Two Protestant Pictures

"The legacy of Protestant orthodoxy has been surgically altered to fit modern standards of pleasantness and light. If the spirit of Puritanism was best represented graphically by a preacher in an elevated pulpit, the arm raised in vigorous punctuation upon the truth of God, that of modern evangelicalism is probably best represented today by the ubiquitous happy face, a bright smile beckoning smiles in return." - David Wells, God in the Wasteland

Secular Predominance in Education: Who's to blame?

"Are we to blame educators for the predominance of secular outlooks and attitudes in the university, or ought we rather to blame ourselves for fostering an anti-intellectualism that took us out of leadership in that arena in the first place?" - Kim Riddlebarger

Hirelings Who Desire A Bigger Audience

How many church leaders are like Micah's priest? Hirelings who allow those they serve to be pillaged in order that they may have a larger audience.

"Is it better for you to be priest to the house of one man, or the priest to a tribe and clan in Israel? And the priest's heart was glad." - Judges 18:19-21

Guard your hearts men of God.

Doug

Rooted in Truth 1: An Introduction to Systematic Theology

Here is the first Rooted in Truth class. This is the introduction to the class and covers what systematic theology is and why it is important in the life of the believer.

God Bless,

Doug

Rooted in Truth: Lecture 1 - MP3

The first Rooted in Truth (Systematic Theology) class is now available on line.

Rooted in Truth: Prolegomena

All future lectures will be available at this link also.

God Bless,

Doug

Opium and Preaching

For years opium has been popular because it gives people a false sense of peace and stupefies them to any legitimate fears, which seems to be the same method used to gain popularity by many modern preachers.

Doug

C.S. Lewis on the King James Bible and Modern Translations

Here is an interesting perspective on the King James Bible and the need for modern translations by C.S. Lewis. This was originally published as an introduction to J.B. Phillips book, Letters to Young Churches: A Translation of the New Testament Epistles.

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It is possible that the reader who opens this volume on the counter of a bookshop may ask himself why we need a new translation of any part of the Bible, and, if of any, why of the Epistles. ‘Do we not already possess’, it may be said, ‘in the Authorised Version the most beautiful rendering which any language can boast?’ Some people whom I have met go further and feel that a modern translation is not only unnecessary but even offensive. They cannot bear to see the time-honoured words altered; it seems to them irreverent.

There are several answers to such people. In the first place the kind of objection which they feel to a new translation is very like the objection which was once felt to any English translation at all. Dozens of sincerely pious people in the sixteenth century shuddered at the idea of turning the time-honoured Latin of the Vulgate into our common and (as they thought) ‘barbarous’ English. A sacred truth seemed to them to have lost its sanctity when it was stripped of the polysyllabic Latin, long heard at Mass and at Hours, and put into ‘language such as men do use’ — language steeped in all the commonplace associations of the nursery, the inn, the stable, and the street. The answer then was the same as the answer now.

The only kind of sanctity which Scripture can lose (or, at least, New Testament scripture) by being modernized is an accidental kind which it never had for its writers or its earliest readers. The New Testament in the original Greek is not a work of literary art: it is not written in a solemn, ecclesiastical language, it is written in the sort of Greek which was spoken over the Eastern Mediterranean after Greek had become an international language and therefore lost its real beauty and subtlety. In it we see Greek used by people who have no real feeling for Greek words because Greek words are not the words they spoke when they were children. It is sort of ‘basic’ Greek; a language without roots in the soil, a utilitarian, commercial and administrative language.

Does this shock us? It ought not to, except as the Incarnation itself ought to shock us. The same divine humility which decreed that God should become a baby at a peasant-woman’s breast, and later an arrested field preacher in the hands of the Roman police, decreed also that He should be preached in a vulgar, prosaic and unliterary language. If you can stomach the one, you can stomach the other. The Incarnation is in that sense, an incurably irreverent doctrine: Christianity, in that sense, an incurably irreverent religion. When we expect that it should have come before the World in all the beauty that we now feel in the Authorised Version we are as wide of the mark as the Jews were in expecting that the Messiah would come as a great earthly King. The real sanctity, the real beauty and sublimity of the New Testament (as of Christ’s life) are of a different sort: miles deeper or further in.

