend to what is written: when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, we are unprofitable servants; we have done that which was our duty to do. In the meantime, we do not deny that God rewards our good works, but it is through his grace that he crowns his gifts. Moreover, though we do good works, we do not found our salvation upon them; for we do no work but what is polluted by our flesh, and also punishable; and although we could perform such works, still the remembrance of one sin is sufficient to make God reject them. Thus then we would always be in doubt, tossed to and fro without any certainty, and our poor consciences continually vexed, if they relied not on the merits of the suffering and death of our Savior.
AMEN!!!
=========================================================
32nd Lord’s Day of the Heidelberg Catechism
Q. 86. Since then we are delivered from our misery merely of grace, through Christ, without any merit of ours, why must we still do good works?
A. Because Christ, having redeemed and delivered us by His blood, also renews us by His Holy Spirit after His own image; that so we may testify by the whole of our conduct our gratitude to God for His blessings,1 and that He may be praised by us;2 also, that every one may be assured in himself of his faith by the fruits thereof;3 and that by our godly conversation others may be gained to Christ.
Q. 87. Cannot they then be saved, who, continuing in their wicked and ungrateful lives, are not converted to God?
A. By no means; for the Holy Scripture declares that no unchaste person, idolator, adulterer, thief, covetous man, drunkard, slanderer, robber, or any such like, shall inherit the kingdom of God.
=======================================================
Canons of Dordt: Head 5 (Perseverance), article 10:
This assurance, however, is not produced by any peculiar revelation contrary to, or independent of the Word of God; but springs from faith in God’s promises, which he has most abundantly revealed in his Word for our comfort; from the testimony of the Holy Spirit, witnessing with our spirit, that we are children and heirs of God, Romans 8:16; and lastly, from a serious and holy desire to preserve a good conscience, and to perform good works. And if the elect of God were deprived of this solid comfort, that they shall finally obtain the victory, and of this infallible pledge or earnest of eternal glory, they would be of all men the most miserable.
Same Head, article 12>
This certainty of perseverance, however, is so far from exciting in believers a spirit of pride, or of rendering them carnally secure, that on the contrary, it is the real source of humility, filial reverence, true piety, patience in every tribulation, fervent prayers, constancy in suffering, and in confessing the truth, and of solid rejoicing in God: so that the consideration of this benefit should serve as an incentive to the serious and constant practice of gratitude and good works, as appears from the testimonies of Scripture, and the examples of the saints.
WCF CHAPTER XIII. Of Sanctification.
Article I. They who are effectually called and regenerated, having a new heart and a new spirit created in them, are further sanctified, really and personally, through the virtue of Christ’s death and resurrection, by his Word and Spirit dwelling in them; the dominion of the whole body of sin is destroyed, and the several lusts thereof are more and more weakened and mortified, and they more and more quickened and strengthened, in all saving graces, to the practice of true holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.
WLC
Q. 75. What is sanctification?
A. Sanctification is a work of God’s grace, whereby they whom God hath, before the foundation of the world, chosen to be holy, are in time, through the powerful operation of his Spirit applying the death and resurrection of Christ unto them, renewed in their whole man after the image of God; having the seeds of repentance unto life, and all other saving graces, put into their hearts, and those graces so stirred up, increased, and strengthened, as that they more and more die unto sin, and rise unto newness of life.
———-
Q. 77. Wherein do justification and sanctification differ?
A. Although sanctification be inseparably joined with justification, yet they differ, in that God in justification imputeth the righteousness of Christ; in sanctification his Spirit infuseth grace, and enableth to the exercise thereof; in the former, sin is pardoned; in the other, it is subdued: the one doth equally free all believers from the revenging wrath of God, and that perfectly in this life, that they never fall into condemnation; the other is neither equal in all, nor in this life perfect in any, but growing up to perfection.
===========================================================
This is just a sampling. I can hear you guys already, but go ahead. You will never EVER convince even yourselves that the men who wrote these words would in their wildest, fever induced hallucinogenic nightmares condone 1/100th of 1% of what is being declared Christian “liberty” on this site. Somebody please make that case. I’ll go get some popcorn. Now THAT would be entertainment.
LikeLike
Greg,
But then you still have to ascertain what regeneration looks like.
It may not necessarily look like a Baptist church lady or a sanctified Methodist who is firmly convinced he hasn’t sinned since ’82.
LikeLike
Greg, ever heard of Reformed narcissism: I think x, I am Reformed, therefore x is Reformed. How can anyone ever get anywhere with you? The guys who wrote these words could never have seen things differently from me. You’re a piece of work.
LikeLike
Greg,
We get back to our personal experience with most of the died-in-the wool pietists and revivalists who we have encountered here over the years.
Inevitably, when pressed, they come off like a-holes that no one would want to spend 5 minutes with.
I’m not lumping you in with them, though.
LikeLike
And for me, gets us back to the animus imponentis, which Greg said he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. Well fine, I’m living in Meredith Kline land from the guy who lives in the confessional outhouse, but to the extent you want to learn more, Greg, the resources are out there. Peace to you on your journey.
LikeLike
Lucado may be heretical, but with my time constrains, I can’t hassle with the android bible app that makes me have to make more thumb movements. Greg, glad you have a healthy devotional life, and I am thankful for your critiquing of mine. Even if you don’t like that word devotional. Peace to you on your journey.
LikeLike
Andrew,
Devotionals are for wimps. Read the Bible & Confessions/Catechisms.
LikeLike
Erik, that’s what the $4 kindle book from Lucado is.
If it’s good enough for Darryl, hey, it’s good enough for me.
But I hear you Erik. Godspeed.
LikeLike
Zrim says:
Greg, ever heard of Reformed narcissism: I think x, I am Reformed, therefore x is Reformed. How can anyone ever get anywhere with you? The guys who wrote these words could never have seen things differently from me. You’re a piece of work.
No I said THEY were reformed and I agree with THEM. I then asked for a case to be made that THEY would see things like YOU do. Can you make that case please? If you can, you will “get somewhere” with me.
LikeLike
Greg, I’ll keep this nice and short and sweet. I apologize in advance if this comment takes it into the weeds. Again, with any combox from my fingertips, feel free to disregard.
