Whilin' Away the Hours

Charles, plug your ears...
Just a reminder that my pastor's sermons are online and linked in the sidebar to the left. He is an awesome preacher and we are blessed to have him. Also of note, one of our pianists, Amanda Roberts, has composed music for Psalm 4, NKJV, and you can listen to an mp3 at the same link (Apologies for the quality. It was recorded onto a laptop computor through a mixing board during our fellowship meal today). I think it's somewhere between chant and metric. She set the Psalm to music without distoring the words and it is truly beautiful. I'm most thankful for my church and for the talents the Lord has given our people.

From CCL

A Note on Norman Shepherd, Covenant and Justification by John Frame.

Dr. Frame takes off his belt, grabs a few theology professors, pastors, writers, and web gurus by the ear and drags them to the woodshed.

False Dilemma
There is discussion of Westminster West's "Our Testimony on Justification" on various internet venues. In one amusing entry, a certain Refomed pastor expressed his opinion of this testimony by proposing another. (Update: After checking in later, I note that his new list has sparked something of a trend.)

These are the Westminster West indications listed as the reason for the testimony:

1. that the Reformation doctrine of justification is not fully biblical;
2. that the Lutherans and Calvinists have different doctrines of justification;
3. that the Reformation misunderstood Paul on justification;
4. that justification is not by faith alone, but by faithfulness, i.e. trust in Christ and obedience;
5. that the idea of merit as a way of explaining the work of Christ for us is unbiblical;
6. that Christ died for our sins but he did not keep the law perfectly in our place (his active obedience);
7. that Christ does not impute his active obedience to us;
8. that obedience or good works is not only the fruit or evidence of faith, but is also part of the ground or instrument of justification;
9. that our justification is in some way dependent on the final judgment of our works.

Following these indications is a list of catechism and confession quotes which ostensibly prove the opposite to be true. This is nothing short of attempting to prove the error of the above set of statements (some of which are caricatures) by posing a false dilemma.

These are my contraindications (the idea for which is borrowed from but not identical to the aforementioned pastor)
1. that the Reformation doctrine of justification is infallible and if any man should broaden it's definition, his name shall be removed from the book of life;
2. that the Lutherans and Calvinists have identical doctrines of justification and that Luther was right about Beza;
3. that the Reformation understood Paul on justification so precisely that there is no advance in scholarship possible;
4. that justification is by alone faith alone;
5. that the idea of meritorious works righteousness is the only way to understand the work of Christ because, as everyone knows, the Adamic covenant was one of meritorious works and strict justice, world without end, amen;
6. that Christ died for our sins but that was insufficient for justification because God wants works to buy sonship;
7. that Christ came to earn a treasury of merits;
8. that obedience or good works are not a cause or means to the end, eternal life;
9. that our justification is a discrete event and in no way dependent upon sanctification.

Some of these are meant to be humorous but they each have a grain of truth tucked in. I could easily provide a list of catechism, confession, and historical quotes to contradict each of the above. I believe some of the statements in the second set are truly erroneous but others, when the caricature is removed and they are properly nuanced, are quite true. In other words, my catechism quotes would present an either/or fallacy.

One false dilemma deserves another, I always say.

Dr. Money
That sounds like a fine example of appropriate naming for the [ahem]doctor who presided over the case of Bruce Reimer. Dr. Money is described as "the world's leading successor to the mantles of Freud, Kinsey and Masters and Johnson." That sounds about right.

A step in the right direction
ReformedCatholicism.com

Tails of conquest
We arrived home late Saturday night to find His Royal Catness had left remnants of conquest on the rug just outside the kitchen: a chipmunk tail neatly severed at it's base. After exclamations of 'ewww, gross' I ziplock bagged the remains of the hapless chippie and interred them in the plastic tomb in the garage.

Sunday morning, on the way to church, my dear husband suggested that we should have saved the chippie tail. Our evil cat would look quite dashing in a chipmunk hat with tail waggishly swagged across his brave brow. I giggled helplessly in spite of my indignation at Mr. Kitty's wanton savagery.

Note to self:
Read "The Implications of the Doctrine of the Covenant for Our Young People."

I'm told by a friend whom I respect that a proper understanding of "foedusdipleuron" will dissuade me from my view of young children at the Table. I'm skeptical but I'm open.

