Is the Reformation to Blame for Secularism?

True Patriotism

The true patriot repents for and calls for the repentance of his nation: "Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people" (Proverbs 14:34 ESV).

The Life of Lewis's Imagination

The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis by Alan Jacobs
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Jacobs shows how Lewis's imagination saved him from rationalism, and thank God it did. If the Great Knock had shaped Lewis more than G. K. Chesterton and Tollers, we might never have been treated to Lewis's beautiful fiction, at least not in the way we have it. Narnia might have read more like the Golden Compass.

Jacobs give us a biography of Lewis's imagination, which at times takes Lewis to task. Lewis would appreciate the criticism but at times Jacobs faults Lewis for not falling in line with evangelical feminism.

In defense of Lewis, the feminine is no more inferior in submitting to the masculine than God the Son is inferior in submitting to God the Father. Of course, no woman should submit to a man who is abusing his authority. She must appeal to Christ who made both male and female in his image.

God bless Lewis for saying, "The husband is the head of the wife just in so far as he is to her what Christ is to the Church. He is to love her as Christ loved the Church—read on—and give his life for her (Eph. 5:25). This headship, then, is most fully embodied ... in him whose marriage is most like a crucifixion." The problem is with men who don't give women anything worth their sacrifice.

I've read a lot of biographies of Lewis and George Sayer's Jack is still the best. Douglas Gresham's Lenten Lands is probably second (though it's really Gresham's autobio). Diana Pavlic Glyer's The Company They Keep is great on Lewis in community with the Inklings. Jacobs is probably my next fav.

It has a good bit of material absent from others, like the former student turned playwright who Lewis may have led to Christ simply by his example of honest scholarship in service of the gospel. The criticism is refreshing, especially after having read Gresham's hagiographic Jack's Life, and most of it is constructive.



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Stinking to High Heaven

Last night I was asked about a serious of prints hanging in our school library that portray a civilization developing out of nature, flourishing into a golden age, and then decaying into ruins. Someone remarked that we should probably take down the decaying into ruins part.

Here's an argument for keeping that front and center. Every civilization, except the very young ones alive today, have all over ripened, stunk to high heaven, and died. Every civilization except the one based on the church instituted by Christ.

Jesus never promised that the gates of hell wouldn't prevail against Constantine, medieval Christianity, the Great American Awakenings, or the Energizer Bunny. "The Bunny, the Bunny, Oh! I love the Bunny." Ok, I stop it now.

He promises that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church because he is the chief cornerstone. That means the source of Christian civilization will keep it "going and going and going." The church has outlasted every philosophical fad that predicted its demise from Voltaire, to Nietzsche, to Sartre.

So the question remains, what are we building on? What are we investing our time, talent, and treasure in? Is it a kingdom of the world, or are we trying to reform those kingdoms with the everlasting truth of Christ crucified, risen, reigning, and returning.

Living Branches on Dead Roots

A student of mine recently wrote in a paper: "The rejection of miracles is the cornerstone of Deism. Not coincidentally, miracles are the cornerstone of Christianity, considering that the miracle of the resurrection is what sets Christianity apart from all other religions."

Thus Deism's effort to redefine Christianity as a religion of mere morals is a gutting of the Faith. No wonder every mainline Christian denomination is dying. They are dying simply because they try to reduce Christianity to the moral code it has in common with all other religions.  You can't put a living branch on a dead root and expect life.

Black and White and Grey Matters

Rene Descartes famously said "Cogito ergo sum" ( I think, therefore I am). The mind was undoubtable.  The universe was matter but man ruled it with his mind. It was mind over matter. What could be the matter with that?

Well the modernists said mind is nothing more than matter, that is "grey matter." The mind is merely a function of the brain. In fact, as Carl Sagan famously said, "The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be."

If this is the fact of the matter, then nothing really is the matter with anything. Mind, will, and emotions are the secretions of matter that's subject to the laws of the material universe. You can't hold someone accountable for following the laws of the universe, unless there's something else in the universe and beyond it. If we're reduced to grey matter, there's no black or white.

C. S. Lewis once said something like: you cannot posit evil in the world unless there's a Good beyond it. When a man calls a line crooked he must know what a straight line is. When we complain about this world we must be comparing it to something.

So if man is more than matter in motion, where do we get our transcendent standards?


Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
(Genesis 1:24-27 ESV)

Nature and Gay Marriage

Marriage begins in a wedding, which implies the bringing together of two people who fit together. God is the God of nature and he has left in nature a testimony of what goes together and what doesn't. We don't need a degree in anatomy to see the obvious.