You have to ask yourself – who are you talking to in this blog? Well, many of us are duly ordained officers of our respective communions. What happened in 2009 at the link I sent you (eat your heart out here, man), is precisely the freedom afforded to one such as me with respect to my beleifs in regards to the length of the days of creation in Genesis.
You have a thing for hollywood – good for you – it’s your little project, and I wish you well. But that’s where the heart of the issue lies – ordination for the officers in the church, and what things are allowable, what aren’t. Can I ask a deacon in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church rightfully join a soccer league that plays games on Sunday? Those kinds of things.
Now if you want to break out your popcorn and watch us dance while you fire your gun at our feet, go for it. It’s the wild wild west. Just don’t start chomping until you actually consider some of us have been reading this particular blog or those like a lot longer than when you found it, so some of us don’t enjoy just rehashing old arguments. Again, are you a prophet for the reformed world to listen to, or some quack? I mean, keep going, by all means,but this is always where the line ends with me, good friend Greg Smith. Godspeed to you as well on your journey, I enjoy our interactions, but at my stage of life, this stuff is best left to the retired and the those who have nothing better to do than play quack or unreal tournament. I hope these blogs are as fun for you as those little games were.
Grace and peace,
Andrew Buckingham
LikeLike
Darryl reads Max Lucado?
I actually haven’t even heard the name Max Lucado since my Southern Baptist pastor raved about him back in the 80s.
I assumed he had been eclipsed by John Piper.
Next we’ll be lauding Chuck Swindoll, Charles Stanley, and Dr. James Dobson. It’s evangelical old home week.
LikeLike
Erik says: “Greg,
But then you still have to ascertain what regeneration looks like.”
That’s really not that tough Erik. Biblically OR historically.
Erik says: “It may not necessarily look like a Baptist church lady or a sanctified Methodist who is firmly convinced he hasn’t sinned since ’82.
OH NO SIR!! Absolutely not!! 😦 That’s exactly the opposite of what I’m talking about. I’m talking about what the historic reformed church was talking about. Those who fight the Romans 7 war using the corpus of scriptural declarations of what does and does not please our God. We are to use what does to wage war against what doesn’t. I’m talking internally as a truly converted and justified new creature in Christ whose yearning is to please His new master.
I see that ALL OVER the quotes I posted (and plenty of other places). Show me the principle in their words whereby your case for Boardwalk Empire is made? Don’t be gittin all twitchy on me now brother. My stickin around here was your idea. You as much as said so already or I wouldn’t bring that up. I reiterate. I am not yelling. I’m asking.
I just know you now better than this. Oh yes you do.
LikeLike
Greg,
These men also wrote by candlelight and had their wives wait on them hand and foot. If only.
LikeLike
erik, the max lucado bible carves the bible up into a reading for each day. today, i read about the exodus, some of a psalm, some of a proverb, and one of the latter chapters of matthew. Yes, each day has a small paragraph or two from ML. What’s nice is I can read each day’s devotion (I read Februrary 1st selections) and I find it a very helpful system to keep me in the word. I think Greg took my question in a defensive way, i’m really only here to see what other people do, as I seek to grow from men in the faith more mature and seasoned than yours truly. follow the links, dg blogs about it on his patheos blog (lucado that is). grace and peace.
https://oldlife.org/2015/02/neo-calvinist-reality-check/comment-page-13/#comment-308438
LikeLike
Erik: Greg,
These men also wrote by candlelight and had their wives wait on them hand and foot. If only.
This is utterly embarrassing and beneath you Erik. I mean that with all my heart. Try again please.
Think about what it means if this really is all you got.
LikeLike
You don’t owe anybody an explanation like this Andrew, but it does help that you gave it.
LikeLike
Greg,
BW is not for everyone. Porn addicts and the sensitive need to stay away, both because of the sexuality and the violence. For those that can handle it it’s good writing and interesting for those who are interested in that era of American history – Prohibition.
It’s interesting to note what Prohibition ended up doing – fueling desire and turning previously law-abiding people into lawbreakers overnight over something that, in moderation, was a perfectly acceptable practice for adults.
I have the same fear about a zero tolerance approach to entertainment involving adult subject matter. In the last few years I have known several Christians — all Baptists – who had serious scruples about entertainment (at least publicly) who were caught in prostitution stings. When people suppress, suppress, suppress sometimes they explode and create a serious real-world mess for themselves & their families. That’s why I consume mature entertainment like I consume alcohol – in moderation, with a critical eye.
I’ll bet you a dollar to a donut that 90% of Christians who succumb to online porn are the ones who are white knuckle, publicly crusading abstainers until they slip up and spend an entire day in a sordid fall into the worst of it.
LikeLike
Andrew,
It’s o.k. You knew dropping Max Lucado’s name would get you crap here.
It’s like if I came in and said I was strangely warmed by my morning reading of Jonathan Edwards.
LikeLike
Erik, why do you think I did it? (wink)
LikeLike
I don’t see that case Erik. I see a self satisfying, rationalizing and yes hypocritical appeal to irrelevance in order to convince yourself that God approves of something you like.
Alcohol and sinfully produced entertainment are not even in the same universe and you know this too. Do I really need to tell you why. I don’t think I actually do.
Allow me to quote you:
“I found myself debating a man who we have come to call “Greg the Terrible”. He’s quite a character and the biggest point he tried to make (in his relentlessly bombastic way) is that Christians willingly watching television shows and movies that include sexual content is inherently sinful because the actors, in making the program, really do take off their clothes and touch each other in inappropriate ways. At the time I fought against him but, upon further reflection, I have to conclude that he is right.”
Except in moderation with a critical eye? Paying people to sin for YOUR pleasure is a thing God condones in moderation with a critical eye now? There is NO way you really believe that. Does this then mean that you and your family can, with God’s blessing, give such performances yourselves? In moderation for the pleasure of other critical eyes? I need to see that case from the scriptures and reformed history Erik. More importantly YOU need to make it or knock off this duplicitous rationalization. This is double mindedness on full strobing neon display here. Isn’t it?