Yes
If we abstract TULIP from the Word and Sacrament, then we are left with a fatalistic subjectivism.

I might add, we are left with hard determinism as well.

More sidebar clutter
I'm adding Tim's essay Monocovenantalism? Multiple Covenants, No Adamic Merit to my sidebar.

A plea
Ralph Smith has posted two essays in response to Rick Phillips' Covenant Confusion: Covenantal Confusion? An Attempt to Understand the Confused and the Confusion and Defining the Covenant: What Consensus?. Both of these are excellent critiques of Phillips' work but the latter actually concludes with a well spoken plea for patience:
"Interpretation of the Westminster Standards can and should be sufficiently broad to tolerate a variety of opinions. The complexity of the present state of the discussion demands that we search the word of God in humility and faith, being patient with each other until we can achieve a unified understanding of God’s word. We also have to remember that it may not be achieved by a direct debate about the issues wherein we disagree, but instead through application of our faith to daily life and the attempt to answer the broader theological and practical challenges that God is confronting us with in the post-Christian Western world."

Stop,
hey,
what's that sound?
The Baptists and the SBC's Christian Education Resolution have been all the talk lately on several Yahoo lists. Today, Doug Wilson's blog entry touches the topic as well. He praises the initiative of the dispensational Baptists and ponders the irrelevancy of the postmillennial Reformed. He's got the gist down but the Reformed aren't sitting around in comfy chairs puffing their pipes while discussing beer, or even scotch. They are writing papers and having conferences and firing off emails designed to ensure that the Reformed faith will not succumb to neonomialism, monocovenantalism, sacerdotalism. Or Calvinism. Our brothers at ACE and Modern Reformation and Westminster West are hard at work underwriting a platonic faith guaranteed to keep America a safe haven for public schools and homosexual marriage.

We Reformed have forgotten the early church which turned the world upside down. We've forgotten that assensus isn't what conquered Rome. A row of ducks won't advance the Kingdom. Worship will. I don't understand how, exactly but two smart men have told me it's true and I believe them.

BAM! The Future of Rock 'n' Roll!
Almost anyone who's seen the bittersweet drama Rain Man will remember the scene in which Charlie and Raymond are driving I-75 through Cincinnati with the car radio tuned to 97X, a well known local modern and indie rock station. Raymond hears the slogan of the station:

Raymond: 97X, bam! The future of rock 'n' roll. 97X, bam! The future of rock 'n' roll. 97X, bam! The future of rock 'n' roll.
Charlie: Ray, enough already! Change the channel.
Raymond: 97X, bam! The future of rock 'n' roll. 97X, bam! The future of rock 'n' roll.

97X was my preferred station for years. Where else could one go to hear the mega-mix of the Ramones' I Wanna Be Sedated (scroll down for audio, beware pop-ups)? Over the last few years, I rarely tuned in partly because the reception is poor where I live and partly because, well at the ripe old age of 50, the music often doesn't appeal to me anymore. But my grey hair aside, 97X is a legendary station. Rolling Stone readers chose 97X as one of the "15 Best Radio Stations" in the nation 4 times in 4 years and, in April 2003, Rolling Stone named 97X as one of the four best and last great independent radio stations in the country.

I was sorry to learn that 97X signed off last Thursday at midnight. I guess station owners get old too. Sigh.

Linkage
Alastair has provided a convenient set of links for the recent "flurry of posting on the subject of 'merit.'" I have Tim's essay yet to read as well as Joel's latest installment but I agree with Alastair, these writings have been well worth reading.

I go through stages during which I feel that Christian internet fora are more trouble than they're worth. Misunderstandings, bruised toes, and outright hostilities wax and wane and I've contributed my share of careless words, I know. I've made radical cuts in the past and I skate close to the edge of ditching the blog and the few remaining lists in which I participate. But then a series of postings & essays comes along like the recent ones by Tim, Mark, and Joel and I remember how much I've benefited from the interaction. I guess I'll stick around awhile longer afterall.

Indicative and Imperative
"The demand on us, we can say, in developing a doctrine of sanctification and in seeking ourselves to deepen our understanding of the Christian life, the demand on us in the light of the pattern of indicative and imperative, in particularly the way in which we have seen that expressed in Phillipians 2:12-13, the demand is to do justice to this full involvement of the believer without allowing this involvement to become competative with the work of God. The demand is to do justice to the full involvement of the believer, we are saying, without allowing this involvement to be as somehow supplementing or going beyond - adding to - the work of God's grace. ... But, it's a matter, as we have been saying, of 100% the work of God and just because of that, involving the believer 100%.

