You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December, 2008.
I was blessed to receive a few new books this Christmas season, and can’t wait to start some of these new reading projects.
Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism by Zacharias Ursinus. This book has been on my wish list for quite some time and I can’t wait to start it. Ursinus was the primary author of the Heidelberg Catechism. His commentary is one of the foremost literary fruits of the Protestant Reformation.
Predestination and Justification by Peter Martyr Vermigli. Vermigli’s two theological loci are thorough introductions to the Reformed consensus on both of these subjects.
Life, Letters, and Sermons of Peter Martyr Vermigli. This is a fascinating volume, particularly Vermigli’s letters to such 16th century giants like John Calvin, Theodore Beza, Heinrich Bullinger, Queen Elizabeth, John Hooper, Nicholas Ridley, and others.
Franics Schaeffer Trilogy: Escape from Reason, He Is There and Is Not Silent, and the God Who Is There. Three of Schaeffer’s most important works.
The Reformed Pastor: Lectures on Pastoral Theology by John Williamson Nevin. Nevin needs no introduction. I must say that this volume is much more consistently Reformed than another book with the same title. One of the best and most concise introductions to pastoral ministry that I’ve ever read. My advice? Put down Spurgeon, Lloyd Jones, and John MacArthur and pick up Nevin. Your theology will never be the same.
I recently came across this post in which Jason Stellman targets the youth group phenomena as fundamentally problematic using Horton’s new book as the starting point. The “generational narcissism” present within many modern evangelical churches is effectively creating a schismatic spirit of disunity through “youth group ministries.” Find me warrant in Scripture for the younger generations separated from the rest of the church and I’ll concede to the entire philosophy foundational to the project of youth ministry. The problem is that it’s simply not there. In fact the opposite philosophy of ministry is presented. We see an inter-generational discipleship model wherein the elderly teach the youth and the youth participate fully in the communion of the entire body. If true discipleship flourishes within this inter-generational context, then it might be wise to conclude that genuine discipleship will wane when generations are lumped together and the unity of the local church is broken. Youth ministry has the potential to be an agent of anti-catholicism and disunity, the very thing that Christ so earnestly prayed against in John 17.
I just finished this explosive book and couldn’t recommend it more! In 138 pages, Schaeffer tackles a number of issues, calling for the supremacy of Christ over all spheres of life, including politics and society. Schaeffer condemns the kind of dualistic spirituality plaguing modern evangelicalism with its roots in neo-platonism. It must be eradicated if Biblical reconstruction be witnessed in our day. This entails an attack upon secular humanism and the willingness to lose everything for the crown rights of Jesus. Schaeffer isn’t a theonomist. In fact, he condemns theocracy as illegitimate on this side of redemptive history. Yet Schaeffer continually insists that apart from the law of God as the objective norm upon which the civil magistrate is built, freedom will vanish and tyranny will rise.
“From his characterizing the godly as delighting in the law of the Lord, we may learn that forced or servile obedience is not at all acceptable to God, and that those only are worthy students of the law who come to it with a cheerful mind, and are so delighted with its instructions, as to account nothing more desirable or delicious than to make progress therein. From this love of the law proceeds constant meditation upon it, which the prophet mentions in the last clause of the verse; for all who are truly actuated by love to the law must feel pleasure in the diligent study of it.”
-John Calvin, Commentary on Psalm 1
“We must understand that the question of the dignity of human life is not something on the periphery of Judeo-Christian thinking, but almost in the center of it (though not the center itself because the center is the existence of God himself). But the dignity of human life is unbreakably linked to the existence of the personal-infinite God who has made men and women in His own image that they have a unique dignity of life as human beings. Human life then is filled with dignity, and the state and humanistically oriented law have no right and no authority to take human life arbitrarily in the way that it is being taken.
We must see then that indeed the cry has not been given. We must see that here, on such a central issue as abortion, the true nature of the problem was not understood: Christians failed to see that abortion was really a symptom of the much larger problem and not just one bit and piece. And beyond this as the material-energy-chance humanistic world view takes over increasingly in our country, the view concerning the intrinsic value of human life will grow less and less, and the concept of compassion for which the country is in some sense known will be further gone.
A girl who has been working with the Somalian refugees has just been in our home and told us their story and shown us their pictures. One million- and especially little children- in agony, pain, and suffering! Can we help but cry? But forget it! In the United States we now kill by painful methods one and a half times that many each year by abortion. In Somalia it is war. But we kill in cold blood. The compassion our country has been known somewhat for is being undermined. And it is not only the babies who are being killed; it is humanness which the humanist world view is beating to death.”
-Francis Shaeffer, Christian Manifesto
Must have missed this a few weeks ago. Witty, honest, and definitely bold. Kevin Johnson did a great job this year in his turkey awards.
Here are some brief observations I’ve noted in my study of Gordon Clark. Some aspects of his thinking overlap with Van Til, while others reflect a decidedly different epistemological and apologetic approach. These are in no way intended to be systematic. I’m only trying to solidify my understanding of Clark’s approach.
And for the record, I’m not a Clarkian. As of now, my loyalties lie with Van Til, make no mistake about it. This is true especially concerning the controversy between Clark and Van Til over God’s incomprehensibility. I’m a firm believer in the archetypal/ectypal distinction, and the inability of mankind to in any way know God as God knows himself.
1. Most un-believing assaults upon the nature, validity, and ultimate truth of Christianity will appeal to what the system believes to be logically demonstrative evidences immune from bias, first principles, or pre-suppositions. This is a fundamental epistemological fallacy in that every system of thinking assumes what Clark terms “first axioms” which will affect the entire approach of the system. First principles must be established, recognized, and evaluated by the Christian apologist before engaging with unbelieving systems of thought.
