Categories
FV and NPP

An Open Letter to the Federal Vision

I’ve decided to post this here to formulate more clearly a thought that has been slowly developing over time given the controversy.

I readily admit that I have dear friends who are sympathetic to the Federal Vision and take great umbrage, at times, that I have criticized those who are most visible in the movement.

I was reading the comments on Dr. Clarks blog post here.

The consistent refrain from Pastor Wilson and others who defend him is this: Critics of the FV are slanderous. The FV believes in all the right Reformed stuff, we’re told. I have to admit that I become concerned that some might be guilty of mischaracterization. I wonder, after almost 5 years, why nobody can get it right!

Let’s all pretend, for the moment, that the Federal Vision is correct in their insistence that they are orthodox and Reformed. Let’s assume that all scrutiny suddenly disappears and all are found orthodox. Let’s go further and turn the tables for a bit and pretend that the FV is in the mainstream and it is the rest of us who are the true quasi-Reformed and we must defend our position.

Here’s the question: What do we believe that is out of accord with Reformed or Biblical orthodoxy?

Surely this whole debate isn’t about us all being the same and all you’re arguing for is the right to use different words to believe the same thing. You’re not simply arguing for the right to quit being misrepresented are you? You haven’t divided Church against Church and disrupted every Conservative Reformed denomination simply to have us agree that you are Reformed just like we are, are you? Surely you must be arguing AGAINST something that we believe in. I shudder to think that so much division has been caused over semantics and your unwillingness just to use the same terms as we.

Perhaps it would clarify what you are FOR by criticizing the rest of us and telling us what you are against. Please, please, somebody in the FV camp step forward and write an article that accurately describes what we quasi-Reformed believe and then critique it. I’m sure you would understand our sensitivity to being accurately represented after all.

I think if we could determine where you believe that we are unorthodox it might help us to understand what you’re for and why you believe this fight is worthy of so much disruption within the Body of Christ.

I’m a Glutton…but at least I’m not a Drunkard!

Prov 23:20-21

Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh: For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty:
and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.

I’ve been reflecting lately on the hypocrisy that many Evangelicals have toward alchohol consumption compared to overindulgence in eating. Manmade doctrine in many evangelical circles condemns any and all alchohol consumption while virtually ignoring or revelling in the sin of gluttony. The Scriptures link drunkenness and gluttony together as virtually identical sins.

What is sad about this issue is that those who preach complete abstinence are missing the whole point of the Scriptures concerning these things. They complete ignore Paul in Collosians 2:

20Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances,

21(Touch not; taste not; handle not;

22Which all are to perish with the using; ) after the commandments and doctrines of men?

They turn alchohol into something that ought not to be touched where the Scriptures would only condemn its wanton overindulgence.

At the same time, however, about 30-40% (or more) of the American Church are gluttons reflecting the general population. It’s virtually a maxim of Churches to say that “…we sure know how to eat in this Church….” I’ve heard that statement from Independents, Presbyterians, and Baptists – all from the pastors of the Churches.

Like most things these days, everything is turned on its head. The majority of “Evangelicals” get bent out of shape if man consumes alchohol in moderation (something that God has given to man to bless him) but then revel in a sin that God has equated with drunkeness.

The blindspot on this issue is simply baffling.

Categories
Theology

Theonomy: Three Questions Answered

Jacob asked the following:

Theonomy is concerned with three irreducible questions, which anti-theonomists cannot answer in an epistemologically satisfactory manner:

1) Which sins should civil magistrates punish?
2) What should those punishments be?
3) How does one justify the answers to the first two questions?

If we are left to govern ourselves by general revelation, then civil laws must be ultimately a matter of opinion, yet laws by their very nature are to reflect what ought to be. Moreover, apart from Scripture inductive inference cannot be justified. Therefore, apart from Scripture it would be baseless to infer that all persons are endowed by nature with the same moral code. Accordingly, it would be tyrannical to impose unjustifiable codes of conduct, let alone sanctions for violations of those codes, upon others who do not claim to share those same codes.

My answer:

1) Which sins should civil magistrates punish?
The sins that God gives them the authority to punish.

2) What should those punishments be?
Generally based on the rule of restitution. The Law gives case law to indicate that you replace that which you take in the offense.

