Whilin' Away the Hours

Blogger Dogs!
Angus Harvey had a lovely visit today with Nicky Garver. At approximately 10:30 this morning, Nicky's chauffeur (I think his name was Joel) opened his carriage door just as Angus emerged from his castle. Nicky barked a greeting to which Angus responded by delivering the traditional salutatory hinter-region sniff. After the ceremonial "marking of the shrub" the two dogs were free to romp with abandon.

Angus then invited Nicky in to check out the interesting food smells emanating from the room with the vinyl floor. But Nicky was distracted from the mission by the appearance of the True Master of the Castle, His Royal Catness, Eleven. To Nicky's homesick eyes, His Royal Catness looked just like Keats! Yes, Keats and Eleven are evil cat twins in their black fur. Unfortunately for Eleven (who has never played with a dog other than his own court jester, Angus), Nicky wanted his Keats and approached His Royal Catness without leave to do so.

The scene which followed is beyond my ability to relay. I knew Eleven was fast; I knew he was athletic. But I can honestly say I didn't know he was capable of high jumping to the ceiling. And that's exactly what happened. After several laps around the house, Eleven at full tilt boogie and Nicky hot on his heels, and several vain attempts to jump through glass doors or gain purchase at the top of the doorframe, Eleven hopped onto a chair & vaulted himself upward in an attempt to cling to the ceiling! He made contact with it but he was unable to grab hold giving the appearance of a ricochetting black furball.

The humiliation was too much for the Royal One. He departed the knavish mob who were doubled over with laughter for refuge and succor in his beloved wildlands and he did not reappear until 10:30 PM.

I can be so forgetful!
(Just ask my husband!)
Our gathering Friday night was great fun...if somewhat crowded. It was a privilege to be able to host an evening in honor of our friends, Lisa & Lamar, from Monroe. I tried not to say "you guys" too often but it's embarrassing to realize how often a colloquialism such as that pops out of my mouth. We enjoyed lots of good conversation and, of course, some reminiscing about the conference. Even though one of the Daytonian Monronian families was unable to join us, Lisa and Lamar were able to meet all of our families in church on Sunday.

I'm sure many who read my blog are aware of the fact that worship at Auburn Avenue is enthusiastic. A prominent feature of the worship there is the strong "corporateness" of it including congregational "amens" at the end of prayers. I loved hearing Lamar's spontaneous amens at the end of our prayers Sunday.

So, what did I forget? Pictures! Both Friday night and at the second opportunity on Sunday.

Speaking of church, some of you may remember the story about my niece holding hands with us while we pray. She seems to have made it a habit to slip her hand into our enfolded hands during prayer in church. Yesterday, she held a doll in her lap as she sat in Uncle Clifford's lap. When it was time to pray, as Clifford & I held hands, she wriggled her little hand into ours and then with her free hand she guided her doll's hand into ours as well. Too cute.

Tomorrow, it's brunch with Dawn, Laurel, Joel, Claire, and Nicky. This will be the first time any of us have met F2F. I wonder if this is a first in blogdom...a blogger dogs meeting!

This should be interesting!
Tonight, there will be 11 adults and 7 children in my small home for dinner. The hardest part is what I'm about to go do: give my pungent pup a bath. O, the trauma! The beast positively hates water. Before I even begin to move in the direction of the bathtub, he knows and it's beyond my comprehension how he knows. But he does. He scoots out the dog door faster than a stealth equipped toddler and disappears into the dark cavern under the deck. He knows I won't come after him. Mouse sized spiders live under the deck. Angus prefers spiders to baths.

