Responding to Hays Responding to Butler

Steve Hays is at it again with his at-a-distance pie-in-the-sky non-falsifiable theory that God continues to work miracles in a manner not at all materially different from how He has always worked miracles. Hays’ argument is really an argument from silence. What I mean by that is that Hays’ argument appeals to claims of miracles far, far away, in a distant land in order to defend his position. From my perspective, it seems that Hays is more interested in a debate than he is in settling the truth of the matter. His strategy, if accepted, keeps adding fuel to the fire, keeping the debate open indefinitely. Perhaps this is what Hays really seeks in the first place. Hays’ wants a debate of the theoretical when the issue that John MacArthur is dealing with is one of reality, one of theology, one of actual consequences. In his response to Butler, Hays accuses those of us in the opponent’s camp of having something in common with the skepticism of Hume, saying,

“I never used that argument. Rather, I've pointed out that MacArthurites often resort skeptical tactics to dismiss modern miracles which are indistinguishable from the tactics of Hume and secular debunkers. That doesn't suggest or imply that MacArthurites have to be influenced by Hume.” 

Can Hays sustain this argument? I don’t think so. In the first place, we have never said that God cannot or does not heal or perform miracles today. Hume’s form of skepticism is fundamentally different. Hays is an educated philosopher and he knows better. What we object to is the view that the “gifts” of healing and miracles as they operated in the early Church are present today. That is a fundamentally different question. In addition, it is not a commitment to philosophical skepticism or any component of if that leads us to this conclusion but rather, our observation that they simply are not occurring. If someone claims to be a miracle worker, we simply demand some form of clear and acceptable proof. Had someone been able to supply such a certification, perhaps the contours of the debate would shift. To date, all we have so far are vague stories about unverifiable reports of supernatural events in distant lands far, far away.

Hays goes on to accuse Butler of circular reasoning:

What about Fred's digression? His response is circular. Remember that MacArthurites classify Biblical miracles as sign-gifts whose function is to certify the messenger. So although Fred believes in Biblical miracles because he believes in the Bible, his position also commits him to believing in the Bible because the Bible was attested by sign-gifts. Therefore, he can't simply exempt Scripture from testimonial evidence in general. On the one hand he believes in Biblical miracles because the Bible attests them. On the the hand, he believes in the Bible due to miraculous attestation. So his cessationism ironically creates some parity between the case for Biblical miracles and the case for modern miracles, given the function which cessationism assigns to miracles (i.e. to accredit the messenger). Given that paradigm, you can't discount the one without discounting the other.

It seems to me that Hays misses the point. It is not our position that Christians believe the Bible because it contains miracles. We believe that miracles occurred because they are contained in the Bible. Moreover, we know that miracles are real because we know that God exists and that we are His creation. Now, did God use miracles to usher in the unique nature of the Christian message to those living at the time of that event? I think Scripture has something to say about that. Peter preached the following: “Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know.” That word attested means “to cause something to be known as genuine, with possible focus upon the source of such knowledge—‘to demonstrate, to show, to make clearly known.” Clearly, NT miracles were designed for a very specific purpose. The resurrection from the dead was a miraculous sign given by the prophets and fulfilled by Christ. These miracles demonstrated that Christ was the messiah and that the message of His apostles was divine. They operated with the authority of the Son of God Himself. Paul said, “The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with all perseverance, by signs and wonders and miracles.” Moreover, Paul said that Jesus was declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead.

To the philosophers at Mars Hill Paul thundered that God was going to judge the world by one man, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead. Clearly, the NT gift of miracles in Scripture served a very specific and high purpose. Why Hays doesn’t seem to recognize this fact is puzzling. It does not seem to me to be a stretch to assert that inspired history really is quite different from uninspired history. Events that are part of divine revelation really are special events that deserve their own category. They are special events in redemptive history given to the Church for very specific reasons. To place these events in the same category as obscure claims to the same phenomena in modern times seems to me to be driven by desperate bias on the one hand, or extreme naiveté on the other.