3) How does one justify the answers to the first two questions?
The Bible.

OK, I answered the questions so here’s my “beef”.

I don’t have a problem discussing the general principle that the laws of the magistrate ought to reflect God’s Law. I think, theoretically, if a country wants to punish blasphemy with the death penalty that it is not unjust for them to do so. To be unjust, intrinsically, would point to some sort of justice that is extra-Scriptural and the idea is not extra-Scriptural that blasphemy could be punished by death. Even leaving aside the issue of whether the magistrate should do so, it seems to me at least, to be pointless to argue whether the Magistrate would be making an unjust law if it decided to enforce that idea.

Now, here is where I start to get off the bus because, while I agree with that basic principle, I don’t see the Church’s chief aim as being activism to ensure that the Magistrate is introducing those laws.

The problem I have with those of a theonomic bent (though I don’t have a huge problem with them) is that they seem to devote more time worrying about transforming the Magistrate than the Apostles did. It is an argument from silence and I’m unlikely to win any debates to persuade a theonomist from his path but the general trend of NT doctrine is clear enough to me to believe that it is NOT the Church’s principle focus.

In other words, if all a theonomist wants me to agree to is the idea that a Magistrate would not be unjust for creating a law that punishes blasphemy by stoning a man to death then I am not going to spend a long time arguing that God is offended at the idea that a Magistrate would punish someone for blaspheming Him. It’s all very theoretical to me of course. BUT, if the same man wants me to join him in a crusade to tell the Pastor that he’s not preaching cultural transformation enough and that the Church needs to spend more time leading the charge to storm the State Legislature and lobby for the creation of those laws then I would tell him to pound sand.

The Church’s mission is the preaching of the Word, the administration of the Sacraments, and Church Discipline. Ironically, the most rebellious people I’ve met in the latter category are theonomists who would not submit to Church Discipline even as they wanted pagans to submit to God’s Law.

I believe, however, that as a citizen I have the right to exercise my time and talents to reform Civic institutions. I also believe that Magistrates will be judged for creating and enforcing laws in disobedience to the Law of God written on their consciences and will also be judged for failing to write laws that God has ordained. But that is their responsibility to create and enforce the proper laws and it is not the Church’s job to spend all it’s time, moving away from it’s primary mission, to pick up the slack where the Magistrate is failing. I believe they have a prophetic role to the State and that the State is further condemned for not listening but that does not make it the Church’s mission to do the State’s job.

Categories
Sacraments

Infant Baptism: The Difference between Roman Catholicism and Reformed Theology

What’s the difference between the RC view and the Reformed view of infant baptism?

Peace,

jm

Much in every way! The Roman Catholic view sees baptism first as an act of Grace that occurs “by the working of the works”. That is, the Sacrament itself, infuses Grace and effectively places the child in a state of grace before God. The grace infused, however, is conditional. The grace can be overthrown and killed in the individual by sin.

The Reformed view is that baptism is ministerial. That is, the minister announces what God has promised in His Word concerning the Covenant inclusion of children and it initiates the child into the covenant community. While the sign and seal of Baptism are not separate from what they signify (real union with Christ) they are not identical. That is to say that we do not believe that the minister is actually conferring union with Christ on the child by the “working of the works” but is announcing the promise of God. That promise is that what Baptism signifies (union with Christ) is promised to the child when he places trust in the Gospel. It is the same thing for an adult in fact. As surely as you see the water signifiying the washing of the filth of the flesh, so are your sins washed away if you believe in the Gospel. It is a visible sign and seal of God’s promise to us that we can look to when the enemy is so oft telling us we are not worthy of such Grace.

In RC baptism, you get in by the Church’s ability to infuse God’s saving grace and you stay in by cooperating with that grace lest you kill it and your “grace meter” goes to a point where justifying grace is killed.

In Reformed baptism, the minister declares the promise of God and seals God’s promises to the recipient. Grace, through faith, saves from beginning to end.