Revisiting union
but not in the "ordo salutis" sense this time. ;-)
Over the last few days I've been rereading a critique of the Summary Statement of AAPC's Position on the Covenant, Baptism, and Salvation written by Howard Douglas King. Question: does anyone know who he is? I'm wondering if he may be of the Herman Hoeksema persuasion. Some of his argumentation, such as, "Christ has purchased no blessings for the non-elect. That is to say that what He, properly speaking, "purchased" with the price of His life's blood was His Bride, the Church (Acts 20:28) -- rather than "blessings". The blessings which the non-elect receive are in no sense 'purchased for them'" sounds suspiciously Hoeksema-like. If my guess is correct, it would explain the foundation of his critique which seems to be that only the ultimately elect are in covenant union with Christ.

I was startled by an example that all members of the church are, in fact, in covenantal union with Christ in reading 1 Corinthians 5-6 today. Here, Paul is commanding the church in Corinth to excommunicate a fornicator. He continues rebuking the church for it's corruptions, tying in a litany of sins with the earlier command concerning the fornicator, declaring that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God. "Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with men, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God." He then appeals to them based on their washing (apolou ô): "And such were some of you: but ye were washed, but ye were sanctified, but ye were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God." So, Paul is stating that those who persist in unrepentance will perish but he urges the Corinthians to be true to their position in Christ.

Calvin says " It is probable, that the Corinthians even up to that time retained much of their former licentiousness, and had still a savor of the morals of their city. Now when vices stalk abroad with impunity, custom is regarded as law, and then afterwards vain pretexts are sought for by way of excuse; an instance of which we have in their resorting to the pretext of Christian liberty, so as to make almost everything allowable for themselves to do. ... it appears from Paul's words that they abused liberty so much as to extend it even to fornication."

At the close of Chapter 6, Paul describes the heinousness of fornication in the church as that which takes away members of Christ and makes them members of a harlot. What else could this mean other than a union with Christ which is broken by unrepentant fornication?

For a quick primer on covenantal union, I recommend The Objectivity of the Covenant by Doug Wilson.

A "must read"
FAITH & FAITHFULNESS in Paul's Letter to the Romans & THE OBEDIENCE OF THE NATIONS. I just read it and I highly recommend it.

Want to read an amazing little story?
The Ivy Vine

Yikes!
What to do? What to say?

She actually did it! O, the hand-wringing anxiety of it all. "Whilin' Away the Hours" is Kristen's blog of the week and I don't have anything to say!

I love this:
" faith which adheres faithfully to God"
From the Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on Habakkuk 2:4

Behold, his soul is puffed up, it is not upright in him; but the righteous shall live by his faith.

email
My husband works a graveyard shift at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. Last night, he sent me this email:

@2AM this morning, i ventured outside at work for a break. it was crystal clear (for ohio) and very bright from a brilliant, slightly past full moon. as i turned my attention to it, i immediately noticed this large bright dot next to it. i took note, but dismissed it as probably an usually bright star. but @ 4AM i went out again and looked and the dot was still there next to the moon, yet closer - even though the moon had traversed the sky about 45 degrees! a star wouldn't have moved. now i was totally mystified and mesmerized - staring at the sight, transfixed in wonder. it was almost as if something was orbiting the moon! when i went back inside, i 'googled' and found this:

Tonight's Sky

i doubt if the same configuration will reward those hearty and sleepless souls who might want to gaze into the dark sky tonite, but ya never know... it was truly beautiful in a serenely surreal kind of way.

One wonders...
Is it a conspiracy? Are Sandlin & Lusk in cahoots?

From Backwater Cultures by Andrew Sandlin:
"No Missionary Sorties
Jesus Christ did not pray that God would remove His disciples from the world, but that He would protect them from its evil (Jn. 17:15). His Great Commission (Mt. 28:18-20) is to go to all nations, baptizing them and teaching and discipling them under His authority. Ancient Israel was called to faithfulness within carefully circumscribed geographical borders. But the Church of Jesus Christ has no geographical borders. The world is its parish.

Nor may the tactic be limited to little missionary sorties into enemy territory with a quick flight back to aircraft carrier Christian Safety. The Apostle Paul established churches in the very belly of the pagan Roman Empire. Even certain of those of Caesar’s household were converted (Phil. 4:22). Today, were the Center for Cultural Leadership to attempt to evangelize the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court, many Christians would be aghast.