Hays then launches into some fairly sympathetic remarks concerning Amie Semple McPherson, John Wimber, and the Catholic claims to miracles. McPherson was a first-rate charlatan. To begin with, she was a female preacher, something Scripture explicitly prohibits. She faked her own kidnapping in order to carry on an adulterous affair. She claimed to hear directly from God. She was obsessed with the “slain in the Spirit” phenomenon that has become very popular in PC circles. She died of a drug overdose in 1944. If you can believe it, John Wimber was even worse. He began his ministry by pulling a group of people together and announcing himself as pastor. He talked about a new breed of manifest sons of God. He was a strong proponent of the laughing movement and called it the third wave move of God. He taught dominion theology and that without His body, the Church, Christ was incomplete. Wimber even believed that Christians could be demon possessed. Wimber’s teachings were deceptive, his methods were a disgrace because of their repeated failures coupled with his claim to serve Christ, Who never fails. Moreover, his anti-intellectual, check your brain at the door kind of rhetoric destroys the very idea of critical thinking.

If I follow Hays’ logic, I am left with some pretty serious problems. First, what basis do I have for rejecting the miracles claimed by Islam? If I must accept obscure and vague testimony from people in distant lands without question, then on what basis can I reject other miracle claims of competing belief systems? Second, Hays’ view that we accept the Bible because of the miracles has it exactly backwards. We believe in miracles because God reveals to us in Scripture that they happened. In addition, all men know that they are the product of the miracle of God’s handiwork. We also know that God lies in back of creation, another fantastic miracle. The miracles contained in Scripture are special events attached to a very special purpose, not only for the sake of that audience at that place and time but also for our sake, for the purpose of spiritual growth and edification. Such historical phenomena are in a category distinctly different from historical phenomena that is not part of God’s miraculous and special revelation. If Hays refuses to acknowledge that such a material difference exists between experiences in Scripture and claims of similar experiences outside of Scripture, what can we say but that the problem must be located somewhere in Hays’ theology.

Hays and others sympathetic approach is detrimental to the testimony of the Christian community. After all, we have charlatans moving around within the visible Christian community making outrageous claims that God speaks to them, that God is healing and working miracles through them, building empires, teaching heresy and doing tremendous harm to the Church, to her position as light in the world, and to countless souls the world over. For some reason, we are more concerned to protect such practices and we are more interested in debating the subject than we are in protecting the flock, protecting the truth, and purging these wolves from the pastures of God’s sheep.

Finally, when Hays and others compare our acceptance of miracles in Scripture with our rejection of miracle claims in modern times, he says we are being inconsistent. If we accept the miracles of Scripture, it seems, we must accept modern claims on the same basis. Otherwise, we are being logically inconsistent. Hays’ reasoning contains a very fundamental flaw. The basis for our belief in the miracles of Scripture is the testimony of God Himself. God the Holy Spirit has made it known to us. The writer to the Hebrews says that we intellectually grasp that the world was made by God from nothing, by faith. That is to say that we possess this knowledge by faith. We know the testimony of Scripture is true, by faith. The activity of God is involved, not only in bringing a revelation, or in giving a revelation, but in our receiving it. If Hays thinks that this process is no different from everyday experiences we have now, he is sorely mistaken. The problem, it seems to me, is not just one of argumentation, it is one of serious theological error. I do not know what kind of theology concludes that modern claims from the PC movement are not materially different from those found in Scripture, but I DO know that it is not the product of sound biblical exegesis. And that is enough for me to say that it should be avoided.

Lavish Lifestyles of The Pentecostal-Charismatic Movement

The Lavish Lifestyles Spawned By Charismania

I suppose the defenders will argue that this is just a small faction of abusers. It takes a great many followers to amass fortunes like this. Click on the link above to see this short special report. It is enough to make you sick. All of this in the name of Jesus Christ. And many in the Church are silent.