There is no theological technique that will keep the imperative from becoming an occasion for moralism. Alternately, so far as I can see, there is no theological technique, there is no golden doctrinal formulation, that will keep the indicative from being heard as an invitation to quietism and to antinomianism. The key here is that in our theologizing and in our Christian life, we walk by faith and not by sight. And as we do that, we will be able, I think, then to negotiate the narrow ledge that is under foot. Undoubtedly, we walk along a very thin ridge in which the fall to either side is ever before us. But as, through the sovereign working of God, by faith we walk along that narrow ledge, then we will come to recognize that the signposts of this path of sanctification, no less than for justification, the signposts for sanctification are Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone." Richard Gaffin

Big guns
Paedocommunion Debate - Steve Schlissel vs Tim Gallant is available at Wordmp3.com for only $4.00!

Wordmp3 is a great resource for lectures & sermons. I just listened to Schlissel on James in a sermon titled "True Religion". It was a much needed antidote to the "Covenant Confusion" I read yesterday.

Don't miss this:
the covenant of works: part one by Joel Garver

Sola Fide
". . . But to protect the importance of faith we do not have to deny His presence, which is what many people, in opposition to formalism, want to do. They say, 'No, we don't want to find Christ in the water, we want to find Him just by faith.' But Luther and Calvin's point is that the water bears Christ to us. The water makes Christ present for us because the water contains and visibly declares the promise of God. Calvin loves the phrase of Augustine, that the sacraments are 'visible words.' They're not a different word than what we hear preached or what we read in the Bible. They don't bring a different Christ. They bring the same Christ and His promise in a different way-a way that helps us in our weakness. And it's at this point that Reformed theology says, yes, we do need to see the promise of God as well as hear it. We are weak, our ears are not enough for us. . . we ought to accept the institution of God, which is water, in baptism and bread and wine, in the Supper." Robert Godfrey

"We should look to the reality - to the thing signified - and not to the sign for our assurance." Rick Phillips

Hmmm, maybe the gentlemen from Greenville should convene a colloquium with the gentlemen of Westminster West in order to understand one another better?

A favor
I was asked if I'd be willing to post this announcement. Of course! I'm happy to do so!

"Norman Shepherd has published his lecture on Law and Gospel in Covenantal Perspective which he gave on March 11 at the Symposium on Law and Gospel held in Warrenville, IL, under the auspices of Reformation & Revival Ministries and the Center for Cultural Leadership. To obtain a free copy send a stamped (37 cents in the US), self-addressed business envelope (#10) to the author at 436 Wave Court, Holland, MI 49424-2238. Canadians should send a dollar with a request for the pamphlet."

Party crasher!
I was having sooo much fun with my mystery quotes! I was prepared to go on with more too. But, the gig is up. I've been busted. Someone spoiled my fun. ;-)

Just for fun, here is one more:
". . . I read Luther's large catechism, in which he has pages on baptism, and I kept waiting for that point at which I would see that he'd gone over the edge, gone too far-and was amazed to find out I agreed with every word of what he said in his statements on baptism in his large catechism, which made me worry, so I went back and read it again, and no, I really think he's Reformed. [laughter] But listen to what he says: 'Thus faith clings to the water and believes that in baptism is pure salvation and life.'"

Who is this?

It is President of Westminster West, Robert Godfrey.

Luther's Large Catechism — Part Fourth: Of Baptism.

Here is another quote from the same speaker...
Who is this?
". . . when you read the New Testament, Paul, over and over again, makes appeal to baptism as a present reality in the Christian life and experience. I think that's true in Romans 6, for example. When Paul wants Christians to mortify sin in their experience he reminds them that they're a baptized people and that baptism speaks to them about sin being washed away. But we can get nervous about that. Even so noted a theologian as Martyn Lloyd-Jones just didn't want to think that all that stress upon baptism in Romans 6 could be water baptism. It must be Spirit baptism, because we don't want to become formalists. But I really think he misses the point there. You see, have you been Spirit baptized? It is a little harder to be sure that you are Spirit baptized than to be sure you're water baptized. You see, water baptism, which certainly testifies to Spirit baptism-and we need Spirit baptism, every Christian is Spirit baptized, I believe all those things-but, you see, again, if you just begin introspectively to ask, 'Have I really been Spirit baptized?' you get right back in the morbid mess. And the water baptism, you see, is the way out, is the way to the objective statement of the glories of God's grace and mercy to His people."

