fundamentalism by blunt instrument
I have mentioned my friend Scott Dean before. I’d like to encourage you to read some news about the Lord’s work in his ministry recently.
It all began with a prayer request last week, then three posts on God’s answer to those prayers:
Praise the Lord for this good news!
A pair of interesting articles showed up recently in the Scientist magazine web-site (free registration required). The two articles speak to the need for education in the history and philosophy of science. The arguments presented (and the biases revealed) make for interesting reading.
The first article is What makes science “science”? By James Williams, subtitled ‘Trainee teachers don’t have a clue, and most scientists probably don’t either. That’s bad news.’
The second article is Why the philosophy of science matters By Richard Gallagher, ‘The central tenets of science enhance communication and our influence on society’.
Here are some concerns Williams highlights in his article:
As a science educator, I train science graduates to become science teachers. Over the past two years I’ve surveyed their understanding of key terminology and my findings reveal a serious problem. Graduates, from a range of science disciplines and from a variety of universities in Britain and around the world, have a poor grasp of the meaning of simple terms and are unable to provide appropriate definitions of key scientific terminology. So how can these hopeful young trainees possibly teach science to children so that they become scientifically literate? How will school-kids learn to distinguish the questions and problems that science can answer from those that science cannot and, more importantly, the difference between science and pseudoscience?
What kind of ignorance is Williams talking about?
The results show a lack of understanding of what scientific theories and laws are. And the nature of a ‘fact’ in science was not commonly understood … Some of the graduates implicitly or explicitly equated theories with hypotheses
Gallagher makes this observation concerning Williams’ findings:
Williams’ findings demand a thorough assessment of what’s being taught to science students. If, as seems likely, university science departments are churning out technically sophisticated but intellectually stunted drones that don’t understand the underpinnings of science, then urgent reforms to the curriculum are required because such people aren’t really scientists at all.
Those students who go on to grad school will presumably be exposed to aspects of the philosophy of science, if only through engaging in research. But this is not so for the group that Williams is working with, trainee teachers.
He goes on to say this:
Williams’ calls for a core course in the history and philosophy of science to be taught to all science undergraduates strikes a chord. I’d add that a further course on the philosophy of biology should be required of students in the life and medical sciences.
And calls scientists to “get back to our guiding philosophy”.
Why are they so concerned? Well consider these lines from each man:
Today we were blessed with our annual Thanksgiving Day dinner and service. Pastor Rick Coursen of 1st Baptist Church of Sedro Woolley. WA was our guest and speaker.
Pastor Coursen’s message took us through Psalm 103, giving us reasons as the Lord’s people to give thanks for the many benefits, especially spiritual benefits, that we have through faith in Christ.
We thank the Lord for a good day among God’s people.
Our message today sums up the case against the moral man – God will judge all men, pagans and moralists, on the day when God judges the secrets of men by Jesus Christ. The whole argument of Rm 2.1-16 comes to completion in this reference to this black day. The darkness of the day makes the gospel stand in sharp relief, like a sparkling diamond laid out against the background of a flat black cloth. Paul says that this whole concept is ‘according to my gospel’. So against the backdrop of the Day of Judgement, against the backdrop of the judgement of secrets, against the backdrop of the flaming eyes of the risen Christ judging the sins of mankind… against all this is laid the gospel of salvation by faith in the finished work of Christ.
In this session, Christian meets up with Faithful who becomes his companion for a part of the way to the Celestial City. Faithful recounts his experience till the point he meets Christian and although they travelled the same way, their experiences differed. In this we see that though there is one way, one destination, one faith, and one Christ, the means by which the Lord brings about our spiritual growth differs with each one. The temptations and trials Faithful experienced are different, but the grace of God in overcoming them is the same.
As they go, the two pilgrims encounter one Talkative, a man who has much to say about religion, but no corresponding testimony. He is an illustration of many a vain boaster who finds Christianity very interesting, except when it comes to actually living out the Christian faith.