False Fruit of the Pentecostal-Charismatic Movement: Hip & Thigh Repost

I realize you will have to click a couple of times, but trust me, it is well worth the extra work. Check out the link below to Fred Butler's Hip and Thigh blog. If you really want to understand the darkness and the heresy that rests at the center of the Pentecostal-Charismatic movement, then here is some good reading for you. If you have never researched these guys, Fred and Lyndon have made it quite easy for you on their blogs. I grew up in this movement and left it as God poured truth into my heart and mind, sanctifying me as I grew and discovered the truth of His word. So I have already been through this research years ago as I began to see the heresy littered throughout the PC movement. I am eternally grateful to John MacArthur's ministry and preaching over the years. He contributed more than anyone else to helping me see the plain and simple truth of the gospel. Enjoy!

Click the link below:

Pentecostal-Charismatic Fruit Review

Endowed With The Gifts of The Spirit – The Fruit of Pentecostal Charismatic Theology

I want to accomplish a couple of objectives in this post. First, I want to refute Adrian Warnock’s misrepresentation of John MacArthur’s view regarding the Pentecostal/Charistmatic Theological (PCT) parasite that lives in the visible Church. Second, I want to spend some time talking about the most serious theological error that I believe characterizes PCT. By now you are probably aware that Patheos has posted a public criticism of John MacArthur concerning his own criticism of Pentecostal-Charismatic Theology (PCT). The article was written by Andrian Warnock. I will provide a few very brief comment about his reason simply because it is obviously fallacious that it only requires a few remarks.

Andrian’s rebuttal essentially comes down to two things: PCT is growing at a maddening pace, and we are bigger than the other components of evangelicalism once you step out of the Western world. Warnock writes, “The Charismatics and Pentecostals are acknowledged by experts to be proliferating like no other previous movement in history. It seems to me that the movement contains many vibrant, faith-filled people who have a deep trust in God, a sense of a relationship with God, and a strong desire to share the gospel.” Apparently, Warnock is oblivious to the fact that this statement has absolutely no bearing on the question concerning whether or PCT is actually biblical or not. In order to determine if a movement is a biblical movement, we must compare its teachings with the Bible, not with its growth rate. Mormonism’s growth rate was extraordinary as well. Does that mean it teaches Christian truth?

Warnock continues, “Outside of the West the Charismatic and Pentecostal Movement dominates the Evangelical church. Whether you are Charismatic or not yourself, I hope you agree that these hundreds of millions of people are our brothers and sisters in Christ, and that we share in salvation together as one Body.” This is a fascinating statement. I think Jesus addresses it with these words, “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ “And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’ (Matt. 7:22-23) It seems clear to me that professions and numbers, regardless of their passion or sincerity to size are not substitutes for genuine Christianity. Warnock’s rebuttal fails to achieve its goal by a long shot.

John MacArthur is offended that PCT adherents claim to experience the work of the Holy Spirit in their movement. The reason this claim offends Dr. MacArthur and should offend anyone filled with the Spirit is that these experiences have continually and, steadily produced a stream of one false teaching after another. It is more than just a little disturbing when you hear PCT adherents claim that the NT gifts are still present and still needed in the modern Church when the people laying unique claim to those gifts continually line up in support of men who are false teachers and prophets; Men who claim to heal the sick and even raise the dead. What has the PCT movement given the Church since its inception back in the late 1800s to early 1900s? What is the fruit of this self-professing Spirit-filled movement? Let’s take a look to see what she has contributed to the modern Church.

We can begin with Katheryn Kuhlman. This was a woman preacher, something that is very common in PCT circles, who traveled around claiming to heal people miraculously. Having been interviewed and obtaining names and addresses of several people (23+) that Kuhlman claimed to have healed, one Dr. Nolan discovered that not a single miracle had taken place. One woman who was supposedly cured of spinal cancel through her brace away and ran across stage, experienced the collapse of her spine the next day. She died four months later. But the attendees would never hear the rest of the story. In their minds Kuhlman was a great miracle worker from God. Many people don’t know that Kuhlman had a proclivity for the flamboyant lifestyle. She liked expensive things. In addition, she was married to an evangelist who had divorced his wife for the purpose of marrying Kuhlman.