I have a problem with the term presumptive regeneration because presumption carries a connotation that I do not believe parents should have. When I presume something, it means I can take it for granted and little is expected on my part. I know that’s a semantic issue but words have consequences. I also don’t like the idea of presuming regeneration simply because I don’t know the hidden counsel of God. I look at it this way: my chilren are Christians and I treat them like that. I don’t treat them like they’re tiny pagans in my household with no different status than my pagan neighbors before God. They are holy because they are in my Covenant household. This gracious God says to me: “I’m not just promising to save you but your children as well.” A glorious thing indeed that those most dear to me in this world, beside my wife, are not my spiritual enemies.

I pray with them like little Christians with a seminal faith – faith as small as a mustard seed (thank you Rev. Winzer). I know that God has promised to save them if they call upon His name just as He has promised to save me under the same Covenant promise. I do not question their election any more than I question mine for my business is God’s precepts and not His hidden decree.

And so, contrary to my Roman Catholic upbringing, when my children sin, I do not raise them to worry that they’re in danger of hellfire as they have just killed the infused grace within them and need to have the Church dispense more saving grace in Penance. Rather, I discipline them as one who believes their sin has been punished in Christ. I train them to ask their Heavenly Father for forgiveness that they have offended Him in their sin, and I teach them to thank Christ for the salvation of sins found only in Him for those that believe in Him.

The difference between Roman Catholic Baptism and Reformed Baptism (aka Christian) is the difference between the doctrine of demons and a visible sign and seal of God’s Grace to His elect.

Categories
Devotion

On Assurance of Salvation

I think I get all my ideas on things to post from the Puritanboard.  We were talking about forgiveness of sins this past week in Sunday School and this conversation brought to mind some reflections on the Gospel and our assurance of salvation.  A brother asked:

If one has trouble or find that one can not seem to forgive someone for a wrong can one really be assured of one’s own salvation? This question is just something that I have been wrestling with.

Have you ever questioned whether you are saved or not? After reading Jonathan Edwards “religious affections” One thought that came to mind is that, I wonder if I am really what I think that I am. If I am not a believer this is truly somekind of self-deception. I need some stuff on assurance. All I know is that Jesus came into my life back in 1993 and I have never been the same since.

This is a very simplistic statement that needs a lot of reflection behind it but the bottom line is that if we never struggled and were never weak then what need would there be of faith in Christ’s work?

Living with the accusation that Satan whispers in our ear every time we sin “You’re not really a Christian are you?” is hard enough. What makes things harder is the error that surrounds us in so many “Christian” circles where people are taught that you’ve not really repented of something unless you stop doing it.

I’m so thankful that God found me and rescued me to the Gospel for it exposed me to Christ’s sufficiency and caused me to stop leaning on my own strength. I had been a Roman Catholic in my childhood and then an Evangelical for years but never found peace. I tried to battle, I tried to wage war against the flesh and the world but I failed repeatedly in my strength and was beaten back. Who was going to deliver me from this body of death?!

But I know now that, ultimately, I’m fighting against a foe that has lost its mastery of me. I know that Christ’s strength will renew me. I hear the Gospel remind me that Christ did not die for me because I was worthy. I see the Sacraments speaking God’s promise of salvation and means of spiritual nourishment. I look back on my own baptism when I cannot believe that God would save me and remember that seemingly insane promise (according to the world) that God would save me simply by trusting in and believing in His Son.

And so I sin and I sin mightily and I want to retreat from God and re-double my efforts and promise Him, on my own strength, that I’m going to try harder. Maybe then, I reason in my denial of the Gospel, will God accept me.

But then He finds me with His Gospel yet again and says to me: “Do you believe?” and I cry out “Lord I believe, help thou my unbelief!” And in the simple trust of a son who loves and is grateful to His Father, I discover again the desire to please Him and the fountain of strength toward that end.

And so I find myself continuing in the fight, striving against sin, with fear and trembling, trusting that God is at work in me to will and do His good pleasure.