In the second place, the Authorised Version has ceased to be a good (that is, a clear) translation. It is no longer modern English: the meanings of words have changed. The same antique glamour which has made it (in the superficial sense) so ‘beautiful’, so ’sacred’, so ‘comforting’, and so ‘inspiring’, has also made it in many place unintelligible. Thus where St Paul says ‘I know nothing against myself,’ it translates ‘I know nothing by myself.’ That was a good translation (though even then rather old-fashioned) in the sixteenth century: to the modern reader it means either nothing, or something quite different from what St Paul said. The truth is that if we are to have translation at all we must have periodical re-translation. There is no such thing as translating a book into another language once for all, for a language is a changing thing. If your son is to have clothes it is no good buying him a suit once for all: he will grow out of it and have to be re-clothed.

And finally, though it may seem a sour paradox — we must sometimes get away from the Authorised Version, if for no other reason, simply because it is so beautiful and so solemn. Beauty exalts, but beauty so lulls. Early associations endear but they also confuse. Through that beautiful solemnity the transporting or horrifying realities of which the Book tells may come to us blunted and disarmed and we may only sigh with tranquil veneration when we ought to be burning with shame or struck dumb with terror or carried out of ourselves by ravishing hopes and adorations. Does the word ’scourged’ really come home to us like ‘flogged’? Does ‘mocked him’ sting like ‘jeered at him’?

We ought therefore to welcome all new translations (when they are made by sound scholars) and most certainly those who are approaching the Bible for the first time will be wise not to begin with the Authorised Version — except perhaps for the historical books of the Old Testament where its anachronisms suit the saga-like material well enough. … It would have saved me a great deal of labour if this book had come into my hands when I first seriously began to try to discover what Christianity was.

-C.S. Lewis-

Deceived to Believe the Truth

If we use an argument that we know is fallacious simply because we know most people will not catch the fallacy and it will move them closer to the truth, we are being deceptive.

Doug

On Pitting Paul Against Jesus - C.S. Lewis

“In the earlier history of every rebellion there is a stage at which you do not yet attack the King in person. You say, ‘The King is all right. It is his Ministers who are wrong. They misrepresent him and corrupt all his plans –which, I’m sure, are good plans if only the Ministers would let them take effect.’ And the first victory consists in beheading a few Ministers: only at a later stage do you go on and behead the King himself. In the same way, the nineteenth-century attack on St. Paul was really only a stage in the revolt against Christ. Men were not ready in large numbers to attack Christ Himself. They made the normal first move—that of attacking one of His principal ministers. Everything they disliked in Christianity was therefore attributed to St. Paul. It was unfortunate that their case could not impress anyone who had really read the Gospels and the epistles with attention: but apparently few people had, and so the first victory was won. St. Paul was impeached and banished and the world went on to the next step—the attack on the King Himself.”

-C.S. Lewis-

Glenn Beck, Mormonism, and Christians

It seems that there is a crucial distinction that needs to be made when it comes to Glenn Beck, his Mormonism, and his cause which many evangelical Christians are supporting. Based on what can be seen online so far, this distinction seems to be rising to the surface but has not yet been clearly defined. This distinction is between Beck’s promotion of conservative ideals (many of which seem to be Biblical), and the Gospel and his understanding of God. The first distinction is that there are many things on which evangelical Christians and Mormons can agree. For example, we can agree on the importance of family, the sanctity of life, the institution of marriage, and many other ideals which are clearly grounded in the Word of God. It is upon these very issues, and many others, that we can unite to combat the erosion that is taking place to the foundational principles upon which this nation was built. And this is a crucial fight since these are the very principles that were established in the constitution to combat tyranny and oppression. As we peruse the internet, is seems that one flaw is that many Christians are blind to this aspect of the commands of scripture. We are to free the oppressed and safeguard others so they will not be oppressed in the future. Another flaw is that others seem to see it as our sole calling. In other words they seems to equate Christianity with doing those things, and as long as you do them you are a Christian regardless of who you think Jesus was and what he accomplished while he was on this earth.

This leads us to the second distinction that needs to be made, and that involves the Gospel and the commands of scripture surrounding it. We must have the discernment to realize that Beck’s understanding of God and the Gospel is contrary to the truth of God’s word. First, his understanding of God is that the godhead entails a god the father and god the mother. These two began to produce spirit children, two of whom were Jesus and Lucifer. In the Mormon view Jesus is a created being and not the eternal God. Second, their understanding of the Gospel is that what Jesus accomplished on the cross is not center of our hope. In the Mormon view, what Jesus accomplished on the cross will only get people to the first level of heaven, which is still often equated with damnation. To them, the Gospel entails all the works you can do to get to the third level of heaven in order to become a god over your own universe. This of course is a seriously false Gospel. Now one of the main arguments made by some who argue that we should support Beck is that the Scriptures command us to stand for righteousness, and to neglect this is to neglect many commands of scripture. On this every Christian should wholeheartedly agree, but we are also commanded to stand against false teaching and false Gospels. To argue, like some have, that Beck is lifting up the name of Jesus, or that he is crying out so that the rocks will not have to, also seems to neglect crucial commands of Scripture. Beck is neither lifting up the true Jesus, nor is he fulfilling the words of Scripture when it says, if you do not praise him, these rocks will cry out.