Aimee Semple McPherson had a strong influence on Kuhlman and others in the PC camp. She too was a traveling faith healer. Few people know, however, that McPherson faked her own kidnapping in 1926 to carry on an adulterous affair. It was this event that led to her founding the International Church of the Four-Square Gospel. McPherson died of an overdose of barbiturates. Again, few people realize this about McPherson. Kuhlman had significant influence on Benny Hinn and John Arnott while McPherson influenced Hinn as well.

Another PCT figure, AA Allen, claimed to perform hundreds and thousands of miracles and healings in his ministry. He claimed he could turn one-dollar bills into twenties. He sold anointed prayer cloths. He offered “Miracle Tent” shavings as points of contact for miracles. He actually started a “raise the dead” campaign at one time. It ended when his disciples refused to bury their departed and their departed refused to come back to life. Allen died from cirrhosis of the liver. He had received DUI after a miracle crusade in Tenn. This is one of many alcohol-related incidents. He was an embarrassment to the ministry and to the Christian Church.

I could go on and on about men like Oral Roberts, W.V. Grant, Jr., The Kansas City Prophets, John Wimber, Randy Clark, Paul Crouch, Jack Coe, Paul Cain, William Branham, John Avanzini, John Arnott, Benny Hinn, Ken Copeland, Ken Hagin, Fred Price, Marilyn Hickey, Pat Robertson, Robert Tilton, Earnest Angsley, John Wimber, The Vineyard Movement, The Laughing Revival, Rodney Howard Brown, The Toronto Blessing, The Brownsville Revival, Jim Bakker, and so forth. The list could go on and on and on. These men and women are false prophets, false teachers, teaching false doctrines for the purpose of material gain. All of them speak in tongues and claim to possess the same gifts of the Spirit that existed in the NT Church. This list is literally a tiny fraction of prominent names from among prominent names.

Now, here is the response you will hear from defenders of PCT. They will claim that ALL these men and women are the abusers. They are not indicative of PCT in general. And that, ladies and gentlemen is a dishonest argument. If it were not for the support and endorsement of the overwhelming majority of PCT churches, the movement in general, these men and women could never have risen to the levels of success they experienced. The fact that I have only listed a few indicates that these practices and teachers are prevalent within the Charismatic movement. Of course there can be small pockets here and there that may see these leaders as the abuser that they are. But that is the whole point. Such small pockets do not represent the majority of the movement.

Now, I want to turn your attention of the false teachings that have been the fruit of most PCT (Pentecostal-Charismatic Theology). The most obvious teaching among PCT is the notion of individual-personal-experiential revelation. This is the view, embraced by an overwhelming majority of PCT adherents that God is still actively giving revelation to the individual and even the Church. PCT adherents often make a big deal out their dreams, continually looking for spiritual meaning and messages from God. The focus is more than a little odd; it can be downright bizarre. The PCT adherent believes that God speaks to them often, through an inner voice that only they can hear. This inner voice provides very specific guidance in their lives around issues like careers, marriage, divorce, even, and things like relocation, and even interpreting Scripture. The goal, from my perspective is to know the hidden will of God, that will which is not revealed in Scripture. Moreover, there is a spiritual pride associated with this practice. The idea that God spoke to me and told me something is lauded as an indication that this person is very close to God. There is a power-factor that immediately surrounds such people. Essentially, this view inadvertently denies the sufficiency and efficiency of Scripture. This is by no means a small issue.