On the Consumption of Alchohol and Christian Liberty

I picked out one of the posts from the PuritanBoard to discuss an issue with respect to liberty. bfrank writes:

A few years ago I was sitting outside on a patio enjoying a pint with a buddy, having theological and personal discussions…there was absolutely no problem in my conscience or faith about the issue. I knew the Scriptures did not condemn alcohol, but drunkeness. One thing we both gleaned from the afternoon was that if Jesus Christ Himself walked into the place we would have no problem whatsoever. However, if some of the members from church walked in it would be a very uncomfortable situation. Of course this caused further study on my part so that I was certain I wasn't using my liberty for license and that I was on solid biblical ground. I had a friend who was meeting with a pastor friend. The pastor told him that drinking in any form should not be tolerated. He said that the Christian should avoid the appearance of evil, so as to not cause a weaker brother to stumble. He preceded to order a virgin strawberry daquiri. My friend began to scratch his head in disbelief…thinking, "Isn't this the appearance of "evil"? LOL

First, I want to correct the "pastor friend" in the story above. The "weaker brother" in Paul's Epistles is the Pastor! The weaker brother is the Christian who is overly scrupulous where God permits liberty of conscience. Jews who were still convicted, for instance, that they had to abstain from pork were "weaker brothers" and Paul is commanding the Gentile brethren not to give unnecessary offense to cause them to stumble.

NOW, here is the rub. I'm starting to think that I am probably too tolerant of what is not a "weaker brother" spirit with respect to things indifferent but a PHARASAICAL spirit with respect to things indifferent. I believe the response to the weaker brother ought to be done carefully and tenderly but the Pharisee ought to be withstood to his face as a Scriptural pattern.

Calvin's treatment of Christian liberty is quoted in part below and he does a great job of differentiating between a personal scruple and a human tradition that super-adds to the Scriptures that binds the consciences of men. Does the Southern Baptist Conventions' ruling that those who consume alchohol should be excluded from Church Office constitute something that Christians should condemn as Pharasaical?  Incidentally, the ruling says that a Southern Baptist is not even permitted to work at an establishment that serves alcoholic beverages.

More basically, however, what if a pastor is teaching this? Should we, like Paul did to Peter, withstand that spirit and, if so, how?  Pastors and Elders, after all, are not supposed to be those that are weak in the faith.  It is, frankly, a sad state of affairs that those who ought to be teachers of men (and are in such positions) need to be taught on the basic principles of the Gospel.  For make no mistake about it:  the issue of Christian Liberty stabs at the very heart of the Gospel and those who begin on the path of the Pharisee run the risk of losing far more than their Christian Liberty.

Without further ado, here is John Calvin from his treatment on Christian Liberty in the Instituties of the Christian Religion

11. I will here make some observations on offenses, what distinctions are to be made between them, what kind are to be avoided and what disregarded. This will afterwards enable us to determine what scope there is for our liberty among men. We are pleased with the common division into offense given and offense taken, since it has the plain sanction of Scripture, and not improperly expresses what is meant. If from unseasonable levity or wantonness, or rashness, you do any thing out of order or not in its own place, by which the weak or unskillful are offended, it may be said that offense has been given by you, since the ground of offense is owing to your fault. And in general, offense is said to be given in any matter where the person from whom it has proceeded is in fault. Offense is said to be taken when a thing otherwise done, not wickedly or unseasonably, is made an occasion of offense from malevolence or some sinister feeling. For here offense was not given, but sinister interpreters ceaselessly take offense. By the former kind, the weak only, by the latter, the ill-tempered and Pharisaical are offended. Wherefore, we shall call the one the offense of the weak, the other the offense of Pharisees, and we will so temper the use of our liberty as to make it yield to the ignorance of weak brethren, but not to the austerity of Pharisees. What is due to infirmity is fully shown by Paul in many passages. “Him that is weak in the faith receive ye.” Again, “Let us not judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumbling-block, or an occasion to fall, in his brother’s way;” and many others to the same effect in the same place, to which, instead of quoting them here, we refer the reader. The sum is, “We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let every one of us please his neighbor for his good to edification.” elsewhere he says, “Take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumbling-block to them that are weak.” Again “Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, that eat, asking no question for conscience sake.” “Conscience, I say, not thine own, but of the other.” Finally, “Give none offense, neither to the Jews nor to the Gentiles nor to the Church of God.” Also in another passage, “Brethren, ye have been called into liberty, only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.”46 455455 61 461 Rom. 14:1, 13; 16:1; 1 Cor. 8:9; 10:25, 29, 32; Gal. 5:13. Thus, indeed, it is: our liberty was not given us against our weak neighbors, whom charity enjoins us to serve in all things, but rather that, having peace with God in our minds, we should live peaceably among men. What value is to be set upon the offense of the Pharisees we learn from the words of our Lord, in which he says, “Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind,” (Mt. 15:14). The disciples had intimated that the Pharisees were offended at his words. He answers that they are to be let alone that their offense is not to be regarded.

