Ministry Idolatry

Some great stuff from Driscoll here. Haven't watched the video but the 11 questions are really useful tools. Taylor adds links to some top-notch resources, particularly Powlison's article.

And if you want to pass this on but don't want people to be seduced into evangelical compromise, here's a helpful disclaimer you might use (adapt at your discretion):

The fact that this volume is being used as a text or reference in __________________ does not mean that __________________ endorses its contents from the standpoint of morals, philosophy, theology, or scientific hypothesis __________________ The position of __________________ on these subjects is well known. In order to standardize the work and validate the credits of __________________, it is sometimes necessary to use books whose contents __________________ cannot wholly endorse because no entirely satisfactory publication is available.

How the Gospel Shapes and Transforms Parenting

I'm just starting to dig into William Farley's Gospel-Powered Parenting, but it looks like a terrific tool to help us bring the gospel to bear in our families. Farley's point is one that evangelical Christians desperately need to recover: "The goal of Christian parenting is heart transformation" (43). Far too often, our goal is transferring morality. And moralism kills the gospel. I'll argue that this is a rebuke fundamentalist Christians need every bit as much as a wider spectrum of evangelicals.

Farley argues that parents can substitute many things for the gospel: techniques, therapy, and even . . . religion (50-51). In their place, he proposes seven ways the gospel affects parents (46-48). The gospel . . .

• Teaches Christian parents to fear God.


• Motivates parents to lead by example.


• Centers families in their male servant leaders.


• Teaches and motivates parents to discipline their children.


• Motivates parents to teach their children.


• Motivates parents to lavish their children with love and affection.


• Is the solution for inadequate parents.

Christianity Today Thinks Mark Driscoll Is a Fundamentalist

CT takes him to task—twice—for taking them to task over their Avatar review. (Video available at the links below.) Here, they think he's just sorta half-baked. But here, they damn him with the sort of accusations usually reserved for fundamentalists:

1) Misunderstand or Oversimplify What the Author is Saying; 2) Not Letting the Author’s Universe Exist on Its Own Terms; 3) Choose Combat Over Conversation; and 4) Failing to Find the Redeemable in the Movie.

Is There Divine Revelation in Historical Events?

I'm reading through an unpublished document that makes intriguing arguments about divine revelation in biblical narratives and the historical events behind those narratives. Here's a very small portion of a much larger discussion:

As the trained historian studies past events, he or she is able to piece together a larger picture of the events recorded in Scripture. By discovering missing pieces that expand the biblical picture, historians are able to better understand the events depicted in the biblical narratives.

So what do you think? True or false? Do we better understand the meaning of the narratives in the biblical text if we find out more historical details of those narratives from extra-biblical sources?

And whether you agree or disagree, is this something that you observe with some regularity in contemporary preaching?

Ryken : Wheaton = Mohler : Southern?

Christianity Today reports that Wheaton College has named Philip Ryken as its next president. Wheaton isn't now where Southern was in 1993, but many have noted signals it's on the same course. I can't imagine that a substantial course correction isn't on both Ryken and the board's agenda.

[Update below:]

A week ago Kevin Bauder wrote in his essay, "Conundrum":

Christian leadership is persuasion, but occasions for persuasion are far less common than one might assume. Most of a president’s life is taken up with administrative bustle. Even if he is also a teacher, he does not get to focus simply on the areas that most interest him. Overworked employees are understandably resistant to the suggestion that they might do extra reading or otherwise prepare for extra conversations. Constituencies are alert for any idea that seems unusual. Gatekeepers of churches and other institutions are watchful for any remark that might be construed as a criticism. I have about concluded that institutional presidency is the worst position from which to attempt to propagate ideas. Presidents have less freedom to say what they think, and they are granted less opportunity to say it, than almost anyone else.

A question and a comment, in light of Bauder's persepctive. Question: Can Ryken really effect change, or were pastoral ministry and a church pulpit a more productive platform? Comment: Once again, we ought to give thanks to God for how he's used Al Mohler to accomplish an unthinkable, astonishing transformation from SBTS 1993 to SBTS 2010.