LikeLike
Greg,
Nothing duplicitous or hypocritical. I never said I was abstaining from anything. I didn’t walk an aisle and never would.
The only hypocrite would be someone who crusades against something, says they don’t do it, but then does it in secret. Those are the people who rightly cause Christians to be labeled as hypocrites.
That’s why I’ll never take a pledge of abstaining from anything merely to please men.
LikeLike
Greg,
Making my way through the entire oeuvre of Eric Rohmer. Fabulous, enriching stuff. Saw a few boobs, may see a few more. Not at all about boobs, though. Not giving that all up for the sake of a few (beautiful) boobs that God created.
LikeLike
Erik: “Greg,
Nothing duplicitous or hypocritical.”
Then you AND God would be enriched if it were your wife or children? And they would be enriched it it were your? In whatever it is you watch? Because if not then that’s hypocrisy. If so, I continue to ask for that case from scripture and historic reformed orthodoxy .
Erik: “The only hypocrite would be someone who crusades against something, says they don’t do it, but then does it in secret.”
That WOULD be hypocrisy. Yes.
Erik: “Those are the people who rightly cause Christians to be labeled as hypocrites.”
That’s true, but as your nemesis Kenneth Weisman (spelling?) told Dr. Hart. It’s one thing to struggle with sin. It’s quite another to declare it righteous. That’s double hypocrisy and an even worse testimony. I only bring him up because he’s the one who said it. NOT to throw him in your face.
Erik: “That’s why I’ll never take a pledge of abstaining from anything merely to please men.”
I’ve never taken a pledge that I can remember in 30 years as a believer. Up until several years ago I used to have cable and watch SOME of this garbage too. I never swore it off. As I got (consciously) closer to God (long story) and the issues became clear, my conscience simply wouldn’t allow it anymore. Now that I see the beguiling, crippling effect it has INSIDE the modern reformed world, I’m grateful He took it from me. I doubt I will ever own another television. I can’t think of one good reason why I should. I am missing nothing and it is just a totally superfluous potential snare and time waster.
LikeLike
Greg,
My wife is privy to everything I read and watch, as are my kids when it is age appropriate. We have no secrets, which is how it should be in a marriage. My wife is not an actress so we have no experience in the area of production.
I think you make a mistake when you conclude that Darryl or I “declare (entertainment) righteous”. Not everyone operates in this pure evil vs. pure good dichotomy that you do.
Kenneth lied about me continuously and publicly so in reality as a religious person he’s a hypocrite. You don’t want him on your side.
You talk about your conscience. How can you make everyone else’s conscience identical to yours? Trying to do that is how people end up in the loony bin.
LikeLike
I then asked for a case to be made that THEY would see things like YOU do. Can you make that case please?
Greg, all you did was cut and paste some stuff from WCF/TFU and said, “There, see? The confessional writers agree with me that believers shouldn’t watch movies.” Huh? But is the point really that anachronistic? I’m not interested in making puppets out of the divines to serve my opinion.
Still, if all it takes to make a case for liberty is cutting and pasting confessional language then how about WCF 20 (the one on liberty):
Chapter XX
Of Christian Liberty, and Liberty of Conscience
I. The liberty which Christ has purchased for believers under the Gospel consists in their freedom from the guilt of sin, and condemning wrath of God, the curse of the moral law;[1] and, in their being delivered from this present evil world, bondage to Satan, and dominion of sin;[2] from the evil of afflictions, the sting of death, the victory of the grave, and everlasting damnation;[3] as also, in their free access to God,[4] and their yielding obedience unto Him, not out of slavish fear, but a child-like love and willing mind.[5] All which were common also to believers under the law.[6] But, under the New Testament, the liberty of Christians is further enlarged, in their freedom from the yoke of the ceremonial law, to which the Jewish Church was subjected;[7] and in greater boldness of access to the throne of grace,[8] and in fuller communications of the free Spirit of God, than believers under the law did ordinarily partake of.[9]
II. God alone is Lord of the conscience,[10] and has left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men, which are, in any thing, contrary to His Word; or beside it, if matters of faith, or worship.[11] So that, to believe such doctrines, or to obey such commands, out of conscience, is to betray true liberty of conscience:[12] and the requiring of an implicit faith, and an absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience, and reason also.[13]
III. They who, upon pretence of Christian liberty, do practice any sin, or cherish any lust, do thereby destroy the end of Christian liberty, which is, that being delivered out of the hands of our enemies, we might serve the Lord without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him, all the days of our life.[14]
IV. And because the powers which God has ordained, and the liberty which Christ has purchased are not intended by God to destroy, but mutually to uphold and preserve one another, they who, upon pretence of Christian liberty, shall oppose any lawful power, or the lawful exercise of it, whether it be civil or ecclesiastical, resist the ordinance of God.[15] And, for their publishing of such opinions, or maintaining of such practices, as are contrary to the light of nature, or to the known principles of Christianity (whether concerning faith, worship, or conversation), or to the power of godliness; or, such erroneous opinions or practices, as either in their own nature, or in the manner of publishing or maintaining them, are destructive to the external peace and order which Christ has established in the Church, they may lawfully be called to account,[16] and proceeded against, by the censures of the Church. and by the power of the civil magistrate.[17]
Bam. I win.
LikeLike
Greg,
You throw out hints about your personal story. Maybe share that with us if you have the time. That might help us understand better what motivates you.
LikeLike
Now if only one of us will copy paste the original autographs of Holy Writ into one combox statement, we can all hit golf balls at the range during our lunch break and hit up the pro shop to see if any putters are on sale.
Let me get right on that. Kenny capitulated on the drunk website when I told him the answer to Hell is just a copy and paste of the latest encyclical away, but alas, he continues to duke it out with Sauron over there.
Zrim, anti-2k and anti-calvinist rage against this blog has to be up there with one of the top forms of entertainment. One might even say that this indulgence of being here is – gulp – something we wouldn’t want our women our children engaged in. We all know what that means..
LikeLike
AB, but by Greg’s reasoning, shouldn’t he avoid the pixelated space that includes cinematic consumers? I mean, if I am guilty of blasphemy, murder, and adultery as those whom I watch on the screen depicting vice, isn’t he guilty for keeping bad company and interacting with me here? Something tells me no, it’s completely different for Greg–his hands are white as snow.
