Theology Archives
Heresy
The fact that good Christians disagree on various doctrinal issues is a reality that every Christian must eventually come to grips with. There are, of course, easy ways out. For example, no one is going to heaven except those with my particular beliefs. This idea usually crops up in only the most insular churches and [...]Marriage As Sacrament: Did Protestants Call It Wrong?
he strength of the Protestant reformation was the axe it applied to contemporary Catholic doctrine. One of the many categories to get the axe was the sacraments. Catholics had a nice round list of seven, several of which are nowhere spoken of in the Bible. But one in particular got thrown out perhaps too hastily, one whose consequences are now coming to bear in the modern American political scene: marriage…God, Authority, and Authoritarianism
Ni Dieu Ni Maître – “Neither God Nor Master” – is a trendy slogan among anarchists. The idea is that the self is the final authority, that it has an obligation to submit itself to no authority, religious or political. There indeed seems to be a sentiment that religious devotion is incompatible with liberty. Submission to the state, the logic goes, is only a small step to a mind accustomed to submission to God. Is it such a small step, though, as if the authority of God were essentially the same as the authority of men but on a grander scale?…Occam’s Razor and God
Occam’s razor is often cited as an evidence against the existence of God. The argument goes that if we can explain the universe without resorting to notions of God, then it is preferable to do so. Whether or not Occam’s razor actually applies in this situation, this argument obviously has its appeal: why argue for the existence of something that we don’t need to explain what we see? Yet the appeal of this argument in itself belies its very unsuitability for this question, and in fact demonstrates just the opposite point…The Will of God for My Life: The Importance of the Doctrine of Sovereignty
With graduation fast approaching, the question gets asked very often: What is God’s will for my life? Life is full of uncertainty about the future, and that’s generally the context of the question. What college do I go to? What job do I take? Whom do I marry? Where do I move? The circumstances are endless, but the question remains the same.The Church’s Bane and the End of Postmodernism
The American Evangelical church has been for years defending itself against postmodernism. Buzzwords like “absolute truth” abound, especially where it tries to make inroads into more intellectual environments. Perhaps postmodernism was once poised to make claims of the sort that there is absolutely no absolute truth. Certainly this is both harmful and false. But such a philosophy, as the church often points out, is flatly contrary to reason – so contrary, in fact, that almost no one outside of philosophy departments would accept it in such a strong form anymore. It is plainly obvious to people that there are certain external truths about the world…Christian and “Family Friendly”
Somewhere along the way, American Christianity became affected of the idea of family friendliness. Perhaps the rise of the Family Research Council in the 1980s and James Dobson’s Focus on the Family radio programs were influential in this regard; perhaps they were merely symptomatic. Perhaps Christians were en masse enchanted by the idea; perhaps there [...]Why the Lapsarian Debate is Irrelevant
First, this is not a disputation as to whether decrees can precede one another. Even lacking a temporal order, a logical order may be necessary. The relevant question is in terms of means versus ends: were humans created for the sake of salvation and reprobation, or were salvation and reprobation created for the sake of humans?…Proximity and Likeness: In What Sense is God the Good for All Men?
C.S. Lewis in the above passage from The Four Loves draws a contrast between proximity to God and likeness to God. And when we say that nearness to God is the Good for all men, it is important to keep in mind in which sense we mean that.The Just Society
Two and a half years ago, Saving The Church Part II set off a systematic decoupling of faith and politics. This is my attempt at reintegration. There is in the Bible a distinction between morality and justice: Morality is rightness before God; justice is rightness before other men. To a certain degree they are not separate: justice is attendant to morality. Loving God with all your heart, soul, and mind entails that we will love our neighbors as ourselves. Yet justice can exist on its own:…Nature, Axioms, and Sanctification
Let us first define ‘nature’ as our active axiom – that is, the ultimate good towards which we strive in acting. There are then two types of nature: -Absolute Referent: The unconditional striving towards the good of something external. -Relative Referent: The striving towards the good of the self. The relative referent is the defining [...]The Trinity Revisited: On Coequality
“Coexistent, coequal, coeternal.” These are the three adjectives typically used to describe the persons of the trinity. The Athanasian creed has given Christianity a fear complex when describing the trinity: it is the creed that deals most explicitly with the idea of the trinity, but also the only ecumenical creed with explicit anathemas. Thus, the trinity, like few other concepts in Christianity, is considered “untouchable” – a sacred cow of the Church…The Balance
The balance concept of works is one of the most bedeviling concepts in pop religion. The idea goes, if I do more good things than bad things, God will accept me. Unfortunately, even Christians all too often buy into the balance model. Not so crude a balance model as exists in pop religion – we take James 2:10 to mean that even one act of sin outweighs all the good works in the world. This is passably true on the surface, but it is still fundamentally a balance model…
Godliness and Godlikeness
We often think of the Christian life as becoming progressively more like God – in character, if not in substance. Though this is true in some respects, it is not an appropriate description of the whole of sanctification. Indeed, through the process we are to become less like God in certain respects, for naturally we [...]Objection Answered