PCT embraces a view of salvation and atonement that is really quite different from that taught in Scripture and expressed by historic Christianity. Many Pentecostals believe that if you die immediately after sinning that you suffer eternal damnation because sin cannot enter the Kingdom. They reject the view that all sin, past, present, and future are forgiven in Christ. They teach that the security of the believer is conditioned upon the actions of the believer. Essentially, truly born again regenerate people can and do suffer eternal judgment in PCT.

Pentecostals teach that a person can be saved but not filled with the Holy Spirit. Some actually teach that sanctification is also a separate work of grace. In that system a person is regenerated, then subsequently sanctified, and then finally filled with or baptized in the Holy Spirit. The evidence that one has been filled with the Spirit is speaking in tongues. If you do not speak with tongues, you are not filled with the Spirit.

Pentecostal worship is also quite different from historic Christianity. PCT adherents encourage their congregations to get in or enter the Spirit as they begin to worship. In most Pentecostal services, the goal is to impart some emotional experience that they call worshipping in the Spirit. I once had an Assembly of God pastor tell me that he knew when someone was dancing in the Spirit because people who did such in the flesh would get tired. The notion of “dancing in the Spirit” is nowhere found in Scripture. Another feature of Pentecostal worship is the practice of being “slain in the Spirit.” This happens when a preacher lays hands on you and you fall down. Again, nothing like this is ever witnessed or taught in Scripture. Another phenomenon is being “drunk in the Spirit.” This happens when people get so emotional that they just begin to stagger around the church and fall down, and basically behave like a bunch of drunks. A more recent phenomenon was the laughing revival. Supposedly the Spirit comes on people and they begin to laugh hysterically. If you have ever witnessed this phenomenon as a true Christian, you can’t help but feel like Satan is using it to blaspheme and profane true Christian worship. It is about as heinous a practice as I have ever seen associated with Christianity. There is nothing Christian about it.

I could go on and on about all the serious errors and even heresies that exist in PCT. I think you get the point. The errors touch the nature of divine revelation and Scripture, the believer’s relationship to the Holy Spirit, salvation, the atonement, worship and more. I am sure that defenders of PCT will respond by calling these abuses. However, the fact remains that these so-called abuses are the very behaviors, practices, and beliefs that have come to define PCT over the short 100+ years of its existence. In the second place, I am curious just how it is that PCT adherents distinguish the abuse of a gift from the proper exercise of a gift. Is it abuse when someone runs circles around the Church yelling glory at the top of their lungs or is it the power of the Holy Spirit? We hear the word abuse quite a lot. What we need to see is the criteria by which abuses are identified so that we can interact with it. So far, I have not seen anyone in PCT publish such a list. In addition, the radically autonomous nature of most PCT churches makes genuine consensus nearly impossible. What one PCT writer says is abuse, 10 others claim is no abuse at all.

In summary, if it is true that the PCT movement is actually endowed with the NT gifts, it seems that the gifts not only don’t help avoid error and sin at all. If anything, the presence of the gifts seem to have a very high correlation with serious error and even heresy. One would expect just the opposite. I would expect a true movement endowed with the true gifts to see a high correlation with truth, with very low instances of error, of moral failure, of materialism.

Here is the list of PCT heroes: Katheryn Kuhlman, Amie Semple McPherson, Oral Roberts, W.V. Grant, Jr., The Kansas City Prophets, John Wimber, Randy Clark, Paul Crouch, Jack Coe, Paul Cain, William Branham, John Avanzini, John Arnott, Benny Hinn, Ken Copeland, Ken Hagin, Fred Price, Marilyn Hickey, Pat Robertson, Robert Tilton, Earnest Angsley, John Wimber, Rodney Howard Brown, Jim and Tammy Bakker, Reinhard Bonnke, Creflo Dollar, Joyce Meyer, Gloria Copeland, T.D. Jakes, and so forth. Is it a coincidence that every personality in this list also has a very high attraction to and interest in materialistic gain? What these false teachers require to be successful is a movement of people that endorses them, agrees with their teachings, and supports them financially. This movement is the Pentecostal-Charismatic movement. While it is true that there are small elements, tiny actually, that view these men correctly as false teachers, the truth remains that such elements are small, uncommon, and not the norm.