Nature has not equipped people of the same sex for sexual union. Do we need further proof? Those unions don't have the "innate" ability to reproduce. In other words, reproduction isn't natural to those unions. The receiving of children to those unions is artificial and thus not endorsed by nature or nature's God.

Now what state would have a problem recognizing that nature of things? Maybe a state separated from nature and nature's God. The two go together, don't they. If we reject God we lose our common sense grip on the nature of things. We start thinking that we can make nature conform to us, instead of conforming ourselves to the nature of things.

This is not to deny that same sex attraction is a real thing. But when we start thinking that any desire we have is natural, we can justify anything. We cannot lose sight of the fact that we are fallen. Something has gone wrong with our sexuality, and nature and nature's God stand as a testimony to that fact. Our desires need to be directed toward the Good as defined by nature. What state cannot recognize this fact? Our state? I hope not.


Righteousness exalts a nation,
but sin is a reproach to any people.
(Proverbs 14:34 ESV)


Now therefore, O kings, be wise;
be warned, O rulers of the earth.
Serve the LORD with fear,
and rejoice with trembling.
Kiss the Son,
lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,
for his wrath is quickly kindled.
Blessed are all who take refuge in him.
(Psalm 2:10-12 ESV)

Don't Bow Before Reputation

G. R. Evans is a well respected Medievalist, who wrote a book about the roots of the Reformation. Her work was endorsed by some of the best in the biz, who now probably wish they would have read as closely Carl Trueman. Trueman's review was so devastating that IVP has pulled the  book and will re-release it after a major clean up.

There are at least three lessons in this:

1. History writing requires exacting attention to detail.
2. You need an editor who doesn't take your word for it or bow before your reputation.
3. A book you haven't read don't endorse, or it may end in remorse.

See the review here
or copy and paste this into your browser:
http://www.reformation21.org/articles/you-cannot-judge-this-book-by-its-cover-a-review.php

Who Knew You Could Smoke a Cigar Box?

This is Glenn Kaiser jamming at Cornerstone this year on his homemade guitar. It's a cigar box with only three strings but sounds like two guitars. He's using a slide with one finger while playing cords and soloing with the rest. Love that tiny pignose amp!

Is Katniss Compatible with Christ?

I noticed the Hunger Games is coming out on video, and I have been thinking about putting my two cents in the ring. My son and I went to see the movie when it was on in theaters. He had read the book and I wanted to see what all the excitement was about.

I know the movie doesn't follow the book exactly, but I understand that the premise is the same: young people are forced by the powers that be to participate in a game of survival where they must kill or be killed. This struck me as post modern ethics. What do you do when you can't escape doing wrong? Christianity can't help you because it's simplistic and outdated and thus can't survive when the hard questions whack it over the head. Or can it?

I think the Christian response is and always has been not to participate. There are examples of whole families and communities dying together because they wouldn't play along in the arenas of ancient Rome. The Romans booed the Christians because they wouldn't give the audience the blood sport it wanted.

When Katniss volunteers to take her sister's place that seems to be redemptive, until you realize that she will have to kill someone else's brother or sister to save her own. Thus, the Christian response would be to make the aristocracy kill you themselves. That way they can't pretend it's a game, "And may the odds be ever in your favor."

Now someone may say, "Well you can play your own game and thwart the aristocracy." They may want to see you run through by gladiators but what if that makes the gladiators feel their own gladius? Its only self defense after all. But we must remember that it's being artificially imposed.

What if your playing Galaga, and suddenly the game informs you that instead of alien bugs its going to be real people flying at you with deadly aim. I think we would have to turn it off and let the consequences be what they are. This is what makes the story unsatisfying. The Christian version was told in Quo Vadis whose author won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1905.

Preach the Gospel at All Times and When Necessary Eat More Chicken

Today is National Chic-fil-A Appreciation Day. There has been quite a dust-up between some Christians over participating for fear of further alienating homosexuals. That is a legitimate concern. We don't want to put stumbling blocks in the way of the gospel.

But what if the offense is already part of the gospel? Part of the gospel you say! How so? Well I would suggest that what the Bible says about marriage is good news for everyone. God made us in his image with a human nature that flourishes in marriage between one man and one woman. Any other arrangement is destructive to human nature.