Who said this?
"There are people who wrestle with tender consciences with the question, 'How can God love a sinner like me?' . . . What do you say to someone in that kind of state? . . . Luther had a very different answer. When the fellow said, 'How do I know I'm a Christian?' Luther said, 'You've been baptized.'"

Got Gaffin?
Gaffin's Definitive and Progressive Sanctification arrived! It's 4 CD set containing "Sanctification and Eschatology," "Indicative and Imperative," "Union with Christ," and "Suffering: A Mark of Union with Christ." Don't those titles sound enticing?

The blight of too few channels
RC Sproul Jr, in his [wink, wink] squib "Too Many Channels" observes an exasperating phenomenon contributing to the "rancorous rhetoric on the web" with which many of us are familiar. It could be described as The Chain Reaction and it's 'net' result is akin to nuclear apocalypse. An illustrative scenario that might be found on my blog would be that I, after reading an article or two by David Engelsma, write a blog entry describing the free offer of the gospel and the responsibility of "hearers" to respond and be "doers". As RCJr. describes it, the next link in the chain is the person who surfs in, reads my blog entry about man's responsibility and rather than recognizing that I am responding to an incorrect emphasis on one side of a two-sided covenant, decides I've abandoned the WCF and starts sounding the Arminian Alarm. Meltdown!

I think RCJr's observation is right on target. But, he goes on to offer a solution:
"How might all this improve if, for instance, we committed only to seek the wisdom of those teachers that our sessions might approve?" Yipes! That's the scariest thing I've read in a long time. I've had first-hand experience with the Pod People generated by this kind of "oversight**." No thanks! The free exploration of doctrines and traditions demands caution and discernment certainly, but the benefit from such study far outweighs the risk. Ignorance does not equal orthodoxy. The overall effect of submission to such a restrictive method can only lead to increased polarization and sectarianism. I've seen it, I've done it and I don't want any part of it!

**I emphasize that I am speaking of my specific experience and/or in generalities rather than of Dr. Sproul or his congregation.

Alone faith alone
Ya gotta love Doug Wilson. His parables are really clever and this one is no exception. It made me laugh outloud all by myself. The "marketing & PR" reference combined with the "donors' brochure" was an especially elegant touch. But, great minds must think alike: A Thoughtful Question by Mark Horne.

Whoa...
Peter Lillback, in his last covenant theology lecture, made the observation that in Adam, the universal glorification of all men was a hypothetical possibility. Of course, I knew that but it startled me a little as I pondered it's significance with regard to the infra/supralapsarian debate. I feel no pressing need to choose a side - it's an exercise in vanity - but thinking of Adam's real potential to be a righteous fed head caused a marked tilt towards the infra side for me. But still, there is the eternal covenant of redemption... oh, nevermind. Thinking about this gives me the same feeling I used to have as a kid when I would look into the night sky and wonder where the universe ended and what was beyond that, and beyond that and...

Mother's Day
When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple
with a red hat that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
and satin candles, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired
and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
and run my stick along the public railings
and make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
and pick the flowers in other people's gardens...

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

This is the poem - not a particularly good poem - that started the phenomenon known as The Red Hat Society. For those in the dark, the Red Hat Society is a "disorganization" dedicated to "fun after fifty for women of all walks of life" whose philosophy is "silliness is the comedy relief of life." My 80 year old mom is a card carrying member of the Red Hat Society. She dresses up in shocking purple and red and, with a gang of similarly dressed ladies, she descends upon unwary establishments and social events - sort of an old lady's "Chinese Fire Drill." (She is also a "cheerleader" for her local highschool girl's basketball team. The grey-haired "cheerleaders," dressed in the team sweatshirt, comprise a bleacher cheering section which even charters a bus to travel to away games.)

My mom is the crazy lady in the back row on the far left:

Happy Mother's Day Mom! I love you.
I hope I can be as gregarious and crazy as she is when I am 80! Hmmm...I wonder if I could talk anyone into dressing in purple and red with me for Christian conferences?