LikeLike
Zrim, something tells me only Greg’s hair dresser knows for sure.
LikeLike
Zrim says: “Greg, all you did was cut and paste some stuff from WCF/TFU and said, “There, see? The confessional writers agree with me that believers shouldn’t watch movies.”
Zrim, the case I was, making was for “regeneration” and the truth that justification never occurs without sanctification. Erik got that.
Zrim quotes WCFXX on liberty of conscience and then concludes with
Bam. I win.
WCF 1:IX:
“IX. The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture, is the Scripture itself; and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any scripture (which is not manifold, but one), it may be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly……
I find it an unassailable reality that the divines would agree with the following revision:
“The rule of interpretation of these standards, is the standards themselves; and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any statement from one part (which is not manifold, but one), it may be searched and known by other places where we have touched more fully or clearly on the matter under consideration.”
I would urge Zrim to interpret what the assembly meant (and most assuredly did not) in WCF XX by reading that chapter in light of the WLC questions 91 through the ten commandments. I feel confident that Zrim will find that they had a VERY different notion of “liberty” than he does.
LikeLike
Greg, are you now one of the westminster divines that you may willy nilly steal their words and apply them to your own confessional construct?
Reminds me of the anabaptists.. good grief.
LikeLike
This statement:
Shows you have much to learn, young padawan. May the force be with you.
LikeLike
Greg,
You do have to admit that history is chock full of examples of Christians demanding that other Christians either engage in or refrain from engaging in all sorts of activities. Many of them we now look back on and say, “Wait. Never mind”.
Remember rock music and “backward masking” from the 80s? Dungeons and Dragons? Harry Potter? Yoga? Product boycotts? Barcodes related to the Mark of the Beast? Prohibition? Y2K? Mixed-race dating being forbidden? And on and on. Christians are oftentimes dupes.
LikeLike
E, what about selling all my possessions and waiting on a hillside for the Rapture to happen based on someone’s calendar calculations?
I promised the family I won’t let this happen to me a 4th time, no sireeeeeeeeee….
LikeLike
Zrim says: “AB, but by Greg’s reasoning, shouldn’t he avoid the pixelated space that includes cinematic consumers? I mean, if I am guilty of blasphemy, murder, and adultery as those whom I watch on the screen depicting vice,
What it is with you man? 🙂 I have said no such thing. What I DID say is that if it would be sin for you perform, it is sin for you to pay others to perform it. And if it’s not sin then you should have no problem with yourself or your own family doing it. OR…. paying them to damn themselves, while you use them for your own entertainment is a God pleasing activity. OR… you’re a hypocrite.
Zrim says: “…isn’t he guilty for keeping bad company and interacting with me here? Something tells me no, it’s completely different for Greg–his hands are white as snow.”
This is a truly dopey argument Zrim. I’m simply doing what amounts to sitting in a room where the owner allows people to talk. I have no control over who else comes in here. As long as I see a godly purpose for me being here, I’ll be here. Unless the honcho throws me out. I don’t instantly declare everybody who’s wrong on media and entertainment a hellbound apostate either. Throwing out their television and never seeing another movie (which I have never said anybody should do) won’t do a thing by itself to please God anyway. In fact, if done in a self righteousness it might make somebody even worse.
LikeLike
Greg – paying them to damn themselves
Erik – Can you expound on that? Would a Christian actor or actress who appears nude in a film necessarily be damned?
What if they pose for a painting or photograph?
Not recommending it, but damned?
LikeLike
Greg,
What’s your opinion of Christian women who wear yoga pants in public?
Their booties had might as well be naked.
LikeLike
Erik and Kent. Nothing of what you’ve said is analogous to what were talking about here. I know you a lot better than Kent Erik. There is no way you are going to tell me that ANYthing on that list is the same as paying real, divine image bearing human beings, that we are commanded to portray Christ to and be to them salt and light, to defile themselves before a watching world. AND CHURCH now. Just no way. Where are the people in that list? And Kent. Your example is on the other side of the solar system from true to life cinematic media entertainment.
LikeLike
Greg, everyone here affirms that justification never occurs without sanctification–case closed, move on. And nobody is paying anybody to perform sinful acts. Vice is being depicting in the process of telling a story. Don’t you know the difference?
LikeLike
AB: Greg, are you now one of the Westminster divines that you may willy nilly steal their words and apply them to your own confessional construct?”
Think with me for a minute here Andrew. I am not assuming their words. I am reading their words in the catechism as defining their words in the confession. See?
If they say “we have liberty” over here and then talk about a bunch of stuff they consider sinful from the scriptures over there, then that MUST mean that the sinful stuff in the catechism CANNOT be included in the liberty in the confession. OR, they were all nuts. OR stupidly inconsistent. That further means that whoever holds a notion of “liberty” that includes the things that they forbid, then that person has a different definition of liberty than the divines.
Would you like to explore who’s standards are closer to the theirs. Mine or the one’s that are held by the majority on this site? I’d be very Happy to do that.
LikeLike
Zrim says: “Greg, everyone here affirms that justification never occurs without sanctification–case closed, move on.”
Then sanctification here is a content-less abstraction wherein nobody really changes, but we apply the word anyway.
Zrim says: “And nobody is paying anybody to perform sinful acts. Vice is being depicting in the process of telling a story. Don’t you know the difference?”
I’m gonna let Erik handle this. It’ll feel good to be on the same side for a minute.
LikeLike
Greg,
Define “defile themselves”?
I’ve noted in past comments things that I think are over the line – strippers on stripper poles, strippers/exotic dances/wannabe “actresses” hired to do graphic sex scenes.
Is any and all nudity defiling?
What about being painted or photographed? A woman nursing her baby where her breast is visible?
A woman showing her breasts in a movie in a non-sexual way?
A man showing his behind, say, in a prisoner of war movie?
LikeLike
Greg, I’m done here, but consider social media as compared to your arch enemy the television and just realize you have a long way to go in cleaning up hollywood, let alone the interwebs.
Better go grab a broom and start sweeping. Peace be with you.