The gospel restores us to these God-defined relationships. This is grace! So I believe that Christians should cheerfully participate in proclaiming the gospel with Dan Cathy and Chic-fil-A by supporting their business against those who have pitted themselves against it. This is for the sake of the gospel, homosexuals and all of us who need it, and the betterment of society which needs more chicken and less chickens :).

Christians should also participate in Chic-fil-A day, because first amendment issues of freedom of religion are also at stake.

The reason Mike Huckabee started the movement to support Chic-fil-A is because Dan Cathy, Chick-fil-A president, said, “We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit,” which indicates one man and one woman till death do us part. This prompted city officials in Chicago and Boston to oppose Chic-fil-A restaurants from opening in their jurisdictions. This has been termed viewpoint discrimination and rightly so. We must support freedom of religion and conscience from the oppression of those who would falsely define gay marriage as a civil rights issue.

Christians shouldn't fear the politicization of the issue either. It is possible and healthy to distinguish church and state but impossible and unhealthy to distinguish religion and politics. God has given us both the realms of church and state, by which he has commanded us to transform his world. So we should go out equally motivated to fulfill the great commission and the cultural mandate. In fact, they are complimentary.

Time to Build

By wisdom a house is built,
and by understanding it is established;
by knowledge the rooms are filled
with all precious and pleasant riches.
A wise man is full of strength,
and a man of knowledge enhances his might,
for by wise guidance you can wage your war,
and in abundance of counselors there is victory.
Wisdom is too high for a fool;
in the gate he does not open his mouth.
(Proverbs 24:3-7 ESV)

Am I building my house with wisdom. Is it established? Are the rooms filled with knowldedge or diversion? Do we have "precious and pleasant riches" or mere gadgets?

Am I full of strength. If I am living wisely, I should be "enhancing my might," not getting weaker. With wise guidance I can wage war, rather than indulge my idiosyncrasies. Do I have many counselors instead or do I tend to worship a single hero at a time? Can I open my mouth at the gate, or am I silenced in the presence of the wise? The wise man built his house upon the rock. Jesus be my rock! It is time to build.

Neither Teen Nor Old-timer in Christ

In The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager Thomas Hine documents how advertisers purposely try to play up the differences between the generations in order to sell them their own unique identity. This is the main reason why the "teenager" was identified as a new social class in the mid twentieth century and the "emerging adult" more recently.

When churches have a hipster service and a traditional service are we not segregating the generations as well? If Paul were writing to the church in America today, would he point out that their is neither teen nor old-timer in Christ?

We have been part of a small group for years where our kids have mixed with people the age of their great-grandparents. I have been so grateful for this influence and shudder to think of teens, emerging adults, and other social groups who are isolated in their own "taste communities" and are never exposed to the richness of older and younger generations.

Let's desegregate, shall we?

Whose Story Is This?

Last night the fam and I watched Mirror Mirror, and I found it delightful over all.

There were problems like (spoiler alert) the king doing a wedding. Not only was there no minister but the king pronounced the couple man and wife "By the authority invested in me ... by myself." Yikes! That's a recipe for tyranny worse than that of the wicked stepmother. Douglas Wilson recently quipped that a despot was anyone who didn't recognize any authority above himself.

There were also the modern slang updates such as the queen referring to Snow as "high maintenance."

At the outset I was very uneasy that this would be a postmodern retelling as the film opened with the queen narrating. She in fact called it "her story." But in the end good triumphed and the queen confessed that this was Snow White's story after all.

That is really the question in the culture war. Whose story is this? Is it the story of Jesus the Messiah, Allah, World Soul, or the secular elites? Since it is Christ's story we are called to play our role with all our might and leave the plot twists, climax, and conclusion to him.

Eros Undefiled

Mature romantic love is the cultivation of affection into an unconditional commitment that's consummated in marriage.

Gnostic + Update = Knostic

A quote lifted from here:

Many modern knostics have wanted to learn how to appreciate the arts of narrative. As far as that goes, nothing wrong with it, but whether writing about novels, or movies, or stageplays, they have found "redemptive" or "death and resurrection" themes in all kinds of grimy stories. In other words, an abstract thing, the structure of the story, is mysteriously able to sanctify the actual content of the story. By means of this amazing magic trick, any amount of Tarantino sludge can be made edifying.
Now . . . three cheers for structure, but content matters. Content is determinative. (Douglas Wilson)

A Parable of Bulverism

I'm going to riff off of Douglas Wilson riffing off of C. S. Lewis.

