Archives for September 2007

CTV.ca | Multiple bodies found in Victoria, B.C. home: “Multiple bodies found in Victoria, B.C. home”

Not good. Just heard it on the news… Nobody we know, I don’t think, but certainly shocking for sleepy Victoria.

While readying myself to launch a new series in the book of Romans, I am taking a few weeks preaching some material from a book by Wayne Mack, A Homework Manual for Biblical Living, vol. 2. The outline is called “God’s way of Bringing Up Children”. I am essentially stealing the outline, filling it out and personalizing it, and broadening the application to making disciples of any age, including raising children.

The first message in this mini-series was entitled “Pass It On“, taking its theme from the word ‘paideia’ in Eph 6.4 and its text as Dt 6. In this message I focussed on the “How?” of making disciples by answering: by personal integrity in instruction. Dt 6 calls on the nation Israel to love the Lord with all their hearts, and then to instruct their children. Thus the application for discipleship is first of all to be a disciple yourself. Make God the center of your life. While doing so, instruct diligently [while walking, sitting, lying down and rising, i.e., as a natural outflow of every aspect of your life], with a wary eye cast on your surroundings and your attitude lest you stumble in your own discipleship, and to instruct patiently, as your sons come to you with many questions. To sum up this ‘how’ of discipleship, it means to instruct by personal spiritual integrity, by diligent public expression, and by purposeful preparation. [Come to think of it, that last sentence would have made a good outline. If you check my outline linked above, you will see that I was aiming for that outline, but didn’t quite express it that way.]

In our afternoon service, we celebrated our monthly communion service. I preached the second message in a new communion series (begun last month) from Leviticus. I didn’t post a link to last month’s message: An Acceptable Sacrifice, so there it is. This month, our message came from the same chapter, with the title: An Offering Made by Fire. I emphasized four ideas from the burnt offering with this message: Finding acceptance of offering and offeror [peace with God under God’s terms]; Propitiating God’s wrath with an offering of a ‘sweet savour’ [found in the complete destruction of the offering]; Atoning for the sins of the worshipper by the payment of a ransom; and Substituting the victim for the person of the worshipper, making fellowship with God possible.

There are many instructive ideas for our fellowship with God to be found in the Law. It is well worth study and contemplation. It can be very sobering, as we consider the full implications of bloody sacrifice.

Regards,
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

Human-animal embryo study wins approval | Science | The Guardian: “Plans to allow British scientists to create human-animal embryos are expected to be approved tomorrow by the government’s fertility regulator. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority published its long-awaited public consultation on the controversial research yesterday, revealing that a majority of people were ‘at ease’ with scientists creating the hybrid embryos.”

Since a majority is ‘at ease’ … we need seek no higher standard, eh?

I follow a blog by Michael A. G. Haykin. He is extremely Calvinistic, but seems to have a very good understanding of history. As such he is interesting to read.

Today he posts on the reasons for his move from the Toronto Baptist Seminary (where he has been Principal for the last four years) to Southern Seminary in Louisville. TBS is the school founded by T. T. Shields, housed in the Jarvis Street Baptist Church in Toronto. TBS would certainly have been in the fundamentalist orbit in the past, I don’t think one would consider it such today.

Dr. Haykin in his post offers these words as an assessment of the situation of orthodox Christianity in Canada, and I don’t think he has in view the positions of fundamentalists, but rather of the more conservative Baptists in Canada.

Historia Ecclesiastica: “Thinking of a move, as I have noted above, has not been easy. I love Ontario and I know, after twenty-five years of teaching in this province, the great need we have for solid theological education. In a word, the churches need a school that is deeply committed to orthodoxy, yet fully in touch with the culture. Not an easy thing to be.

“All too often, it is one or the other: conversant with the culture and out of step with Scriptural realities, or rooted in biblical orthodoxy but fighting old battles that most people no longer remember. As Luther is reported to have once said: if we are fighting and skirmishing where the enemy is not attacking, we are failing to truly fight the war.

“And more than ever I believe we need to be committed to networking and the need to labour alongside those who stand for the same core truths that we love. The absolute independency that some in this province prize is, in my opinion, the high road to impotency. To be sure, if we need to stand alone when others are caving in to theological error and the passing fads of theologia, then stand alone we must. Dare to be a Daniel, as we have long sung. But all too often this translates into a pettiness and a refusal to work with others unless they see utterly everything our way. Without sacrificing theological integrity we need to find essentially like-minded brothers and sisters and labour side by side.“

These sentiments seem to me to be something of what Bob Bixby calls ‘the emerging middle‘. There is this anxious desire for something of a less contentious, but still orthodox theological position. It is the viewpoint of the ‘young fundamentalist’.

The tension between being ‘deeply committed to orthodoxy, yet fully in touch with the culture’ is the evangelical proposition. This IS the issue between fundamentalism and evangelicalism in the 1950s and continues to be the issue today. The evangelical answer to the question is to stand on the ‘in touch with culture’ side of the divide and the fundamentalist answer is to stand on the ‘a pox on culture’ side of the divide.

Dr. Haykin rightly observes the dangers of both answers. On the one hand is to be so culturally ‘hip’ that truth, Christ, and Scripture are left by the wayside, with nods of appreciation and protestations of loyalty. On the other hand is the danger of a descent into another world, where petty personal issues become the crusades of the day.

There are Christians on both sides of the question who don’t fall into the traps their answers risk. I don’t think anyone would seriously question the doctrinal orthodoxy of the current crop of conservative evangelicals the young fundamentalists love so much. That would mean men like Mohler, Dever, MacArthur et al. At the same time, there are men who answer the dividing question with fundamentalist answers. Their orthodoxy is unquestioned, of course, and there is some concession by the young fundamentalist that these, at least, have not strayed into the realm total cultural irrelevancy or descended (too deeply) into petty divisions. In this category we would find names like Bauder and Doran, perhaps.

Those who advocate for the ’emerging middle’ seem to think that parties on both sides of this divide are changing and a new reality is emerging. I don’t see that happening at all. The divide remains. Those answering the question as evangelicals are committed to the evangelical answer to the question.

A change, nevertheless, is occurring. The change is among those wearing the fundamentalist label. Many among them (many of them young, hence the term) are changing their answer to the dividing question. The evangelicals remain evangelicals still. There is still a tendency to make some kinds of concessions to outsiders (more liberal Christians or even the world) in order to remain ‘in touch’ with culture.

You can find examples of these concessions in many evangelical commentaries. They make nuanced statements on some areas of orthodoxy to show that they ‘get it’ and are not so dogmatic as to insist, for example, that John wrote the gospel of John, or that it is possible that Moses’ mother was a woman of exceedingly advanced age before she had children. In discussing the ‘saints’ of this age, they are willing to concede that the works of unbelievers should be ‘admired on their own merits’, all the while criticising their false doctrine. [See this blog by Rick Phillips on Mother Teresa for an example.]

The emerging middle is not a middle. It is a change by those formerly associated with fundamentalism towards evangelicalism. In time, it will be simply that. Fundamentalism will be abandoned, evangelicalism embraced. Those heading in that direction expect fundamentalism to be shattered by these changes, I suspect.

For myself, I really am not all that interested in being ‘in touch with culture’. The culture of this world has nothing to offer in terms of spiritual value. I think we should understand culture in order to understand people, but we should be preaching against the corrosive influence of culture that deadens the soul to spiritual things and we should be calling people out of the culture of this age into a true discipleship of Jesus Christ.

May God grant us the wisdom to do just that.

Regards,
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3