The typical PCT adherent will accept, approve, and support many if not most and all the names in this list. What is sorely needed in PCT is for someone to specifically dig into the beliefs and, practices of the movement, and gain consensus on what is abuse and what is not abuse. Perhaps then we can have a conversation about the conclusions as well as the criteria. Until such criteria is in place, those of us who are not PCT adherents are left to qualify our comments as addressing the movement as a whole with the understanding that some within the movement may not be as guilty of error as the movement itself. 

Suffice it to say that it is indeed an egregious error to claim that something is the work of the Holy Spirit when in fact that work is used to issue false prophecies, make false claims about being Spirit-filled, pretend that healings and miracles are regular occurrences, and to line the pockets of false teachers with millions of dollars so that they can build empires and live lavish lifestyles all in the name of Jesus. If anything, the PCT defenders that claim that there are abuses in these practices should simply say amen and pronounce their public shame rather than defending them. After all, the PCT movement as a whole has made a mockery of Christianity with its prosperity gospel, its pseudo-tongues, its false claims about the miraculous, its visions and dreams, its radical focus on the experiential, and its obsession with the material. It is only because we care about the Church and about the testimony of our Lord that we make such public criticisms of a movement that does nothing but create scandal after scandal for the Christian community.

Another Story of Supposed Lost Faith – Methodist Pastor Comes Clean About Her Atheism

In April of 2012, Teresa MacBain decided to come clean about her atheism. She had apparently had an internal struggle with doubts about the Bible and God for years. What she describes is an internal struggle that seemingly pushes her to the brink of serious depression. Teresa said she felt like she was living a lie. Apparently this false life was creating a serious ethical dilemma, one that she could not endure. You see, Teresa was a Methodist pastor. She claimed to believe in God, Jesus Christ, and the Bible. She was living the epitome of a double life. According to MacBain, the moral struggle came to a boiling point in April of 2012 when she finally proclaimed her freedom from religion, joining the ranks of atheism. She came out of her atheist closet, not at her church, but at a convention filled with atheists. I wonder how much nerve that took. Let me guess, none. That MacBain chose such a venue gives us a glimpse into her real moral character. So much for the struggle. Why wouldn’t a pastor feel a sense of obligation to begin with her church family and then head off to the convention? Something seems more than a little odd with MacBain’s strategy.

All that aside, one has to wonder what MacBain’s crisis of faith actually was. We get a glimpse here and there as we attempt to follow her experiences. The story says,

“She had questions, of course, about conflicts in the Bible, for example, or the role of women. She says she sometimes felt she was serving a taskmaster of a God, whose standards she never quite met.” 

About this MacBain is both right and wrong. Is it possible that MacBain dismissed not biblical Christianity, but a false version of Christianity? I think it is. First off, she is correct when she says that God’s standards are never quite met. And that is precisely the point of grace. That is exactly what Jesus does for His Church. He meets the high demands of God in our place so that we no longer have to. This is essential to biblical Christianity. Otherwise, grace dissolves in the acid of humanistic, moralistic deism. And that, folks, is not biblical Christianity. That is actually a corruption of biblical Christianity.

The story continues:

"In reality," she says, "as I worked through them, I found that religion had so many holes in it, that I just progressed through stages where I couldn't believe it."

Is it true that religion has many holes in it, or it is possible that MacBain was guilty of embracing a false view of Christianity on the one hand, as she demonstrates above, and outright rejecting other components of Christianity as a matter of arbitrary, personal preference. For example, was the biblical role of the woman just too distasteful for MacBain? Or, perhaps it was the Genesis account of creation that she may have considered just too unscientific to believe? If this is the case, MacBain really didn’t have a crisis at all. She simply traded one crisis for another. She has only changed the object of her faith from God to man.