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We had a number of visitors today with a total attendance of 57, so praise the Lord. Now if some of the visitors would come back!!
The Lord blessed in the services today, with good responses from several people.
You may wonder why no third service today. The reason is that tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day in Canada, so we will be having our annual Thanksgiving Dinner and Service. Our good friend, Pastor Rick Coursen of First Baptist Church of Sedro Woolley, Washington, will be our guest speaker tomorrow. We will have the audio up sometime tomorrow afternoon.
I am working ahead of our people on Pilgrim’s Progress and just ran across a passage concerning Mr. By-Ends, a man who uses religion for his own advantage.
Mr. By-Ends proposes a question to his friends:
Suppose a man, a minister, or a tradesman, etc., should have an advantage [have a chance, an opportunity] lie before him to get the good blessings of this life, yet so as that he can by no means come by them, except, in appearance at least, he becomes extraordinary zealous in some points of religion that he meddled not with before; may he not use this means [religion] to attain his end, and yet be a right honest man?
Mr. By-Ends friends are Mr. Hold-the-world, Mr. Money-love, and Mr. Save-all. Mr. Money-love assays to answer this question:
I mentioned earlier that I am listening to Kevin Bauder’s sessions at International Baptist College. I still recommend them to you in order to understand Bauder’s thinking. As I listen, I find myself mostly in agreement with his exegesis, but I do have significant differences with him on several non-exegetical points. I’ll talk more about that later.
Tonight, I’d like to comment on a point Bauder makes several times in the lectures, but doesn’t appear to elaborate on. (I am almost finished with lecture 8 of 10 lectures.)
Are we (Fundamentalists) immune from the entrance of savage wolves (Ac 20.29) or the rise of men from our own selves, speaking perverse things (Ac 20.30)?
I am listening to Kevin Bauder’s series of lectures at International Baptist College in Tempe, AZ. His whole presentation is exhaustive (and perhaps exhausting!). Some will strenuously disagree with his ecclesiology [though I do not]. Regardless of your views on that topic, his presentation is worth listening to. I have not yet made it to the end, but if you want to understand how Bauder himself arrives at his conclusions, his presentation is well worth your careful attention.
I have no comments or critiques as yet on his work here since I haven’t made it completely through to the end. I may make some comments later, I am sure I will have an opinion!
But a comment in the seventh lecture in the series got me thinking about the questions with which I commence this post.
In our message today, we look again at Rm 2.13, a passage that is much misinterpreted by the false teachers of the “New Perspective on Paul”. In this message, we briefly summarize these false teachings and point out the subtlety that unstable Christians may miss in the teachings of these or any false teacher. One goal of local church ministry is to stablish the saints so that they might be better equipped to notice when teaching goes subtly awry.
This week we had a brief review of a couple of points from last week’s lesson and began to look at Christian’s progress through two valleys. The first involves his encounter with Apollyon, where Christian wins the day by virtue of his humility and use of the Word of God. The second is the Valley of the Shadow of Death where Christian must navigate between the ditch of false doctrine and the quag of cloying and defeating temptations.
Our Communion service brings us back to Leviticus where we consider the death of Nadab and Abihu, Aaron’s eldest sons, on the first day of Aaron’s priesthood. The shocking death of these two priests, for what appears to be a minor deviation, illustrates God’s exacting standard for worship. This standard is not reduced in the New Testament, but heightened – no longer external and ritualistic, the standard is now internal and spiritual, a standard that requires more than we can possibly perform and calls, in the end, for the grace of Our Lord to save us.
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It was good to be back in the pulpit again this Sunday. We enjoyed a good day worshipping the Lord, one visiting couple from Montreal, our first visitors ever from that city, I think.
I got three hits on my blog today from a discussion forum called “Spurgeon Underground“.
One of them is from Anniston, Alabama, who viewed, according to Sitemeter, my main page, my about page, and then went over to my church site. This visitor spent 3:31 on oxgoad.
Another, briefer visit was from Mobile, Alabama, just a quick hit and gone.