12. The matter still remains uncertain, unless we understand who are the weak and who the Pharisees: for if this distinction is destroyed, I see not how, in regard to offenses, any liberty at all would remain without being constantly in the greatest danger. But Paul seems to me to have marked out most clearly, as well by example as by doctrine, how far our liberty, in the case of offense, is to be modified or maintained. When he adopts Timothy as his companion, he circumcises him: nothing can induce him to circumcise Titus (Acts 16:3; Gal. 2:3). The acts are different, but there is no difference in the purpose or intention; in circumcising Timothy, as he was free from all men, he made himself the servant of all: “Unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; to them that are without law, as without law (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ), that I might gain them that are without law. To the weak became I as weak that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some” (1 Cor. 9:20-22). We have here the proper modification of liberty, when in things indifferent it can be restrained with some advantage. What he had in view in firmly resisting the circumcision of Titus, he himself testifies when he thus writes: “But neither Titus, who was with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised: and that because of false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage: to whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour, that the truth of the gospel might continue with you,” (Gal. 2:3-5). We here see the necessity of vindicating our liberty when, by the unjust exactions of false apostles, it is brought into danger with weak consciences. In all cases we must study charity, and look to the edification of our neighbor. “All things are lawful for me,” says he, “but all things are not expedient; all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not. Let no man seek his own, but every man another’s wealth,” (1 Cor. 10:23, 24). There is nothing plainer than this rule, that we are to use our liberty if it tends to the edification of our neighbor, but if inexpedient for our neighbor, we are to abstain from it. There are some who pretend to imitate this prudence of Paul by abstinence from liberty, while there is nothing for which they less employ it than for purposes of charity. Consulting their own ease, they would have all mention of liberty buried, though it is not less for the interest of our neighbor to use liberty for their good and edification, than to modify it occasionally for their advantage. It is the part of a pious man to think, that the free power conceded to him in external things is to make him the readier in all offices of charity.

Categories
Book Reviews

Concluding Thoughts on R. L. Dabney: The Sensualistic Philosophy

from my blog

The philosophy of the nineteenth-century sensualists and positivists–particularly Comte, Hobbes, and Mill–assaulted God and science with the same club. Thus, in deconstructing the premises of this philosophical strain, Robert L. Dabney upheld the causes both of God and science.

Evolution theory is not simply unprovable and wrong. The theory attacked the foundations of Christianity: God creating Man in his own image, placing him at the head of an ordered Creation, with a foreknown Fall and Redemption, all for his glory.

Evolution theory turned man into a soulless beast. Its proponents claimed solid, observable facts which were neither. The theory offered nothing to account for man’s God-directed spirit; and so, it attempted to gainsay the existence of both man’s spirit and God. The theory enthusiastically embraced random forces in lieu of God’s infinite wisdom and personal nature.

Dabney refuted evolution theory’s adjunct, the evolution of civilizations, with historical examples. He denied that man progressed in development from savage to high civilization over time, but rather, that

“All the advancements made have been under the operation of moral causes: and these have always come by conquest, colonization, or in some other way, from some higher race without.” (R. L. Dabney: The Sensualistic Philosophy, Naphtali Press, 2003, p. 272.)

Dabney vehemently denied that the human mind is an organism, as evolutionists posit, but defended its structural unity as a “spiritual monad.” Dabney defended the human spirit as the center of consciousness against evolution theory’s relegation of consciousness to nerve bundles and organic processes. Evolution attributes the works of the mind to experience and environment; Dabney defended the mind as the efficient cause of perception. This is extremely important, because if the mind’s operations are subject to the vicissitudes of experience and environment, it can hardly be rational, reliable, or useful toward one’s advancement.