LikeLike
Why is “sanctification here is a content-less abstraction wherein nobody really changes”? Because we watch TV and movies? That what teetotalers say about smokers and drinkers. You keep wanting to say substance and cinematic consumption aren’t the same, but you sure talk about the latter the way legalists have spoken about the former.
LikeLike
If you combine my questions and Zrim’s, I think Greg has a hurdle to get over in establishing that seeing a nude body part itself (unless necessary) is unequivocally sin. When it’s not porn, even the sex scenes are fake. You see the body parts, but no one is really having intercourse.
Now there is the area of enticement, I agree (the stripper on the stripper pole, the man feigning making love to the woman, usually with suggestive dialogue).
When enticement is not present, however, I don’t think Greg has made his case that seeing nude body parts = sin.
We lose track of the fact that God made bodies and sometimes he made them quite beautiful. There is not necessarily shame intertwined in that (John Piper’s overheated rhetoric notwithstanding).
LikeLike
Paul speaks about avoiding sexual immorality. Jesus speaks about not looking upon women lustfully. Do either of them condemn Greek or Roman art that included nudity?
LikeLike
Erik says: “Greg,
My wife is privy to everything I read and watch, as are my kids when it is age appropriate. We have no secrets, which is how it should be in a marriage.
That’s good, but irrelevant.
Erik says: “My wife is not an actress so we have no experience in the area of production.”
That’s a flagrant copout Erik and you know it. Suppose she came to you and said she wanted to “perform” in scenes on the same level as “Boardwalk Empire” because it’s a great production? Yet again. These things she knows you watch. She would be ok if you “performed” those parts with those other women? And both of you would be proud if it were your children? You’d want your church to see? Please address that directly sir. Here, I’ll go first. My wife would be quite legitimately crushed if I were to so much as whisper such an outrage for any of us. I would consider her an adulteress whose immorality I would need to forgive and overcome for our marriage to continue. I already said I would weep bitterly if it were my little girl. How bout you?
I think you make a mistake when you conclude that Darryl or I “declare (entertainment) righteous”. Not everyone operates in this pure evil vs. pure good dichotomy that you do.
Erik, that sounds like pure post modern dialectic gobbledygook. Either the profane, blasphemous, bloody, debauched performances in these productions are sin or they are not. If they are, you’re in sin for promoting it. Repent. If they’re not then you and your family could participate and you should have no problem telling me that.
Erik says: “Kenneth lied about me continuously and publicly so in reality as a religious person he’s a hypocrite. You don’t want him on your side.”
I did not place him on my side. I mentioned one instance where his point was a good one.
Erik says: “You talk about your conscience. How can you make everyone else’s conscience identical to yours?”
This is the discussion that really has to happen right here. Save for a few explicitly extrapolated areas in scripture, and the principles they actually DO cover. every Christian conscience IS the same. The “liberty” passages have been MANGLED and pounded so thin and wide as to allow FAAAAAR more than they do and until the recently EVERYbody with any kind of testimony at all knew that.
Zrim quoted it from WCF XX:
“III. They who, upon pretence of Christian liberty, do practice any sin, or cherish any lust, do thereby destroy the end of Christian liberty, which is, that being delivered out of the hands of our enemies, we might serve the Lord without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him, all the days of our life”
That my friend, is the prevailing practice of today’s church. Bend and warp scripture around so as to make everything I like ok. I ask you to tell me right now that you honestly believe that ANY reformed authority who worked on ANY of the recognized standards, be it the Westminsters or Three forms would watch Boardwalk Empire or the Wire with you and declare it alright with God. I dare ya 😉
LikeLike
Greg – You’d want your church to see?
Erik – Yeah, I’d like to show it like a 70s showing of a Billy Graham movie.
Duh.
Do you really run every action you take through a mental checklist like this before doing it?
Of course every action I take is not appropriate for every potential group that I interact with.
Do I invite the copier repairman into my bedroom before making love with my wife?
This is fundie calculus.
LikeLike
Erik says: “If you combine my questions and Zrim’s, I think Greg has a hurdle to get over in establishing that seeing a nude body part itself (unless necessary) is unequivocally sin. When it’s not porn, even the sex scenes are fake. You see the body parts, but no one is really having intercourse.”
Then it would be ok if you or family did it and your church watched?
LikeLike
Greg – I would consider her an adulteress whose immorality I would need to forgive and overcome for our marriage to continue.
Erik – That sounds Muslim.
LikeLike
You’re running Erik. You know what I’m actually asking you now please answer. I have made a heroic attempt to answer as many of your questions as I could.
LikeLike
Greg,
Any “promotion” I do is with caveats. Watcher beware. There’s enough information out there that people can look things up for themselves before watching.
LikeLike
Greg – every Christian conscience IS the same
Erik – You disagree with Paul on that. For some, eating meat offered to idols was sin. To others, it was fine.
LikeLike
Greg – EVERYbody with any kind of testimony at all knew that.
Erik – What do you mean by “testimony”?
That’s Babdist-speak.
LikeLike
Greg – You know what I’m actually asking you now please answer
Erik – I really don’t.
You have some unanswered questions on nudity unrelated to sex or faux-sex, though.
LikeLike
Greg – every Christian conscience IS the same
My New Testament is filled with Christian consciences differing, weak and strong brethren, those we have to forebear normal activity in front of so that they aren’t damaged.
LikeLike
I don’t see my answer Erik.
Erik says: “If you combine my questions and Zrim’s, I think Greg has a hurdle to get over in establishing that seeing a nude body part itself (unless necessary) is unequivocally sin. When it’s not porn, even the sex scenes are fake. You see the body parts, but no one is really having intercourse.”
Then it would be ok if you or family did it and your church watched?
===========================================
Greg – every Christian conscience IS the same
Erik – You disagree with Paul on that. For some, eating meat offered to idols was sin. To others, it was fine.
===========================================
You skipped the rest.
“Save for a few explicitly extrapolated areas in scripture, and the principles they actually DO cover.”
That’s one of em. Food. We can do this Erik. Let’s see your skills in the word? I am NOT being sarcastic. I don’t know, but you’re not off to a very good start 😀
LikeLike
Uhm, emoticons are an automatic disqualify.