Fortunately, Paul did not suffer such compunctions.

The Best Defense
The myth of the virility of backwater cultures has serious spiritual consequences. We cannot for long maintain unpolluted backwater cultures. If we refuse to overtake the evil in our culture, it will soon overtake us. There can be no detente with depraved culture. Depraved culture must be redeemed, not avoided. The hungry jaws of Satan will not be satisfied after he has devoured the evil culture — he will then seek out the Christian Church and family.

Therefore, the best defense is a good offense.

And from Discipleship and the Church by Rev. Rich Lusk:
"Local forms of community, especially parish churches, are badly needed. But creating “safe havens” of virtue to protect ourselves from the barbaric rulers of culture simply won’t cut it. Indeed, such a strategy fundamentally misses the heart of the church’s calling – to be the face and hands and feet of Jesus to a hurt and broken world. (After all, what else could Paul’s “body of Christ” metaphor mean?) The creation of small enclaves of virtue are important, but not if they are only formed for self-serving ends.

The need of the hour is not so much for another St. Benedict and a new smattering of monastic cells, but for a public theologian like Ambrose or Augustine to step to the fore and wrestle with wickedness in high places. After all, the monasteries could only thrive after the very public pre-Constantinian church had conquered Rome with the gospel. The point of discipleship, then, is not the establishment of warm and fuzzy centers of community that have their backs turned to the world; rather, it is the creation of a host of servants willing to live in and die for the world. Christianity is an incarnational, not an ideological, religion. It is sacrificial, not self-serving." [bold face added]

This is exactly the point I was trying to make here with regard to the nature of wolves and rabbits, "History has proven that wolves, left to their wolfishness, quickly stuff the warren with dried grass, apply the Zippo, and enjoy rabbit stew for dinner."

Catapult that cow
Moooo!

The event of the year in Dayton
is this week! The 2003 Dayton Air Show. This year, the event is being billed as the world's biggest air show because this is the 100th anniversary of the first powered flight by Dayton's own Orville & Wilbur Wright. There are projected 150,000 visitors from 50 states and 9 countries. It is said that there will be planes performing in the air continuously for the 4 days of the show including North American jet teams the Thunderbirds, the Blue Angels and Canada's Snowbirds; all three performing each day. In addition, there will be 150 planes on display on the ground, including vintage, early commercial airliners and cargo planes as well as F-14s and F-16s, many aerial demonstrations, and flybys by both the U.S. Air Force F-117 and the U.S. Air Force B-2 Stealth Bomber. There are 5 blimps around Dayton, even now (I've seen them in the air several times) and hot-air balloon launches every day of the air show.

I don't know if we will go to the show, but all of Dayton usually gets to see some of the aircraft here to perform. Every year we see the featured jet team practicing over the skies of Dayton. I was thrilled several years ago when the B-2 Stealth Bomber twice flew directly over my house at a very low altitude and slow speed. I could hear the ominous, vibrating rumble of it's approach long before I could see it and then it would appear over the housetops, slowly gliding over just like the alien ships in "Close Encounter of the Third Kind" - so bizarre was it in appearance. I've seen it once since then. As I was flying from Seattle to Dayton, the pilot announced that we should look out the left side of the plane (I just happened to have a left side window seat) and we would see the B-2 tracking parallel to us. That was an amazing perspective too!

I hope we get to see it again!

Speaking of elenctic pedagogy
(lol)
With apologies to Dennis for pirating his paper, this is the best definition of the conditionality of the covenant I've come across:

A. Do you mean by "condition": something which would bind God? Then we say unconditionally: "UNconditional be the device!"

B. Do you mean by "condition": something for which God has to wait, before He can go on? Then we say unconditionally: "UNconditional be the device!"