The first visit was from the UK, 1:56, with an “out-click” on my link to the Pulpit Magazine article concerning Piper, Driscoll, and harsh language.
This group is a private forum for members only. From their about page:
The Spurgeon Underground Fellowship is a small group of like-minded, committed Christians who strongly hold to the doctrine of sola scriptura. We believe that the Bible is our sole authority for all doctrine and practice. We do not reject biblical commentaries and other writings by committed believers, but we hold them accountable to the “whole counsel of God” as found in the Scriptures. Because we believe in the doctrine of salvation as taught by the Scripture, we are also strongly committed to what is commonly called the Doctrines of Grace or Reformed Theology.
This group was created for fellowship, prayer, and interaction for those who hold these doctrines. These doctrines are not politically correct, nor are they readily accepted in the majority of the Christian churches in our day. This fellowship is a haven in the midst of a stormy sea. As such, membership is by invitation only and only extended to like-minded, like-spirited men. If you would like to know more about the fellowship, you can read our fellowship guildelines posted below in Adobe Acrobat format. You may also email the Forum Administrator.
What gives with this? Why the secrecy, fellows? How does clandestine spirituality promote the body of Christ?
And why the mis-spelling of “guidelines”? It occurs twice on the about page, both in the comment above and in the link to the “guildelines” document. Is this just an accident or is it somehow a subliminal play on the word “guild”?
Count me mystified.
UPDATE: One of the members of this group enlightens me in the comments. I meant my comments to be taken lightly after a rather tense week, so I hope our brethren who are involved in this group aren’t offended. I wish them all well in their various ministries. By the way, you might want to check out their group blog, linked in the comments below.
Now that the dust has settled a bit, what shall we say?
First, I think that Chris was rightly offended at the category tag I put on my earlier post. He was right, I was wrong. The tag has been removed.
But what about the substance of my complaint? Chris dismisses my complaint and thinks I should take down my post since he was merely offering a citation, nothing more.
A citation?
ci·ta·tion
(s?-t?’sh?n) Pronunciation Key
n.
- The act of citing.
- A quoting of an authoritative source for substantiation.
- A source so cited; a quotation.
[citation. Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/citation (accessed: October 03, 2008).]
This is the headline of the post in question:
Driscoll on the Emergent Church
By Chris on Mark Driscoll
Prominently displayed is a picture of Driscoll himself (apparently while ‘preaching’.)
There are a few other citations in the post, it is true. But what is the post about? It’s about Driscoll. He is the centrepiece and his mp3 is the main point of the post.
Side Note: There is an attitude among some who wear the label ‘fundamentalist’ that seems to think it ‘cool’ to show how cutting edge they are by talking up and quasi endorsing men who are not fundamentalists. It’s real cool when you can promote someone like a Driscoll and yet say you still hold your fundie bona fides. Am I right or wrong, my readers, to say that such an attitude exists?
Now, in my mind, what Chris did with his post was more than citation, it was promotion. My perceptions are admittedly affected by Driscoll’s most recent outrage, but I have been repeatedly asking (and no one has really been answering) if the Christian church should do anything but shun Driscoll for his blasphemous talk?
The outrage in our little circle has been directed instead at me, for expressing my dismay at what seems to me to be promotion, not just citation. I have argued with Chris in the past concerning his support and promotion of conservative evangelicals. I have a great deal of misgivings about what Chris says and does in that respect, but Driscoll is (and has been) far further afield than a conservative evangelical. Am I right in saying Chris’ post is promotion not citation? (I realize opinions will differ here.) Am I right in thinking that it is at best highly questionable if not completely inappropriate to promote Driscoll in any way? Or in this way?
Now then, what should we do? Chris wants me to take down my post, and I still find his strongly objectionable.
These posts are probably all archived by now on Google, I am sure. But if Chris is willing to take down his (both of them), I will take down mine (both of them). That would mean, of course, dear readers, that all your immortal comments would be lost. Can you live with that?
The latest audio from the GBCvic
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