This is a blog moderated by an orthodox presbyterian.
At least that’s my interpretation.
LikeLike
Watching a show with objectionable content for the sake of the content that is engaging and not objectionable (like “The Wire”) is akin to the calculus that each of us makes in our daily lives for years on end.
Do we obey every law, rule, and regulation put forth by every level of government to which we are accountable, at all times and in all ways, every minute of our working & private lives? Show me the guy who says he has and I’ll show you a liar.
What we do is make a reasonable attempt to comply, paying particular attention to the really important laws and rules that we know are non-negotiable and really important for our safety and the safety of others.
This is why I may watch a show with some objectionable content while I won’t go hire a prostitute on the street. To try to equate them and put them on the same level is sophomoric.
LikeLike
kent, like Erik, partially quotes me as saying:
Greg – every Christian conscience IS the same”
And then responds with:
My New Testament is filled with Christian consciences differing, weak and strong brethren, those we have to forebear normal activity in front of so that they aren’t damaged.
It is? Fabulous! Tell me please? This will require a TON of time consuming work, but Erik’s gonna get his money’s worth. This is something I’ve been wanting to do a for a long time and this is as good a place as any. In fact, much better than most.
LikeLike
Greg,
I honestly have no idea what question I haven’t answered.
LikeLike
Greg,
So you would make the case that Paul on the conscience only covers his explicit examples and could not be applied to any scenarios or technologies that didn’t exist in the first century?
Do you also believe the King James is the pinnacle of Bible translations?
Do you make use of electricity?
LikeLike
Erik says: “Watching a show with objectionable content for the sake of the content that is engaging and not objectionable (like “The Wire”) is akin to the calculus that each of us makes in our daily lives for years on end.
Absolute falsehood Erik. Give me some examples please. (I KNOW you ain’t even buyin this yerself)
Erik says: “Do we obey every law, rule, and regulation put forth by every level of government to which we are accountable, at all times and in all ways, every minute of our working & private lives? Show me the guy who says he has and I’ll show you a liar.”
This can’t be one of your examples? This is the same as hypocritically paying sinners to do what you wouldn’t want your family to do? As a settled practice? I know you ain’t serious?
Erik says: “What we do is make a reasonable attempt to comply, paying particular attention to the really important laws and rules that we know are non-negotiable and really important for our safety and the safety of others.”
So if its’s not that big a deal, you and your family could do it and your church could watch. Right?
Erik says: “This is why I may watch a show with some objectionable content while I won’t go hire a prostitute on the street. To try to equate them and put them on the same level is sophomoric.”
I have NEVER tried to do that Erik and I defy you to show where I have. They are different sins, but sins nonetheless and all an abomination in the sight of our God. Facilitating and financing sin on your neighbor is the unbelievably selfish opposite of loving him as yourself. Doing so while forbidding it in your own family is hypocrisy. NOT adultery, but still sin, easily avoidable and engaged in out of pure rebellious carnality. You’re better than this and so is Hart.
LikeLike
Erik asks: “Greg,
So you would make the case that Paul on the conscience only covers his explicit examples and could not be applied to any scenarios or technologies that didn’t exist in the first century?
Unbelievable 🙂 Lord help me. From just above:
“This is the discussion that really has to happen right here. Save for a few explicitly extrapolated areas in scripture, and the principles they actually DO cover. every Christian conscience IS the same. The “liberty” passages have been MANGLED and pounded so thin and wide as to allow FAAAAAR more than they do and until the recently EVERYbody with any kind of testimony at all knew that. “
Erik asks: “Do you also believe the King James is the pinnacle of Bible translations?”,
No HAHA!! NASB man here. (Though I quote the ESV a lot.) I also VEHEMENTLY defend the Christian right to drink alcohol and judiciously use tobacco though I do not. (Those first century weddings like at Cana were a rousing party down good time)
Do you make use of electricity?
No. I have a wind up computer. Come on man. 😀
LikeLike
Greg,
I don’t want my family members selling pencils on the corner either, but it proves nothing.
If my daughter was Jennifer Lawrence or Amy Adams, would I be proud of her? I would.
If my daughter was a stripper I wouldn’t be proud. But I’m not advocating watching strippers.
LikeLike
Greg,
You can’s just keep highlighting “and the principles they actually do cover” as if that explains anything.
What we’re arguing about are the principles they actually do cover.
LikeLike
Erik says:”Greg,
I don’t want my family members selling pencils on the corner either, but it proves nothing.
So selling pencils to you is the same as the sex scenes you watch? I just wanna be clear about that.
Erik says:”If my daughter was Jennifer Lawrence or Amy Adams, would I be proud of her? I would.”
I don’t know who those people are, but I assume they are women who played sex roles in the shows and movies you watch? If not, they don’t count. If so then I ask again. You would be proud to have your daughter’s nudity filmed by pagans to be displayed for your church and the watching world and you feel that Jesus, the apostles and the puritan divines share this view?
You’ll never EVER have this problem with me Erik. You can ask my view on anything and I will answer.
LikeLike
Erik – I hate to intrude in this interesting exchange between you and Greg, but if you have not yet gotten yourself a copy of “The Pledge” yet you might want to go through extra measures to do so (I realize that Netflix no longer loans it). It depicts a man caught up in just such a moral dilemma as described in these threads, pledging himself to do the “right thing,” only to wind up in a dead heat at the end. You’ll love it – I promise!
LikeLike
Greg – So selling pencils to you is the same as the sex scenes you watch? I just wanna be clear about that.
Erik – I don’t recall any pencils being sold in those scenes but I could have missed it.
?!?!?!?!?
LikeLike
Greg – I don’t know who those people are, but I assume they are women who played sex roles in the shows and movies you watch…You would be proud to have your daughter’s nudity filmed by pagans to be displayed for your church and the watching world and you feel that Jesus, the apostles and the puritan divines share this view?
Erik – This is getting surreal.
They’re Academy Award caliber actresses.
I care way less about what the apostles and the puritan divines think than Jesus. They’re just dead men at this point.
Jesus didn’t seem to have quite your level of squeamishness about all this.