2. Clark critiques the evidentialist/Thomistic approach to epistemology as fundamentally flawed. First, evidentialism attempts to seize a philosophically neutral ground with the unbelieving critic, assuming that his system is immune from first principles and assuming that the unbeliever possesses the ability to reason consistently with reality. The evidentialist also relies upon empiricism as a legitimate means in which to deduce truth about God from nature. Clark is a unyielding critic of empiricism. He recognizes that empiricism possesses no built in system of interpretation. Consequently, it is impossible to reason from nature to God apart from special revelation via a proper understanding of Scripture made possible through regeneration and effectual calling. Clark singles out Aquinas’ cosmological argument as one example of the empiricist error. It is logically fallacious to reason from a finite world to some kind of infinite and unchanging causation. The law of non-contradiction excludes Thomas’ argument from even being possible. If every effect has a preceding cause and every cause is moved by the preceding effect, then one must reason infinitely back to an eternal series of cause and effect relationships. The cosmological argument also fails to in any way prove the existence of the Judeo-Christian God. The best it can do is attempt to prove something, be it Allah, Zeus, Jesus, etc. etc.
3. What’s left? Is Clark a mere skeptic? Clark sees the need for a dogmatic/pre-suppositional apologetic which is rooted in the self-attesting Christ of Scripture. This dogmatism is merely Calvinism applied to the field of apologetics. It realizes that empiricism is not a reliable means of pursuing truth, that man’s reason has been so affected by the fall as to exclude the possibility of a philosophically neutral starting point, and that Scripture is the only reliable, stable, and true source of divine knowledge or true reality. When engaging the unbelieving skeptic, Scripture must not only be assumed, but used to tear down all forms of unbelief by appealing to its logical inconsistency in light of God’s revelation. Logic is central in the thinking of Clark. No one can reason rightly apart from establishing and pre-supposing the truth of Scripture. Yet once Scripture is established as the first axiom, logic is used, not to verify or prove any particular system, but to falsify the non-believing position in light of its internal inconsistency. Part and parcel of this logic is the law of non-contradiction which Clark seems to view as the most effective logical tool of the Christian apologist.
To review, Clarkian pre-suppositionalism emphasizes…
-The reality of first principles or pre-suppositions in every system of thought.
-The epistemological illegitimacy of empiricism.
-The epistemological illegitimacy of evidentialism and Thomism.
-The epistemological illegitimacy of irrationalism.
-The necessity of a dogmatic and pre-suppositonal epistemology.
-The ability to reason rightly after first principles are established. Particularly the centrality of logic since God himself is, in some sense, the embodiment of logic itself. Very controversial, very Clarkian.
-The law of non-contradiction.
-The rationality, consistency, and reliability of Scripture.
-A rejection of historical proofs or evidences to prove the existence of God as bad epistemology.
-The nature of divine revelation as the only stable foundation contra evidentialism and Thomism.
-Anti-Thomistic, with particular attention given to the fallacy of the cosmological argument and its counter-productive conclusions.
I would reccomend this book if only for Horton’s wonderful essay. It’s an interaction between Leonard Sweet (one of the original architects of the Emergent Church), Andy Crouch, Michael Horton, Frederica Matthews Green (an Eastern Orthodox scholar), Brian McLaren, and Erwin McManus. All of the authors interact with each other in their particular essays. Horton’s essay is entitled Better Homes and Gardens. It’s very rich and worthy of thoughtful consideration. Here is one of my favorite excerpts in which Horton responds to the flippancy with which Emergents use the term “Postmodernism.”
“In fact, the debate between ‘modern’ and ‘post-modern’ worldviews is in many respects the ongoing debate between conceptual realists and idealists. It was Kant, not Derrida or Rorty, who introduced the modern world to the view that the ‘world’ conforms to the knower’s conceptual categories rather than vice versa. There is just too much of the modern in the post-modern to be able to speak in sweeping terms of a major paradigm shift in culture. As Peter Berger and John Milbank have shown, much of the social theory that has underwritten both modern and post-modern thought is motivated by deeply theological factors- namely, the attack on God and on discourse that is grounded in his existence and sovereignty.”
-Michael Horton, The Church in Emerging Culture: Five Perspectives
I’ve been trying to post some helpful quotes on the efficacy of the sacraments in an attempt to emphasize the importance of Reformation sacramentology and the error of strict memorialism. For the Calvinist Reformers, as is clear from chapter 21 of the Scots Confession, memorialism is false dogma and a rejection of apostolic and patristic thinking. In the case of baptism, memorialists can’t consistently embrace the entirety of the Nicene Creed and thus find themselves in a very akward position theologically and historically. For baptismal memorialists, there exists no “one baptism for the remission of sins.” Here Zanchi masterfully explains the centrality of the sacraments, their efficacy, and their relationship to the mortification of sin and the life of holiness.
Therefore we believe that these sacramental signs be not simple marks which only do sever us from other people that are not of the true church, or mere tokens unto us of our Christian society, or whereby we should profess our faith openly and give thanks to God for our redemption–but that they are the instruments by which (while the actions and benefits of Christ are represented unto us) they are called to our remembrance, His promises are sealed, and our faith stirred up, the Holy Ghost also doth ingraft us to Christ and doth keep us being ingrafted, and makes us daily to grow up more and more into one with Him; and that being endowed with a greater faith towards God, and earnester [more earnest] love towards our neighbor, and a mortification of ourselves, we might lead a life even like (so far as might be) to the life of Christ, in spiritual joy and gladness, till the time when we shall live with Him in heaven most holily and blessedly forever.
-Jerome Zanchi, Confession of the Christian Religion, On the Sacraments
