Johnny Mac on Pragmatism

Great article by Johnny Mac here about the whole "hey, if it works" attitude that's very prominent in the American/European church today.

PTRC: Social Action and Dispensationalism

What with how so many within and without the ECM are jettisoning the doctrine of the Blessed Hope and placing eschatology on the shelf as de facto "disposable doctrine" in favor of a social gosp-- er, I mean, "social justice"... ahem... I found this article regarding social involvement within a dispensational framework to be very interesting.

Yes, yes, I know. Tommy Ice is the devil. Blah blah blah.

Read the article. It's spot-on.

---

This is another great one.

Paskewich tribute to Falwell

Quickly, because period 2 has started - with the Wings up 2-0 3-0!!!

Great homage to Dr. Jerry Falwell here by Joe Paskewich.

Go read it.

Okay, back to the hunt for Lord Stanley's Cup...

PCW: Hidden Heroines

The Persecuted Church Weblog has a great blogpost RE: four heroines of the faith.

Stuff of note...

I keep track of many streams of information via tools like Bloglines. I only get to really skim a lot of the stuff that I keep tabs on - it's a lot of information. Mostly blogs, some news sites...

Some of the webthings I've bookmarked in del.icio.us for more in-depth perusal when I have the time, and which I present here for y'all's consideration:

• Next-Wave
  
  • Online newszine for the Emerging/Emergent Church.
  
  
  • If you want a better understanding of the current thinking in the ECM, this is a tremendously good resource.
  
  
  • I've found that the contributors cover a good portion of the range of what is considered "Emerging," though in general sits right in the center (ever-shifting as that center might be).
  
  
  • Note: It's good to read stuff from dudes you might not agree with, as that serves the twin functions of keeping yourself sharp, and makes it more difficult for you to fall for mischaracterizations. The ECM is the "hot topic" du jour, so I make sure to read their stuff so that I really can say I understand it.
    
    • ...again, as much as something as fluid as the ECM can be understood...


• Open Source Theology
  
  • Another ECM site, and...
  
  
  • ...a more appropriately - and instructively - named blog I have never found.
  
  
  • Warning: This one leans waaaaaaaaaaaay over to the far left, theologically. One of the longer-running threads is titled (I kid you not) "Genesis as True Myth".
  
  
  • 'nuff said.
  
  
• Dan Kimball is one of the leading ECMmers that I actuallly appreciate. Theologically conservative to the core, and with a really wacked out hairdo, to boot. My kinda guy.
  
  • In this post, he lays out his "here's my non-negotiables" list and then pleads for more patience and charity in the whole... ah... "conversation" thing, there...
  
  
• A good blogpost by Stand To Reason regarding public prayer

And in the "not-directly-theology-related" category, I have bookmarked:

• Ubuntu vs. Vista
  
  • Okay. I admit it. I'm a geek.


• Quantum Physics Says Goodbye to Reality
  
  • Great stuff on how "reality" isn't quite as concrete as many naturalistic/materialistic scientists would love for us to believe...


• Kryptonite Discovered in a Mine
  
  • ...just 'cause it's cool...


• An article going into the inner workings of the relationship between Bush and Blair...


• ...and finally an article that is breathtakingly infuriating - not because of the kids involved, which is heartbreaking enough, but because of the parents.

Martyrs

Another exmaple of the practice of the religion of peace - as the mainstream news media and politicos here in the U.S. (especially the party currently in power in the House of Representatives) continue to insist Islam really is.

I can't help but notice that whenever a Christian looks cross-eyed at a Qur'an or doesn't show proper deference to Mohammad, or whenever someone in a free press environment draws a clever cartoon lampooning the reality of Mohammadism, the Islamic world erupts into a furor of rioting and protest.

...but as long as it's just three Christians who are slowly, grotesquely butchered (in the name of Allah), all is well.

The double-standard is glaring.

I predict that no prominent Muslim will loudly decry this atrocity. I further predict that the Christian world will not riot, burn cars, threaten to blow up Mosques, etc., etc., etc.