Why are you not answering any questions about whether all nudity in film is (equally) sinful?
Amy Adams has done some nudity (in “The Master”), but nothing gross that I’m aware of. I’m not sure about Jennifer Lawrence.
What if Meryl Streep has done some nudity? Do I need to label her a harlot and throw out her 40 year career?
LikeLike
George,
I will try to watch that on Amazon (only $3.99). Easier now that I have a smart phone.
How can Netflix not have all Jack Nicholson’s movies? Disgraceful.
LikeLike
I have no moral dilemma and I have made no pledge. I am simply a man who has been forgiven much and who refuses to jump through all these ridiculous moral hoops, for what? Some godless pagan entertainment? Created by an industry that is COMMITTED UTTERLY, to everything my Lord hates?
This is only difficult for media junkies. Which is nearly everybody today. As I say. The most spectacularly successful Satanic campaign in the history of God’s earth. HAH! I just can imagine if we brought back those 16-18th century men of God and had them follow this conversation. They would vomit at the love affair their spiritual descendants are in with the world today.
I made it though 5 seconds of this Amy Adams clip. Erik wants this to be his daughter and for his church to watch.. 😦 He thinks the historic reformed church would approve of this.
Ya make me sad man. Ya really do. I absolutely refuse to believe that you will always be like this. NO way.
I made it though 5 seconds of this Amy Adams clip. Erik wants this to be his daughter and for his church to watch.. 😦
Ya make me sad man. Ya really do. I absolutely refuse to believe that you will always be like this.
LikeLike
Greg,
I was kidding about the pencils, I know what you mean.
I don’t want my sons playing NFL Football or even high school football, but I’ll go to a football game.
I don’t have to embrace everyone’s choice in life to watch their choice.
Stripper poles for my daughters, no. Tasteful nudity in film, in a portrait, or in a painting? Maybe. That’s their decision and their husbands.
Now you make the case that you’re trying to avoid having to make — that ALL non-medically necessary nudity is equal and equally wrong.
LikeLike
Greg,
Now you’re retreating. You get uncomfortable pushing your case to it’s logical end so you resort back to blanket denunciations of Hollywood, media junkies, etc.
I throw a penalty flag on that one.
LikeLike
Greg,
This is where you & Kenneth go off the rails. YOU post nude videos here? That’s crazy in light of everything you’ve been saying.
Darryl & I have never posted a nude video here, but you do?
LikeLike
Erik – well if that don’t work, let me know and I’ll buy a DVD and mail it to you.
LikeLike
Greg,
You also have to be careful in posting things like that as “examples”. Those could be Directors Cuts & deleted scenes that were not in the movies that were released. You could be exposing people to things they would have to go way out of their way to see.
I saw “American Hustle” and didn’t remember seeing her nude in that at all. I could have forgotten or maybe my wife covered my eyes.
Some of those clips on the side talked about “jailbait”. What the heck are you doing?!
LikeLike
Don’t forget the library, yo.
LikeLike
I’m sure you would, George. Thank you.
LikeLike
Erik says: “They’re Academy Award caliber actresses.”
Meaning what? Is that supposed to impress me? Celebrity means less than nothing to me. They are God hating pagans who need a savior.
“Erik – I don’t recall any pencils being sold in those scenes but I could have missed it.”
This is intentional. And no sir, it is not going to work. You are going to face the substance of my arguments and not be relieved by making me lose my credibility by goin off on you. 😀 OR, you can run away. But this imbecile routine to work me up ain’t happnin and just shows you really don’t know me brother.
Erik asks: “Why are you not answering any questions about whether all nudity in film is (equally) sinful?”
Yes, after Genesis three, all nudity in the presence of the opposite sex is sinful save for the marriage bed alone. It is a gracious God’s leaving us a little piece of His paradise. Here’s where you seize on that and everybody comes out of the woodwork. I promise you I know every single biblical argument there is.
All I wanna hear is you guys saying that it would be ok for you and your wives and children. You already have Erik. I am NOT givin up you though. I went from thinking you were a lowlife slug to thinking I had never been more wrong about somebody in my life to now not knowing what to think exactly.
There’s a reason God has us in this conversation though. .
LikeLike
Greg,
You also have to be careful in posting things like that as “examples”. Those could be Directors Cuts & deleted scenes that were not in the movies that were released. You could be exposing people to things they would have to go way out of their way to see.
I saw “American Hustle” and didn’t remember seeing her nude in that at all. I could have forgotten or maybe my wife covered my eyes.
Some of those clips on the side talked about “jailbait”. What the heck are you doing?!
I know NOTHING about this person or this movie or that site. I saw 5 seconds and closed the tab. That is a sleazy immoral women Erik. If you would be proud for that to be your daughter, I just don’t know what to say. 😦
LikeLike
I need a break 🙂 BBL.
LikeLike
Greg,
In light of you posting that stuff here I’m giving you a time-out to cool off.
I think you’re getting a little too concerned about “winning” at this point.
We’ll maybe try again tomorrow.
LikeLike
Oh for Pete’s sake Erik LOL!
You have my solemn word that there is no cooling off to do. I just need to eat HAHA! And take care of a couple things.
LikeLike
I did a Google search and it took 5 seconds (if that) to see what kind of woman you said you wanted your daughter to be. I saw literally nothing on the rest of the page. I don’t even know what site it was. (You can’t possible mean this.)
BBL. Or tomorrow is fine too. Here this is hysterical. It helps if you really know Catholic theology.
LikeLike
Wow, this thread picked up.
Greg, you mentioned that you used to watch these sorts of shows until a couple of years ago (I don’t recall exactly how you put it) – what is the story behind the about face and crusade against it now? What convinced you and what led up to that convincing? Do you still play video cames (purely a curiosity question)?
LikeLike
When Kenneth posted nude video it was when he was going to the dark side. Now that Greg has done it I’ve decided to take my leave, as I resolved to do when theological debate gets weird. We’ll see if others pick up the discussion. Thanks for your contributions up to that point, Greg.
LikeLike
Official Old Life warning to those tempted to go to the dark side:
LikeLike
Probably a wise move – think I’ll do the same.