Bulverism, as Lewis defined it, is dodging your opponent's argument by psychologizing him. Your treat him like a psychological patient who needs your evaluation to explain why he came up with such a ridiculous argument in the first place.

So what was his inferior state of mind that produced the silly argument? Hmmmm.... Let's see (says the faculty at Enlightenment U). He's obviously so weak he needs a crutch. So he invents a God to help him through life.  

No! Wait (says Freud)! He misses his papa, so he invents a heavenly father to hold his hand every step of the way.  

No! Here it is. He doesn't live up to his goals so he projects a perfect image of himself into the sky and calls it God. Yeah! Yeah!  

Wait, (says the patient) but how do you explain the incarnation Feuerbach?  

Oh that's easy (says the philosopher). You see that projection got a little intimidating after awhile, so man just brought it back down to earth in the form of Jesus, so he could pat his God on the head and say "There, there. Your not so scary. You love me so much you're going to die and rise again to save me." 

Now let's all go to bed and rise tomorrow to live wiser lives (says the Lady of the Green Kirtle). 

What about Thomas's Five Ways (says the patient)? 

Oh, don't you know that philosophers have pointed for years out that those arguments don't really prove anything scientifically. Thomas' only use now is on my couch. That will explain everything.  

But aren't there grave difficulties in psychoanalyzing the dead (says Roland Bainton the perfectly sane historian)? 

No, not when they really need you (says the faculty of Enlightenment U in their most updated accent).

Secular Jihad

Today, when the whole population of every civilized country is subjected to an intensive process of schooling during the most impressionable years of their lives, it is the school and not the church that forms men's minds, and if the school finds no place for religion, there will be no room left for religion elsewhere.
                                Christopher Dawson, Cultural Historian, Civilization in Crisis  (1950) (Thanks to Chris Baker for this quote.)

When government schools declare religion out of bounds, they aren't, as they claim, being neutral towards all religions. They aren't just saying that religious expression isn't relevant to education either. They are enshrining the religion of secularism with its saints (like Darwin), martyrs (like Galileo), and liturgy ("separation of church and state") to be the established faith of the school.

Because religious beliefs are our most basic beliefs, they frame, color, and define our view of the world at every waking and sleeping moment. Claiming otherwise, would be like telling your coach you could see the ball just as well wearing your welding helmet as your batting helmet. The welding helmet keeps certain things out while the batting helmet helps you see as God intended. Your coach would not be fooled.

"What God has joined together no man can put asunder." So government schools pull a fast one by pretending to have put it asunder, while installing their own belief system for all practice day in and day out from pre-K to graduation.

The students get the message too. When I spoke up from a Christian perspective in my government school, it wasn't the teachers who were offended. It was my fellow students who told me to shut up!

Teachers are expressly forbidden from teaching from a Christian point of view. Evangelism is an outrage and Christianity is evangelistic. This makes Christian statements unwelcome in the classroom.

Christians in public schools have been conquered by secular Jihad and reduced to the status of dhimmitude, which means "concession, surrender and appeasement" towards government demands. The government isn't Sharia law but Secular law.

With government schools leaving no place for Christian expression, is it any wonder that the Christian recession in the public square starting in the early twentieth century continues today with disastrous moral results?

Freedom From Responsibility

Thanks to Mark Horne for this quote:

In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again. -- Edward Gibbon

Burning Eloquence

Got this from Blog and Mablog:

One of the best definitions of eloquence is, 'to have something to say and to burn to say it'." (Fish, Power in the Pulpit, p. 18).

Technology and Barbarism

Technology is not a cure for barbarism.

"Intemperate Minds Cannot Be Free"

Edmund Burke wrote in 1791:

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites .... Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters. 

We tend to define freedom in terms of the maximizing of choice. We think the more we can have what we want the freer we are. The Christian view of freedom is the ability to do what is right. Since we have given up on any standard of right and wrong that applies to everyone, we are left with, "I'm free to do what I want any old time." This is a recipe for bondage. Jesus didn't say, "He who sins has free choice." But, "He who sins is a slave to sin."

Burke explained the proliferation of law that we see today. Our view of freedom as personal choice throws off internal restraint. We aren't born with internal restraints. They must be instilled by parents and other God-given authority figures teaching the word of God through words and wood. This needed little back up from government when churches and parents were doing their jobs. Today it's left up to government and laws try to keep up with accelerating lawlessness. But now the law looks more and more arbitrary and is taken less and less seriously.