For a time the question of culpability in predestination was one which I had a sense of the right answer, but for the life of me could not articulate coherently: the Romans 9 “God’s God. He can do whatever He wants” is true in every sense, but also hollow – why would God be glorified [...]The Law as Values
People from the time the law was given have looked at it as a series of categorical imperatives – things that one must abide by no matter what and regardless of the reason. It becomes more about the action itself than the spirit behind it. It was exactly this thinking that led Jesus to rebuke the Pharisees for adhering to the letter of the law while completely missing its spirit (Mark 2:23-28)…Rest and Teleology
Though the expenditure of energy prevents it, physical teleology tends towards a state of rest (diffusion, the second law of thermodynamics). Though the addition of new information prevents it, economic teleology is always tending towards a final state of rest (equilibrium) with regard to prices (Mises, Human Action, Chapter 14.5). Though borrowing, language contact, and [...]The Ends of Faith
Throughout the history of the Church, there have been countless movements that alternately rise and quickly wither, or completely reform the Church. Names like Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards stick out as giants and innovators among the faith, while there are countless other people that perhaps conform better to modern sensibilities as they are, but are obscured by the passage of time (for example, no one regards Pelagius anymore, even though Pelagianism – the discounting of total depravity – has been silently recreeping into pop theology for over a century)…Trinity and Tritheism
I’ve said before that the term “Trinity” is itself a rather unhelpful term in describing God without further explanation. Though the doctrine fully expounded is entirely correct (there, I don’t want anyone accusing me of being a modalist now), the term taken as it is in mainstream Christianity can – and does – lead to misconstructions of the nature of God…Objective or Subjective Value?
The foundation of liberal (in the classical sense) thought is freedom, for the purpose of the maximization of the happiness of man. Unfortunately happiness isn’t exactly a cut and dry concept. Libertarians of the Subjectivist school (Mises and his followers) believe happiness is maximized when man is free to do as he pleases: value, something’s [...]The Value of Life
Value is not intrinsic, it is not in things. It is within us; it is the way in which man reacts to the conditions of his environment. -Mises, Human Action, Chapter 3 This statement was in regard to goods and services: the subjective theory of value breathed new life into classical economics – that goods [...]In What Sense does God Act?
What is human action? According to Mises, it is the use of means to attain ends (Mises, Human Action). One acts towards these ends in order to gain utility, or to somehow improve one’s lot, however that looks for the particular person. This unfortunately runs into problems with the idea of the almighty, as Mises [...]Is God the Author of Sin?
Let it first be understood that this is a completely different, but not unrelated question from “Does God sin?”. To answer either question, we first need to define our terms. Sin is the valuation or desire for something less than good. To sin against another person is to have something less than their best interest in mind. Thus, if God is that highest good, sin in its most general form is to value anything more highly than God. This is what Jesus meant when He described Himself as the fulfillment of the law (Matthew 5:17): the law is an approximation, love is the form. The law is 3.14, love is ?. The law is a riemann sum, love is an integral. The law is a series of commands that approximate how the regenerate person acts, where love is what actually produces it in fullest form…
The Necessity of Depravity
Idly scouring the internet as I sometimes do, I came across an article entitled 50 NES Quotes You Should Know. I’m no gamer and have no emotional connection to the games of olde like most in gamer culture, but I (correctly) assumed most of the quotes would be funny, and was also keen on being able to make references to old school video games besides “Do a barrel roll!” and “Abort/Retry/Fail?”. And while the article was a success in that regard, the main revelation was gleaned from an offhand comment beneath the fourth page of the article:
Christianity says that people are inherently good and that deep down we all want to do the right thing. Video games prove the opposite is true…
Thankfulness
With Thanksgiving fast approaching, I think it would be a good idea to take a look at thankfulness. What should we be thankful for? Are there things we should not be thankful for? In previous articles I’ve insinuated that material prosperity is not necessarily a blessing. Should we nevertheless be thankful for it?
Note that the first and last beatitudes are for those without any claim to prosperity. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 5:2), and “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:10). These are blessings which preclude the rich (one would assume that the persecuted generally forfeit their wealth). Obviously there is a special blessing for the poor, but is that a complement to a blessing of wealth, or is wealth not a blessing at all?…
The Nature of Christ
The description of the Trinity in the Athanasian Creed was frustrating for me for a long time. What does it mean to say that there is one God with three Persons? It’s all well and good to say “eternally begotten”, but it’s almost a senseless phrase. In fact, the whole creed is full of concepts that make very little sense on their own: without explanation, it’s a very unhelpful way to think about the Trinity.
Fortunately, there is explanation…
Thoughts on the Attributes of God
Creation is such that God is the ultimate good for it. Good is thus absolute with respect to creation as we know it. But is it absolute with respect to God? That is, could God create something such that God Himself is not its ultimate good?…
The Pre-Existent Will of God
I’ve referenced John Piper’s proof of a selfish God a lot in the past few articles, and once again it is the starting point of this one. This is posited as the motive of God working through history in the redemption of mankind, that His mercy and justice may simultaneously be exemplified.