On the lighter side, this thread has the makings of a great
actioncomedy movie: GREGORY TAKES ON HOLLYWOOD (virtually) staring the senior Arnold Schwarzenegger with a killer beard and Burgess Meredith as the costar. The dialogue could be lifted from this thread pretty easily. The trailer would start out: “He’s been playing video games and watching movies for years, now he’s done and he’s making sure you are too…one blog at a time” This has the makings of a modernized “Who’s on first”.LikeLike
“When Kenneth posted nude video it was when he was going to the dark side. Now that Greg has done it I’ve decided to take my leave, as I resolved to do when theological debate gets weird. We’ll see if others pick up the discussion. Thanks for your contributions up to that point, Greg.”
Now this really is a copout Erik. 😦 i watched the first few seconds, in which there was no actual nudity, and turned it off. Waddaya squeamish now? This is YOUR “Oscar caliber” girl. Remember? The woman that YOU named with admiration saying that you would be proud to have your own daughter emulate her. I just wanted to make clear the depths to which the great gods of art and entertainment are capable of seducing the post modern reformed church. http://tiribulus.net/pix/the-golden-idol.jpg (I made that myself 🙂 )
There’s nothing weird here. I’m forcing you to defend your stated convictions. Instead, when actually faced with them, you are running away. I say again. You’re better than this. Retreat is de factco concession though you will deny that. It IS.
Your options are as follows:
1. Stand by your statement that you would be proud to have your daughter have that woman’s career of immorality. That would confirm my original assessment of you a year ago when you made a statement about your wife that put on my knees in tears for both of you. (true story) That would rank in the top 5 somewhere for sure for non family related heartbreaks in the history of my life. You just cannot know how unspeakably grieving that would be to me.
2. Recant your statement that you would be proud to have your daughter have that woman’s career of immorality. To be even vaguely consistent, that would require a radical readjustment of what you would consider acceptable in your “entertainment”. Mine is the only actually consistent.position anyway. If it was sin to perform, then it is to consume. The way you can personally tell is if you could take your church see it if it were yourself or your family. That may expose THEIR very likely entertainment hypocrisy too. Observe.
Hey guys, Erik Charter invited the whole church to go watch his daughter perform in a movie like Amy Adams!!
WHAT? Erik’s daughter? Hold on now. I don’t know if that’s such a great idea.
Why not? How many other men’s daughter’s have we seen in these shows? Sons too. Isn’t Amy Adams somebody’s daughter?
Yeah…, but… I mean, Erik’s daughter? We know them….. (strained confused look)
No tool of the devil has produced such reliable consistent results for him. I say tool instead of weapon because he doesn’t actually have to attack with it. He just sets it in front of us and we do all the work. Now THAT’S entertainment. Oh how he must laugh. Watching, not just the world, over which he is already god, having “blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” No sir. He has THE CHURCH onboard now too!!!! Willing to pimp their daughter’s out on the altar of Hollywood. As long as they’re “Academy Award caliber” of course. Because THAT’S important!!! (say it ain’t so Erik 😦 )
3. You can attempt further tortured rationalization, continuing your abandonment of your claimed reformed roots, which you said yesterday you don’t (really) care about. You have to say that because you DO know what they would say, don’t you? All of em. But the great gods of art and entertainment are jealous indeed. They will not allow some dusty, long dead, legalistic puritan scholastics to steal their glory. Therefore until freed from their grasp, you simply MUST find a way to serve Yaweh AND Molech.
Don’t you dare mistake what I’m saying for hatred or even anger. (you guys really did over do that last time) YOU invited ME here. Here I am. I’m just talking. Like I thought you wanted me to. You are engaging in incredibly inconsistent practice here brother. This junk has it’s hooks in you deep. I refuse to believe that down inside you don’t know that. It does NOT have to be this way. I am telling you, if you ever do get loosed from this? (my fervent prayer) Only then you will see how it was strangling the life out of your walk and witness. There IS a such a thing as dangerous “pietism”. You guys use that though as a rationalization and justification for sin. An actually breathing Christian conscience and “pietism” are synonymous around here.
LikeLike
I honestly have no clue what this dark side thing is all about.
LikeLike
“I honestly have no clue what this dark side thing is all about,” said the bat.
A nude link, daughter references. Study up on your natural law.
LikeLike
Muddy Gravel
A nude link, daughter references. Study up on your natural law.
I must be especially dense today. I have no idea what this means either.
LikeLike
I’m told by one of my partners that even though it made my point, .linking that video was unwise. 😦 They may be right.
LikeLike
Greg, your partner is right. You may want to ask the OLTS moderator to delete the comment for you. Just an idea..
LikeLike
Greg,
And it didn’t even “make your point”. Both of those women have done & still do kids movies. For you to find the worst things they have done (in your opinion) and flaunt it is childish. I could say I like you and someone could find something bad that you had done and use it to tell me I’m nuts for liking you. Is that fair? People do both good and bad things. Adults understand this.
LikeLike
He has me blocked on the contact page. Or so it appears. They are always returned as undeliverable. Even though my messages are always nice. Dr. Hart, if you would be so kind. It is a 20 second operation. Could you please edit that link out of my message? I would me most appreciative. Thank you
This is what you said Erik:
“If my daughter was Jennifer Lawrence or Amy Adams, would I be proud of her? I would”
Would you?
LikeLike
Greg,
I would. We might discuss making better choices in some cases, but they are talented, hard working women.
I don’t just think the worst of people. I give them the benefit of the doubt.
Now we’re done talking about my daughters. If you can’t leave that alone, we’re done completely.
LikeLike
Greg or anyone, please give me the link to the comment and I’ll do it. Believe it or not, I don’t watch all the links.
LikeLike
Darryl, Greg,
Here to serve, as always:
https://oldlife.org/2015/02/neo-calvinist-reality-check/comment-page-14/#comment-308541
Prolly should delete the two links at that location.
I’m ducking out for a while. Really.
Go
sisterssixers.Peace.
LikeLike
ab, thanks.
LikeLike
Thank you Dr. Hart. I was not familiar with that site and made a mistake. I should have thought that call through more completely.
LikeLike