C. Do you mean by "condition": something that we have to fulfill, in order to earn by it? Then we say unconditionally: "UNconditional be the device."

D. Do you mean by "condition": something which God has connected with something else, in order to make clear to us that the one thing cannot come without the other, and that we cannot be sure of the one thing unless at the same time, we have been assured of the other? Then we say unconditionally: conditional be the device!" (Geertsema 1979d, 291). Klaas Schilder

For those interested
Someone posted the OPC GA minutes pertaining to the Kinnaird case on the Warfield list:
Draft minutes

Friday afternoon
Matt, Sora, and Zek'l Colvin joined us for dinner along with Brad, Cinnamon, Brayden and Genie from our church. Brad was a Latin and Greek instructor at Mars Hill Academy until last year when he decided to move to Dayton in order to continue his education. It was a great opportunity for Brad and Matt, who will begin teaching at Mars Hill this fall, to pow wow about Latin curriculum.

Brayden and Zek'l, our two toddling guests, hit it off well after doing some serious checking out of one another. They are two very well behaved little boys!

After dinner the theological discussions began but they took an unexpected direction when James Stuart Russell (whom I've never read) was mentioned. So out came the Bibles and Matt & Brad were off and running. We had a wonderful time in spite of the fact that Cinnamon nearly set our house on fire and Brad had a close shave with a 15 ft. plunge from our deck (hmmm...too bad; would have made a great photo story).

With apologies to the DSL/cable modem-impaired, some pictures:

Sora, Genie, and me sans guys who were either changing diapers or clearing the table. ;-)

Matt with coffee (decaf; he's a light weight. hee hee).

Brad, Cinnamon, and Brayden who managed to survive the evening by the grace of God.

Zek'l expressing the geist of the evening. He wore the pie on his face with nobility & honor.

I've been neglectful
this week! Sorry. I've been pretty busy with work and with defending the OPC. ;-)

Let's see, what's new: tomorrow afternoon, Matt & Sora Colvin will be having dinner with us. I first met them in Monroe and they will be in the southern Ohio area to close on their new home. I debated long about what to serve since Sora is a vegetarian. I think I came up with a good plan: Welsh Rarebit. I have a yummy recipe (includes beer & cheese so you know it's good) and the carnivores can add bacon to their assemblages without compromising the meatless dish. I'll also make a salad of Spring Mix greens, artichoke hearts, hearts of palm, black olives, hardboiled eggs, and feta cheese with a home made lemon vinaigrette. Shiraz or Chardoney for those who care to imbibe and Starbucks coffee later.

But...too bad the Colvins couldn't wait until later in the month. The Garvers will be stopping by as they pass through. Dawn will join us for brunch. I plan to serve eye of newt in honor of the Rowling release. Anyway, can you imagine the debate? It makes my head spin just thinking about it.

Another event in the works is a mini-Monroe Pastor's Conference reunion mid July. The folks with whom the Dayton Contingent stayed while in Monroe will be in town visiting their daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren so I hope to host a gathering for all who attended the conference and for those who wish they could have. Should be fun but I promise, there will be no crayfish sucking going on, I guaaarronnnteee.

Biblical Dialectic
From Reading Scripture by Rev. Dr. Robert S. Rayburn
"Now, we are speaking through these summer Sunday evenings of the proper way to read and to preach the Word of God. And we said last time that over against those approaches that emphasize some unifying theme that controls interpretation and preaching - such as the redemptive-historical scheme or the law-gospel scheme - it is more faithful to the Bible's own way of teaching its doctrines to recognize a biblical dialectic. There is in the Bible everywhere and in regard to all its teaching a setting side by side of truths that are not easy to reconcile with one another, that must be held in tension with one another, truths that lie on a continuum of truth but lie at opposite ends. So, for example, divine sovereignty and human responsibility, justification of sinners by Christ's imputed righteousness and our being judged according to our works in the last day, the security of the elect in Christ and warnings everywhere about the genuine danger of falling away, and on and on like that. We noted how often the Bible speaks in a way that surprises us because it is not easy to reconcile that statement with another made elsewhere.