But does this mean that God is bound by higher notions of ‘glory’ and ‘good’? It would certainly seem so if we are to apply the self-interest model of free will to God. We are bound in our behavior by our knowledge, our values, and our interests. Obviously God has infinite knowledge and thus entirely correct values, but does God have interests? Being omnipotent, can He ever improve His lot?…
Blessing
As Christians, we have faith that “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). As straightforward as this seems, the concept of good itself is more problematic than it ought to be: what is good in the first place, and what does Paul mean by good here?
I cannot count how many times I’ve heard prayers thanking God for placing us in a country where we are free to worship Him. It’s a favorite theme of Patriotic Evangelicalism…
Beauty
The phrase “The beauty of the Lord” is thrown around a lot in Christian circles, especially in song. It’s a wonderful thing to sing about, but what is the beauty of the Lord? How can it be appreciated when there is nothing of Him for us to see but His creation?
For a long time I had no idea what it meant to marvel at the beauty of the Lord. I had not even but the vaguest idea of what beauty really meant. In retrospect, my first glimpse was the testimony of a missionary who had been working with Campus Crusade at various universities. He recounted the story of a grad student he met one day, who told him though she was not a Christian, she knew “there must be a God, because…
Standing in Solomon’s Shoes
The Dream of Solomon, by Luca Giordano The concepts behind the recent article What Is Free Will? may seem pretty out there – they are very abstract at points, and it’s easy to question the value of plumbing to such depths. But the framework also has intensely practical benefits for the believer who is open [...]The Origin of Sin
The goal of this article is to apply the ideas behind What Is Free Will? to the theme of A Humble or a Haughty Spirit. Having read both of these will be helpful in reading this article, as I justify in those articles some of the assumptions that I will take for granted in this [...]What Is Free Will? (Or, Does the Nominal Believer Really Believe?)
The question of free will is whether, and in what sense, rational agents exercise control over their actions and decisions. -Wikipedia, Free Will Rational agents, by definition, act based on what they know and believe in order to maximize their expected total enjoyment(/pleasure/utility/etc.). Though intuitively it would seem that not everyone is rational, the definitions [...]From Whence Religious Truth?
With Postmodernism in full swing, it almost seems as if new religions are springing up faster than new followers can be made. Especially hot on the market is custom religion – tailored from an eclectic mix to fit your own needs and desires; something deep enough to make you look sophisticated (“spiritual but not religious”), [...]A Humble or a Haughty Spirit?
I was out driving the other day with the radio turned to a Christian radio station, when a song lyric jumped out at me: Because you would rather die / Than to ever live without me. Lines like this have never sat well with me, but I always attributed my discomfort to a question of [...]Patriotism in the Church
It must be taught that patriotic loyalty must not be identified with Christianity. -Francis Schaeffer, The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century In America and throughout the world, it is not at all uncommon to find that nation’s flag flown prominently in the churches. In certain “conservative” circles especially in America, faith and [...]Unfounded Prejudice against the Bible
For all the apologetics and reasonability Christians strive for, it seems that message is being heard less and less. Easily debunkable arguments are increasingly circulating among even America’s intellectual elite (I can’t speak for universities elsewhere, but I imagine the situation is similar if not worse) as irrefutable fact and signs of self-sophistication. The use [...]On the Rapture and the Second Coming
The teaching of the Rapture as happening prior to the Tribulation at the end of time is now a remarkably well-accepted doctrine among mainline Evangelicals for having arisen only in the last two centuries, largely stemming from the ecstatic visions of a 15-year-old Scotch-Irish girl in 1830 and the writings of Hal Lindsey, a self-proclaimed [...]Abortion And The Church
Abortion is unique among the “social” political issues in that a strong argument can be made against it without appealing to any particular religion. But the traditional tactics of the Christian Right in fighting Abortion – often ignoring this advantage and long reeking of the liberation theology that Pope Benedict recently condemned – suddenly seem [...]Saving The Church Part II, or, A Case For Libertarianism
For all the talk by and about the “Christian Right” as a political force in modern America, one should be inevitably drawn to question their very premise: Should Christians intentionally affect worldly governments, and what would be the ultimate goal of their action? This article is the conclusion in specific terms of Saving The Church, [...]The Church in the Postmodern Era
There seems to be a general feeling in some levels of theological Academia (or at least those represented by the Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine) that the postmodern era has allowed the church to relax against some of the heresies of the enlightenment engendered by its singularly rational mindset – that a postmodern culture is [...]Saving The Church
Religion today is not transforming people; rather it is being transformed by the people. It is not raising the moral level of society; it is descending to society’s own level, and congratulating itself that it has scored a victory because society is smilingly accepting its surrender. -A.W. Tozer It’s said that those who don’t know [...]