The three men who died for trying to share Jesus with their fellow man are martyrs, heroes of the faith, and examples of giving the last full measure. They are to be honored, their widows and orphaned children are to be prayed for and supported in any way we as their brothers and sisters in Christ can. The wife of one of the martyrs has called for forgiveness for the men who vivisected her husband - echoing the words that Jesus spoke as the Roman soldiers were in the process of driving cruel spikes into His wrists as they crucified Him - "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

The men who perpetrated this unspeakably wicked, overtly demonic atrocity in the name of Allah are to be prayed for. May God grant them repentance.

Ergun Caner on Allah

Dr. Ergun Caner, a former Muslim who is now president of Liberty Theological Seminary and all-around great guy (all the more so because Calvinists don't like him), discusses an article by his brother regarding the fact that Allah is NOT the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Two Blogposts of Note

Two blogposts that I've bookmarked in my Bloglines account:

• bob.blog: Geoff on an order of Attractional with a side of Missional...
  
  • Bob blogs on many ECM things (being an ECMmer), and in this blogpost he summarizes and comments on an ongoing discussion betwixt himself and Geoff Surratt on "Attractional vs. Missional."
  
  
  • Good insight into ECM philosophy of ministry.


• Stand To Reason blog has posted an article on Clergy Confusion RE: moral equivalency.

Persecuted Church Blog: Chinese Christians and Church Registration

This is a very insightful article about the issues involved in the whole registered church vs. unregistered church in China. It begins to answer the question as to why most Christians in China refuse to register their churches with the Three Self Patriotic Movement.

Johnny Hart

He will be missed.

Stand To Reason: Redefining Christianity

Important blogpost here.

...and some people think we're in the midst of apostasy...

What would ever give you that idea, I wonder?

...so much for the postmillennarian "evahthang's gonna be alriiiiight" eschatological point of view, there, eh?

MeChurch

This is a great video...

Steve Camp Nails It

One of the blog feeds that I make sure is always up-to-date in my newsreader is from fellow Calvary Chapel pastor Charles Nestor. Today's blogpost refers to another article by Steve Camp, "Doctrinally Disfigured", which hits the nail squarely on the head RE: the current trend to trendifyize the church.

The first two paragraphs hit the initial home run which sets the tone for the rest of the article:

The face of evangelicalism has been altered so dramatically that it looks "doctrinally disfigured" suffering from one too many "botox injections" of pragmaticism and ecumenism; with severe "soteriological 'nips and tucks'" that gifted "plastic surgeons" skilled with the scalpel of New Perspectivism, Inclusivism, Open Theism and Postmodernism have cut away so much of authentic gospel "tissue" that what's left is just a synthetic, artificial "message-manikin." The "religious legislative laser technicians" have almost burned away the aged wrinkles of faithfulness to God's Word trying to give a "new face of influence" through political co-belligerence--turning the body of Christ into just another lobbyist group, PAC or "Christocrat." Seminaries are having "theological lypo-suction" done at such alarming rates that even the doctrinal positions of TBN, by comparison, are looking deceptively... "orthodox." And "full body makeovers" of local churches are being done so effectivel! y so as to not have to look like church, sound like church, act like church, be called a church, or function as a church that they could be featured on a special ecclesiatical episode of "The Swan."

All sardonic metaphor aside, here's the plain truth: the rule of faith is no longer considered the Scriptures, but experience; the goal of faith is no longer considered holiness, but personal happiness; the purpose of faith is no longer considered the glory of God, but being 'in conversation' with the culture; and the object of faith is no longer considered Christ, but self. In other words, 'Evangelical Christianity' is becoming completely unrecognizable.

This is an incisive, spot-on, awesome analysis of the current Christian scene - you need to read this article.

And Charles - thanks for turning us on to it.