On Premillennialists and Our Canards . . . Again

I didn't intend for this to be a series (here's the first post), but here's part two: I received a partial transcript of a sermon on Revelation 20 recently preached by a dispensational premillennialist pastor. In reference to those who don't read Revelation 20 as a literal 1000 year reign, he said . . .

You have to tamper with every hermeneutical principle that takes anything seriously related to any kind of timing and just sort of chuck that out. God probably isn’t serious. Do you really want to tamper with God’s references to time periods? The book of Revelation tells us that Heaven lasts forever; do you want to mess with that? God probably isn’t serious—that’s such a long time.

Now, for the record, there are other views. I don’t want to put you to sleep but let me give them to you: Amillennialism is the view that the church simply inherited the promises of the kingdom and Christ is simply ruling in our hearts and there will be no literal 1000 year reign. You take passages like Revelation 20 and say “That’s just a nice idea. It's spiritual, it’s some sort of metaphysical truth and um and these prophecies must be taken figuratively instead of literally.”

Enough of that view. The view that we're talking about is taking prophecies at face value and we believe that those prophecies of Christ’s first coming happened physically and literally. Why not prophecies of his second coming? You have to put your hands over your eyes, close up your ears in order to somehow discount it all.

Now, I agree in principle with the pastor's analogy between prophecies about the first and second coming. But I'm a bit surprised that he would overlook the obvious presence of imagery in prophetic books, particularly apocalyptic texts. So here are my questions for anyone out there who thinks his argument makes sense:

Surely you take all the prophetic imagery in Revelation literally, right? Surely not just the timing! You believe God is really serious, don't you? I mean, Jesus is a lamb with seven heads and seven horns wearing a sash and a long robe with a sword coming out of its mouth, right? Oh and this lamb is somehow a lion too. Maybe somebody can explain to me how that all works . . . literally. But obviously, if you don't want to tamper with time periods, you must not want to tamper with how God describes his own Son! Right? That's kind of a big deal, isn't it? God's serious about Jesus, isn't he?

Brothers and sisters, let's not pretend that one millennial view or one hermeneutic has the corner on "literalism." (And if it did, let's not pretend that would be a virtue.) And let's certainly not pretend that one approach has the corner on taking God seriously. I hope we all realize, by now, that's certainly not true.

Or do we need still more evidence of things not worth saving?

Remember Terry Schiavo?

The woman said to be in a persistent vegetative state who was starved to death by her husband after a lengthy legislative and legal battle?

What if she really wasn't "vegetative"?

An article just published in the New England Journal of Medicine by an international team of scientists raises grave questions about her and, ultimately, thousands of other patients. The Washington Post reports:

These patients, the images clearly indicated, were living silently in their bodies, their minds apparently active. One man could even flawlessly answer detailed yes-or-no questions about his life before his trauma by activating different parts of his brain.

Read the article here.

"They aren't actually 'pro-choice' so much as they are pro-abortion": A Pro-Choice Columnist on the Pro-Choice Movement

Here's a welcome piece by Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins on the Tim Tebow pro-life Super Bowl ad. Make no mistake—it's a pro-free speech piece, not a pro-life piece. But Jenkins' honesty is fresh and respectable—possibly even courageous. Here's the gist of her perspective:

I'm pro-choice, and Tebow clearly is not. But based on what I've heard in the past week, I'll take his side against the group-think, elitism and condescension of the "National Organization of Fewer and Fewer Women All The Time." For one thing, Tebow seems smarter than they do.

Tebow's 30-second ad hasn't even run yet, but it already has provoked "The National Organization for Women Who Only Think Like Us" to reveal something important about themselves: They aren't actually "pro-choice" so much as they are pro-abortion.

I'm encouraged to see Jenkins make the obvious argument that the Tebows do more to care for women than the organization that claims to represent them:

Pam Tebow and her son feel good enough about that choice to want to tell people about it. Only, NOW says they shouldn't be allowed to. Apparently NOW feels this commercial is an inappropriate message for America to see for 30 seconds, but women in bikini selling beer is the right one.

Jenkins also exposes the fear in the pro-choice movement:

If the pro-choice stance is so precarious that a story about someone who chose to carry a risky pregnancy to term undermines it, then CBS is not the problem.