Hedonism is the logical outcome of evolution. If all perfecting of consciousness comes through experience, and pleasurable experience is the most adaptive and likely to be repeated, then clearly hedonism is most conducive to jumpstarting the species. However, this is not observed in nature, and thus is problematic for evolutionists.

No conflict exists between God and true science. “Nature implies the supernatural” is axiomatic to Dabney. God’s work manifests only absolute logic, reason, perfection, and virtue.

Evolution is a theory that denies God and proper science because it posits in their place unconscious forces spinning off randomly occurring organisms. These, in turn, compete for survival in randomly assigned environments in a somehow self-existent world in which virtue is relative because it is defined solely by experience. The only good news evolution really offers is that you have no immortal soul that must endure this travesty of fatalistic flukes forever.

Without God-given reason, man has no ethical worries. Brutes have little faculty or use for moral responsibility, merit, or rational motives above instinctive impulses. But the sensualists whose philosophy underlies evolution do assign man ethical and moral responsibility. Therefore, their own arguments fail for want of acceptable conclusions.

Dabney enumerates some of the products of man’s consciousness we’d be missing if we were brutes who’d made it through Evolution 101:

“The spiritual love of Christian mothers, the heavenly charity which delights to bless an enemy, the aspirations of faith for the lofty sanctity of the skies, and even the redeeming love and divine holiness of Jesus of Nazareth are generically but enlargements of animal appetites in apes!” (p. 284).

Further,
“The spirit which looked out through a Newton’s eye and read through the riddles of the phenomenal world the secrets of eternal truth and the glories of an infinite God, went out as utterly in everlasting night as the gleam in the eye of the owl or the bat which could only blink at the sunlight” (p. 284).

Evolution theory is maddening to a Christian. It affronts God; it denies his work and perfect intelligence, and it cancels man’s promised destiny of glorious liberty with him.

Nevertheless, Dabney counsels that we “be angry and sin not,” and refrain from “the gall of personal spite” (p. 248). Dabney does, however, raise his own indignation to a fair level, asserting, “Man’s soul is formed by its Maker not only to see moral truth, but to love it upon seeing it. It is an unnatural soul, a psychological monstrosity, which does not” (p. 249).

It is sad indeed that an evolutionist might apprehend little more of the Gospel than one of his elevated simian prototypes, or “anthropoid higher apes.” Dabney presaged our own postmodern era, one in which Godless philosophy would drag science down with it and declare Man the lucky winner in a battle of dexterous digits. Postmodern man is still searching the ravines for those transitional thumb bones.

Dr. Dabney ends this particular book without optimism.

Categories
Book Reviews

Further Reading in Dabney and Some Thoughts on Creation, Its Laws, and the Irrationality of Evolution

From my blog


Once more, quotations are taken from Robert L. Dabney: The Sensualistic Philosophy, Naphtali Press, 2003.

Robert L. Dabney’s philosophical observations of science are not stale; on the contrary, his observations are still crisp and refreshingly prescient after more than 125 years.

The permeation of scientific thought with Sensualistic philosophy displaced religion with Materialism; creation with force, motion, and chance; God with unknowable, impersonal forces; the soul with nerve bundles; and consciousness with organically advantageous neural impulses. As Dabney notes, we are compelled to look beyond science and philosophy to Biblical revelation “to learn that a man goeth upward and a beast downward” (p. 125).

“That a fortuitous conjunction of atoms should account for all the marvels of design in the universe, and that material mass should be endowed with consciousness, reason, and conscience, are difficulties common to this and all the other phases of this philosophy” (p. 128).

Anyone who studies modern science, or has children studying modern science, is exposed to the difficulty of which Dabney speaks.

Bad science shares eye space with celebrity affairs in grocery store aisles. It is inescapable but not irrefutable. Refutation requires background, and Dabney, a contemporary of Charles Darwin, provides background.

Noting the teleological arguments (we’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here) evolutionists use to refute Christianity, Dabney remarks that the evolutionist “requires us to go back, discarding all the acquisitions of human civilization in this department, and immerse ourselves in the stupidity of barbarism” (p. 147).