John Witte Jr. argues  that without a basis in divine and natural law, positive law becomes a sort of wish list. To make up for this courts are invested with divine like power. In an episode of Seinfeld, Poppy challenged Elaine to defend her pro-choice view by asking her, "What gives you the right?" She replied, "The Supreme Court!"

Rick Santorum recently remarked in a Republican debate that government doesn't give us rights. It's job it to recognize and protect our God-given rights. This is much more satisfactory than Ron Paul's naive view, expressed in the same debate, that his religious views wouldn't affect his presidential politics. "You can't legislate morality," they say, but isn't it the case that we shouldn't legislate anything but morality? If so, where do we get it?  If we don't get it from God it will be the end of society. If we return to him individually and in our homes, work, churches, and in public, there is hope of a most glorious and gracious kind.

To sum up: Without divine law there's no internal restraints. Without internal restraints positive law increases. Without divine law to back it up, positive law has little force. To give it more force we give more power to our government, especially our courts. But its not the job of government to give us laws and rights but to maintain the God-given ones. If we don't acknowledge what we acknowledged in the Declaration of Independence then we won't be independent much longer. If we return to him we return to hope.

The Start of Abolition

The abolition of slavery as an institution didn't begin with William Wilberforce in the early 19th century, but with Gregory of Nyssa's Easter sermon in 379:

If man is in the likeness of God, and rules the whole earth, and
has been granted authority over everything on earth from God,
who is his buyer, tell me? Who is his seller? To God alone belongs
this power; or rather, not even to God himself. For his gracious
gifts, it says, are irrevocable (Romans 11:29). God would not therefore
reduce the human race to slavery, since he himself, when we
had been enslaved to sin, spontaneously recalled us to freedom.
But if God does not enslave what is free, who is he that sets his
own power above God’s?

Historians have searched in vain for a predecessor to Gregory, so I guess we will have to take Gregory's word for it. He must have gotten this from the Bible.

The Sucking Canvass of Nothingness

I heard a portion of an interview with Woody Allen on NPR on my way to teach class. Allen confessed that it is hard to find any pleasure in life because of the human predicament hanging over every happy moment.

This means, for Allen, that every enjoyment is not pointing beyond itself to the Joy of joys but is, in his words, "ephemeral." Allen has made atheism the canvass of his life. Whatever pleasing strokes he brushes on are immediately absorbed by the sucking canvass of nothingness.

This has reminded me that life without God is painfully subjective. But life with God guarantees an objective reality that our senses were created to know, and Scripture declares that God has personally entered that reality and we are part of his business of redemption. Let's join the family business!

A Reformation Day Sermon

I preached this sermon on Reformation Sunday at New Life Presbyterian Church in Muncie, IN.

http://www.newlife-pc.org/media/20111030-WorshipService-1.mp3

Reason and the Logic of Revelation

Thomas Aquinas believed that reason can prove what faith accepts when the books of nature and Scripture overlap. When special revelation stands alone however, reason receives it and may serve to show its logic.

The Queen of the Sciences

"Everyone [in the Middle Ages] agreed that theology was by far the most important and highly skilled profession of all. Only the most rigorously trained individuals could practice it. It took seven years to qualify as a theologian, and that was after spending at least four years working on a first degree.... If a philosopher did want to tackle matters of faith, then he was perfectly entitled to join the theology faculty and train as a theologian" (Hannam, The Genesis of Science).

We Are Lovers, This Is True

We are basically lovers. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and all your strength," says Jesus. I'm one who tends to lead with my mind, which isn't necessarily bad. But when I reduce man to mind that's bad. Especially when I look down on my less cerebral brothers and sisters.

So I need to remember that the life of the mind is important to an abundant Christian life but not the be all end all. In other words, we all have our primary, secondary, and tertiary love languages when it comes to loving God. We must proactively promote the love languages of our brothers, especially when they are different than ours.

Language and its Detractors

We tend to forget that the postmodern skepticism about language is communicated through language.

Why Religion Gets to the Heart of Things

Ken Myers has a good quote on why theology is still the queen of the sciences. Whether it is acknowledged or not, it is the science behind all the sciences:

"Virtually all the major disagreements between rival theories in the sciences and in philosophy can ultimately be traced back to the differences between the religious beliefs that guide them" (Roy Clouser, The Myth of Religious Neutrality: An Essay on the Hidden Role of Religious Belief in Theories, Revised edition, University of Notre Dame Press, 2005.