Take something as famous as the Sermon on the Mount. Read it over again yourself tonight. And then ask yourself if, knowing what you know about the gospel, about God's grace, about the gift of Christ's righteousness, you would ever have preached such a sermon yourself. That sermon is all about the law, It is about what we must be and do and it is searching in its demands. Luther said the Sermon on the Mount was "Mosissimus Moses", that is, Moses to the highest degree. A modern scholar said that the Sermon on the Mount was Moses quadrupled! And in that sermon, amidst all that law, we are warned that if we don't forgive others we won't be forgiven, and that those who thought themselves the followers of Christ through their lives and even served him notably - "Lord, Lord, did we not prophecy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles" - will not be acquitted in the day of judgment because they did not do the will of the Father in heaven. Where is imputed righteousness in that sermon? Where is grace covering all our sins in that sermon? It is law from beginning to end. And the Epistle of James is like it in that, so much like it that Luther wondered if James really belonged in the New Testament.

Now, don't mistake me. I believe absolutely in sovereign grace and in the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ and in justification by faith alone. But I do not want my conviction of those things to deafen me to what the Bible says so plainly and clearly and emphatically to me about my duties and about the way in which my life will be judged and about the absolute necessity of my obeying the Lord through the days of my life. The Bible spends huge tracts of its teaching on these latter subjects as well. Teaches them emphatically as it does the former doctrines. Was there ever a man who was a more committed Calvinist than the Apostle Paul, if I may so say? Was there ever a man who believed more firmly in sovereign grace and unconditional election and the perseverance of the saints that the great Apostle to the Gentiles. Was there ever a greater champion of justification by faith alone than Paul? But hear him say what we are loathe to say. "I beat my body and make it my slave, lest having preached to others, I myself be disqualified for the prize."

One of you asked me some questions after last Lord's Day evening's introduction to this subject, the biblical dialectic. He asked if the Roman Catholic-Protestant split on justification was an example of this tendency to overemphasize one pole at the expense of another. And I would say on the Roman Catholic side, it is absolutely that. Faithful Protestant theology, especially Calvinist theology, never hesitated to proclaim the necessity of good works, even as it proclaimed justification by faith alone. Roman Catholics often criticize Protestant views of justification for their incoherence because we say faith alone and also say that faith must work. But it is the Roman Catholics who desert the Bible because they are unwilling to say faith alone, which the Bible so emphatically and so polemically teaches. The Roman Catholics have a justification that is part faith and part works - the worst possible situation because it renders both poles mush. Is that precisely our impression of so many Roman Catholics? They believe in a salvation by works, but they don't work very hard at it - the Christ part merely softens, weakens the works, it does not brace it with a true grace counterpoise. No we want faith alone and we want the absolute necessity of good works. That is what the Bible teaches and each emphasis gets its day in the Bible's teaching and that is why we often find ourselves struggling to maintain both emphases at the same time. They seem to want to fly apart. And, and this is my point, it must always be this way. You will never, you can never relax this tension. When the tension goes away it will be because you have lost touch with one of the poles! The same person asked me how the dialectic is different from the idea of Hegel, the 19th century German idealist philosopher. You remember Hegel from school days. He saw ideas as always in transit according to a fixed process. A thesis produced an antithesis, they then in their conflict, gave birth to a synthesis, and that synthesis then became the new thesis and so on - an unending development and, of course, in that scheme, truth and knowledge become relative because they are moving all the time. But, in the Bible, the thesis and the antithesis never produce a synthesis, they are eternal truths that abide forever and the tension between them can never be overcome in some resolution. There is perfect resolution in God's mind, of course, but not in our finite minds. We must hold truths together, that is all we can do, we cannot see the perfect harmony of truth, we must simply believe it to exist as God tells us that it does."