Further, he asserts:

“These speculations are to be deplored, in that they present to minds already degraded a pretext for materialism, sensuality, and godlessness. The doctrine can never prevail permanently among mankind. The self-respect, the conscience, and the consciousness of men will usually present a sufficient protest and refutation. The world will not permanently tolerate the libel and absurdity that this, wondrous creature, man, “˜so noble in reason, so infinite in faculties, in form and moving so express and admirable, in action so like an angel, in apprehension so like a God,’ [quoting from Shakespeare: Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2] is but the descendant, at long removes, of a mollusk or a tadpole” (p. 141).

I pray Dabney is not overly optimistic.

Evolution is based on compact records; its star theory is also its undoing. If lifeforms evolved to the fortunate fittest, where are the intermediates representing the unfit? Um…well, they haven’t exactly been discovered yet. Dabney published this book in 1875 and we’re still waiting for the fossils to vindicate the theories of their existence.

Evolution is a theory that has to fabricate missing links from whole cloth because its hypotheses are untestable and unsupported by evidence–and yet its conclusions remain on the books as facts. Perhaps this is why evolution theory has had to resort to the force of law in the courts: It has no recourse in the laws of science.

I happen to agree with Dabney, and not with some other Christians, in that I do not subscribe to the idea of “creation by law.” I believe in creation by fiat of the spoken Word of a particular Creator, the triune God who calls himself Jehovah in the Bible. I perceive the existence of laws as evident in creation, not causal of creation. I think this is more consistent with the Christian world view.

I see the existence of laws evident in, and not causal of creation, because I perceive a Who behind the act of creation, as opposed to a “how.” God created the heavens and the earth. The “how” God employed is given as: moving, speaking, dividing, making, creating, blessing, forming, breathing, and planting. None of these initial acts of creation originated in natural law. There was no natural law before there was a creation–there could be no such thing as preexistent laws waiting for something to act upon. Natural law originated in the template of God’s creation and is expressed in that creation. God is the First Cause and the Lawgiver. Creation by law implies secondary causes on which God was reliant. Creation is reliant; God is not.

The same God who created us and this world for us gave us the ability to know something of himself. By grace he gave to some more ability than others. This truth impelled Pharisees to pick up stones to hurl at Christ. It still does today.

Evolution is a pragmatic theory that violates the very carbon and silicon of pragmatism: It doesn’t work.

Categories
Book Reviews

Ayn Rand: The Failure of Mind as God

From my blog

Ayn Rand (1905-1982) was the great white hope of atheists determined to commandeer rationality. Her philosophy, “Objectivism,” was unique in its separation from the sensualists and its rejection of relativism. She did, nevertheless, hold man’s “own happiness as the moral purpose of his life,” and thus hearkens to John Stuart Mill.

Rand was influenced by Aristotle, Aquinas, and Nietzsche; from Aristotle she took the rational premise, “A is A.” She vehemently attacked every type of gnosticism and every form of empiricism, refuting the notion of what she called “the primacy of consciousness.” The primacy of consciousness is the cornerstone of postmodern thought: the notion that man’s conscious perception defines reality. Thus in this arena, Rand and Dabney were allies.

Unfortunately, Rand’s Objectivism is an atheistic system. While appearing rational in its propounding of an objective reality independent of consciousness, Objectivism also advocates that no divine consciousness underlies reality. Perception does not define reality, but neither is there a creator, nor a soul. The human mind is the moving force behind man’s potential, and man’s potential as a fully self-actuated individual is the only object of interest to the Objectivist. Nothing that came before is of any interest at all.

Rand rejected religion, as she did postmodern philosophy, as “evil” and “irrational.” She dismissed religion categorically as irrational because its premise is altruistic. Rand likened the alliance she perceived between church and state to “Attila and the Witch Doctor”–perhaps one of her more compelling insights.

The mind of man, according to Objectivism, is simply here, a priori, the most important thing in the universe, and not to be hindered. There is nothing higher and nothing more potentially rational. “Potentially” is the operative term here; Rand considered virtually everyone outside of her small coterie of followers to be irrational.

Rand was untroubled by any considerations of “where it all came from.” In an interview with Bill Moyers, Moyers asked Rand whether she was not impressed with all the things of creation around her. Her candid response: “Not really, no.” That which did not originate within her mind was unworthy of the further exercise of her mind.