Maybe protests, placards and marches have their place. Seems to me, though, that this sort of message may find more of a foothold in American culture.

The Central-Faith Merger: Two Thumbs Up, and a Question

Tuesday's Baptist Bulletin article sheds some real light on the news. It raises some interesting issues that seem worth talking about, and I'm curious to hear what people think.

First, Bauder thinks fundamentalism has too many seminaries:

Bauder says the initial conversations were motivated by a “push and a pull."

"The push comes from a multiplication of institutions in fundamentalism, a shrinking movement that cannot sustain all of its colleges and seminaries. By multiplying institutions, we have diluted our educational excellence,” Bauder says.

My interpretation (and I speak as a Maranatha alumnus): There is no compelling justification to start another conservative fundamentalist seminary, particularly when the movement is already bleeding out more and more guys to places like Southern.

By my count, there are at least ten seminaries serving conservative, non-KJVonly fundamentalism. Depending on how strictly you define "seminary" and "conservative fundamentalism," you might get even higher. I can't document their their combined full-time equivalent (FTE) enrollment, but I'd be utterly flabbergasted if it's more than 2,000. I'm guessing closer to 1,000, and that may be high.

By contrast, the SBC operates six seminaries with a combined FTE enrollment of 7,750. At least two, and perhaps as many as four of them by themselves are larger than all the conservative fundamentalist seminaries combined. That doesn't mean the SBC's getting it right, but it does display a stark contrast. The data reinforces Bauder's arguments that multiplication has unnecessarily diluted resources and faculty. Whether that long-standing trend reflects the Fundamentalist impulse to splinter, or merely the natural outgrowth of a movement that skews more to independence than cooperation, I'll leave to the historians to settle.

That leads to the second reason this merger looks like a good thing on the surface: It's reversing the Fundamentalist splinter impulse:

“We come out of slightly different milieus. Faith comes historically from the Regular Baptist movement, and Central comes from the very conservative wing of the Conservative Baptist movement. Over time, these two branches have grown much closer together,” Bauder says. “One of our goals in the merger is to bring closer together two constituencies that never should have been separated in the first place.”

James Maxwell agrees, saying, “We want to do all we can to preserve the heritage and constituencies of both groups.”

Other groups and constituencies never should have been separated in the first place either, but this is a start.

Now the question:

According to Bauder, “all of the big philosophical questions are out of the way,” but the two boards were continuing to discuss “the thorny questions that are the standard factors in any academic merger.” Bauder lists the matter of combining the two boards, selecting administrators, merging administrative functions, and hiring faculty.

This makes me wonder what the philosophical issues were. My sense is that Faith has historically held a quite rigid position on dispensationalism. Central has not, at least not to the same degree. Faith specifically affirms (PDF) traditional dispensationalism. At least from time to time, some faculty at Central have advocated some form of, well, non-traditional dispensationalism.

For all my arguments that churches have no justifiable grounds to exclude members over many millennial or tribulational views, I believe a seminary bears no such obligation to tolerate differences. But that doesn't make rigid unanimity prudent. I have no inside information whatsoever, but I wonder if diversity on dispensational views was one of the philosophical questions. Is it possible that even some variations under the already narrow umbrella of "premill, pretrib" might be excluded? I hope this merger doesn't dilute the educational experience of the students by imposing an artificial, unnecessary unanimity.

True, institutions must grapple with the parameters of their own identity and their target constituency. But students who don't hear thorough presentations of opposing views aren't equipped to refute them. And frankly, traditional dispensationalists haven't offered convincing explanations for all the biblical data. To be fair, maybe no one has, and that's all the more reason to draw the lines at least as broadly as Central has, historically.

Department of Redundancy Department

From SI today:

Editor’s note: D. A. Carson is Research Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, IL. and author of many articles and books. A few important recent volumes are Christ and Culture Revisited, Evangelicalism: What Is It and Is It Worth Keeping?, and Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus (RE: Lit). He does not claim to be a Fundamentalist.

;-)

For what it's worth, I agree wholeheartedly with said editor's endorsement in the comments of Carson's Exegetical Fallacies. Without question, it's one of the five books that have influenced me more than all others. If you disagreed with Chris Anderson, you probably haven't read it.