In conclusion, there are many areas where we can agree and unite, and, as some have suggested, maybe even praise God that he has raised up a man to promote those truths (for the Lord often uses the unregenerate to accomplish his purposes), and Christians need to understand this and not throw the baby out with the bathwater. It also seems important to keep in mind that Beck’s primary work has very little, if anything, to do with the Gospel. On the other hand we must also not be so blindsided with the things we can agree upon, that we neglect our due diligence to the commands of scripture in other areas. We must be discerning and, with the same emphasis as Scripture, emphasize the importance of the purity of the Gospel. And even though Beck’s primary work has little to do with preaching the Mormon gospel, the minute he invokes the name of Jesus, or uses the word “God,” we must be aware that he means something very specific by these terms. To believe that anyone can interpret those terms any way they want and that authorial intent does not matter, is imbibing in the very postmodern thought that is driving much of the secular liberalism which they are trying to combat. And worse, they are saying that the authorial intent (God’s meaning) of scripture doesn’t really matter either, as long as it helps us meet some pragmatic end.

Doug

Why are the "Coexist" Folks Always Telling Me I'm Wrong?

Why are the "Coexist" folks always telling me I'm wrong in believing in the exclusivity of Christianity? Why won't they "coexist" with me? Oh... that's right; they believe their understanding of religion is the only correct one and that everyone who disagrees needs to be converted.

Doug

Social Justice and the Nature of Man

Social justice seems to be something that everyone should be working toward, but why is there often differences of opinion between conservatives and liberals on the topic?

Fundamentalistic Anti-Fundamentalists

When someone throws out the term fundamentalist in a pejorative sense without providing an answer to a logical argument, they are guilty of participating in the very aspects of the term they are attempting to condemn, because calling someone a name in hopes that their argument will go away is a closed minded attempt to disparage someone into submission.

Doug

Are Atheists Free Thinkers?

Atheists often argue that they are free thinkers, but is this acutally the case?

Doug

Why Pop Culture Often Lacks Virtue - Ken Myers

"Popular culture is unimaginable without mass-media, which is in turn unimaginable without advertising, which would not survive in a cultural climate that places a premium on modesty, chastity, frugality, simplicity, and contentment. So those virtues will necessarily be alien to popular culture, even if the people wanted them there."

-Ken Myers-

More Conservative than Scripture (Video)

Being more conservative than Scripture is no more praiseworthy than being more liberal than Scripture.

Doug

Empty Deceit and "Christian" Self-help

To the atheist, the conscience is the end product of a long line of evolutionary and social conditioning, so when it bothers them they are not really guilty of anything. As James Sire puts it, they are really only guilty of guilt. This is why we live in a culture of therapy. The goal is to rid ourselves of the feeling of guilt instead of the guilt itself. Unfortunately, we see this being translated into many churches as sin and the cross of Christ are ignored and replaced with a "Christian" self-help regimen. So even under the name of Jesus, empty deceit can hold sway.

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

-Colossians 2:8-

Doug Eaton

Christianity, The Church, and Government

Why is it that many Christians who decry Christian political involvement (read Tony Campolo types) because power and politics are tools of Satan, then go on to argue for government solutions to global warming and health care? Do they really want Satan and his tools cooling our plannet and running our health care? Perhaps a more balanced approach is needed.

Should Christians be involved in government? Isn’t Christ our hope not politics? Is any influence of Christian thought on the state a violation of the separation of church and state? In this episode of Apologetics.com radio, Dean, Donald McConnell of Trinity Law School, Doug Eaton, and Lane Chaplin discuss several questions that pertain to the Christian’s role in government and the governments role in Christianity.

http://www.apologetics.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=385:christianity-the-church-and-government&catid=43:kkla-995-fm-los-angeles&Itemid=74

This show can also be downloaded for free as a podcast in itunes. Simply search for apologetics.com in the itunes store.

Charles Finney and the Heresy of American Pelagianism (White Horse Inn)

Boredom, Self-Denial, and the Christian Life

As a Christian are you bored? There should be some things that bore you, but are you bored by the right things?

God Bless,

Doug