Although Rand faulted Hobbes, her philosophy, as did his, held self-interest to be the bonding force of civilization. Self-interest was the greatest virtue in the Objectivist scheme, and altruism the greatest evil. She differed from Hobbes largely because of her “Benevolent Universe” world view. By what algorithm she reconciled benevolence with a contempt for altruism is unclear. As for the “why” behind the benevolent universe, she would not be accountable. It simply was. Self-existence implies self-existent properties.

Rand’s novels depict heroic humans with godlike brilliance of achievement; they are, in fact, creators. Titanic battles take place between creators and destroyers. Meekness was not the key to the Objectivist kingdom.

Rand, who emigrated from Bolshevik Russia, held strong anti-Communist convictions. The prevailing theme in her novels, as well her nonfiction, is the individual pitted against the collective. While rightly vilifying the unthinking and parasitic collective, Rand wrongly deified the mind. Sadly, she failed to apprehend atheism as the fatal essence of Communism.

Unfortunately, Rand’s scenarios are stage-set after a staunch Calvinist work ethic; but rather than accountability to God for one’s moral parameters, there is accountability only to the “rational self-interest” of her creator-heroes. Nor do her heroes lean toward a Calvinist chastity ethic. And they occasionally find it justifiable to kill someone who gets in their way.

An affair with her protégé undid Rand’s moral credibility, and with it, the credibility of Objectivism as a moral system sustained in self-will. Atheism lost a paragon in which to billet its cause.

Rand was right: Reality is objective. It is not subject to change according to men’s whims or perceptions. But Rand was wrong: Rational self-interest is unavailable to the perception of the natural man. The natural man’s self-interest cannot be rational because the natural man is not rational. He does not seek God because he believes he can live by his own reasoned righteousness. Man’s only true rational self-interest lies in his salvation from sin through belief in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Ultimately, Objectivism is a philosophy of self-will, self-interest, and self-undoing.

Ayn Rand was buried, at her own request, wearing her wedding ring, a photograph of her husband placed in her hands.

Categories
Devotion

“A Constellation of Graces”

From my blog


I am unsure why the idea of beauty embarrasses me, as though my thoughts are too defective to confess. Often it seems to me that my beauty receptors process input in blunt chunks.

Objects–dwellings, clothing, the stuff of life–engage me with their utility, and beauty somehow is optional. The miraculous intricacies of creation–animal, botanical, and mineral, of the earth, sea, and visible heavens–captivate me; nevertheless, I fear my appreciation is terribly analytical.

But that isn’t what distresses me. The huge and terrible question is: Do I find beauty in Christ? This is where diffidence grips and I fear I am casehardened.

Certainly I find beauty in his Word. But, “He is altogether lovely“ (SS 5:16) refers to a Person, not to a Word. But this Person is the Word…is the Word the sole repository of his beauty? Is seeing beauty in the Word sufficient to apprehend “the beauty of Christ,” the altogether loveliness? And, I can be analytical with the Word….

So in my distraction I turn to my therapist, Dr. John Owen, who died in 1683, but left a therapeutic legacy of systematic theology. Owen, always on deck with a lifeline, assures me that Christ is indeed beautiful, and his beauty is something I can begin to take in. His beauty is in his Word, because he is there. His beauty is his wisdom, his pondering the “hidden man of the heart;” it is his eminency, his strength, his faithfulness, and his stability. Dr. Owen wrote that prescription for me.

Owen writes more than 20 pages specifically on the subject of the beauty of Christ in Vol. II, Communion With God (Banner of Truth) pp. 56-78. The rest of this volume and much of his other work is also rife with the subject, if not as specifically. I am not given to typing exercises, but he lists 11 ways in which Christ is “lovely.” From Owen’s exposition on the beauty of Christ, I will here extract one crystalline sentence:

“There is light in him, and life in him, and power in him, and all consolation in him;–a constellation of graces, shining with glory and beauty.” (The Works of John Owen, Banner of Truth, Vol. II, p. 75)

That, I find beautiful.

I remain diffident about my blunt chunk approach. I am consoled that this has little to do with beauty in a way that I need to understand it.

To know something of the light and the life and the power and the consolation of Christ is to know something of his beauty.