Albert Mohler article on "Theological Triage"

Jumping from a link in one of Johnny Mac's recent blogposts, I found this article by Dr. Albert Mohler on "theological triage" - a very important concept that is very helpful in maintaining fellowship across doctrinal lines without compromising the foundational principles of the Biblical gospel. I can (for instance) sharply disagree with Johnny Mac over the issue of the perpetuity of the Gifts of the Spirit and over the issue of Calvinism, and still very much appreciate him as a brother. I can sharply disagree with Mark Driscoll over his ecclesiology... and, there it is again, that darned Calvinism... and still appreciate him as a brother.

But on "first-order" doctrines like the nature of salvation (contained in the famous "solas" - sola gratia, sola fide), or the Trinity, or the Nature of Jesus - if we disagree on these or call these into question then we no longer have any basis for Biblically Christian fellowship.

Hence, when Rob Bell says stuff like:

What if tomorrow someone digs up definitive proof that Jesus had a real, earthly, biological father named Larry, and archaeologists find Larry's tomb and do DNA samples and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virgin birth was really just a bit of mythologizing the Gospel writers threw in to appeal to the followers of the Mithra and Dionysian religious cults that were hugely popular at the time of Jesus, whose gods had virgin births? But what if as you study the origin of the word virgin, you discover that the word virgin in the gospel of Matthew actually comes from the book of Isaiah, and then you find out that in the Hebrew language at that time, the word virgin could mean several things. And what if you discover that in the first century being "born of a virgin" also referred to a child whose mother became pregnant the first time she had intercourse? (Velvet Elvis, p. 26)

...he places himself outside of the community of faith.

Sorry, man; them's the facts.

And his weak disclaimer on the very next page that he "affirm(s) the historic Christian faith, which includes the virgin birth and the trinity" is negated by the previous citation on page 26 and its implications - if these foundational doctrines are called into question, then the Pollyanna, fideistic affirmation on page 27 is rendered pointless.

Ideas have consequence.

If Jesus was not born of a Virgin - and by that, I mean physically born of a woman who was unambiguously a virgin - then He is unqualified to be the sinless Savior, and we are all dead in our trespasses.

Period.

The little NRSV-ish semantic two-step shuffle he tries to dance around the issue of Isaiah's use of almah' is thoroughly unimpressive. There are much better explanations than ones which obliterate the foundation of the Biblical record.

But anyway; back to Mohler's article.

Here's a quote which summarizes his point:

The error of theological liberalism is evident in a basic disrespect for biblical authority and the church's treasury of truth. The mark of true liberalism is the refusal to admit that first-order theological issues even exist. Liberals treat first-order doctrines as if they were merely third-order in importance, and doctrinal ambiguity is the inevitable result.

Fundamentalism, on the other hand, tends toward the opposite error. The misjudgment of true fundamentalism is the belief that all disagreements concern first-order doctrines. Thus, third-order issues are raised to a first-order importance, and Christians are wrongly and harmfully divided.

Great article - well worth the read.

"What would you say...?"

Interesting read here.

The Trinity

Good post here on the subject of the Trinity.

More on the "Tomb of Jesus"

More helpful stuff from Johnny Mac on the "Tomb of Jesus" here.

That Darned Religious Right

There are many over yonder on the... ah... progressive side of the church, who really really really wish that mean-spirited "Religious Right" would just go away and curl up with a nice, smooth latte; just today, I read on another blog from a dude I respect but have been disagreeing with more and more in recent days that he's slipping more and more towards the Dark Side.

Blatant political activism by the church is distasteful to me - and that was when it was conservative political activism. All this "happy shiny people holding hands" neoliberal semimarxist out-and-out socialist activism that's become vogue with the rise of the pomo church is beyond distasteful.

Weeeeeeeell, our good buddies over at Chalcedon have a thing or two to say about that.

You know, for a bunch of stark raving pinko commie Calvinists, with really goofy Pollyanna eschatology, sometimes they just make sense...

Catholic Cardinal warns Pope about Antichrist

So I'm reading WorldNetDailyDotCom, and I run across this article which, quite honestly, I found more than a little interesting.

Perhaps y'all might find it a bit thought-provoking, too...