“The questions haunted her: Is Jesus the only way to God? Would a loving God torment people for eternity? Is there any evidence of God at all? And one day, she crossed a line.”

Why would Jesus being the only way to God create a crisis of faith? Has not MacBain embraced a position that she now believes is the only true position? If the exclusive claims of Christianity were so hard to swallow, I have to wonder why the exclusive claims of atheism aren’t. Secondly, we now begin to see that MacBain wanted a different kind of God than the one Christianity presents after all. Christianity gives us a Jesus that is the only way to the Father and informs us that He is the only way by which man may avoid divine judgment and eternal torment. Obviously, MacBain has never understood the perfect holiness of God nor the nature of sin. If she had, she would not have a problem understanding the eternal demands placed on those who violate such a perfectly holy will of such a perfectly holy God!

MacBain then hints that perhaps there isn’t even any evidence for God at all. But this story is soaked through with evidence. Let’s be perfectly clear when it comes to the evidence: it isn’t the evidence that the atheist has a problem with. It is the criteria for what qualifies as evidence that they have a serious problem with. Atheism refuses to acknowledge that it operates upon a set of presuppositions for which no evidence can be offered just the same as every other worldview does, with the exception of Christianity. Romans one informs us that God has not only provided the evidence, He has made sure to make Himself known to the point that all men are without excuse. In other words, the amount of evidence we have for God’s presence in the world is more than enough to hold men culpable for their rejection of Him.

The story continues:

"I am nervous," she says, "but at the same time I am so excited. I slept like a baby last night because I knew I wasn't going to have to live a lie anymore. Such freedom."

From an atheistic perspective, why would anyone worry about living a lie? Moreover, why would anyone worry about living a lie that actually served to comfort and help people over the course of their lives? Why not let the Methodist church believe in its religion if it serves as a effective psychological tool for coping with the ups and downs that life presses upon us? The atheist worldview is predicated upon naturalism. This is a world of random chance. In such a world morality is impossible to come by. In addition, it is impossible to generalize from the particular in such a system because the nature of reality is such that chance cannot possibly help us infer anything at all. Yet, MacBain talks about ethics as if it is something everyone understands and experiences. And in the middle of it, she embraces a worldview that not only cannot make sense out of her moral struggle, but one that cannot make her argument intelligible in any sense of the word. How could one ever conclude based on science or reason alone that lying is unethical, that one should not live a lie? MacBain seems painfully unaware of her irrational statements.

The story goes on:

“A few minutes later, MacBain strides off the stage into a waiting crowd. One man is crying as he tells her that her speech is "one of the most moving things I've seen in years." Another woman says she, too, had been a born-again Christian. "Join the club," she says as she hugs MacBain."I have never felt so appreciated and cared for, you know?" MacBain says later, noting that she has left one community — Christianity — for another. "New member, just been born — that's what it feels like."

MacBain is finally free from the rules of Christianity. But wait; hasn’t MacBain lived by certain rules in order to “free” herself from Christianity? It would seem that one of those rules is that lying is bad. Another rule seems to be that you should not live a lie. So MacBain trades the rules of Christianity, the ones she doesn’t like, for the ones she does like. I get it now. It is becoming clear to me. MacBain’s issue isn’t really with Christianity. Her problem is that she wants to be in charge of her own rules. And apparently, she thinks atheism will allow this.

Not for nothing, but why would an atheist cry at the announcement of a person coming to faith in atheism? If the world is essentially a bunch of molecules in motion, time + chance + matter, then what difference does it make? Life has no real meaning whatsoever. One human behavior is just as moral (if you can use that word) as any other human behavior. Our lives have no purpose and a purposeless life is a meaningless life. What is this talk of freedom and these emotions that these people put on display? It is the fingerprint of God, that is what it is. Try as they may, they cannot destroy the idea that life really does have meaning, that right and wrong actually do exist, and that humans should carry themselves with a certain amount of dignity. This can only be the case if Christian theism is actually true.

Now, remember that MacBain left atheism because she said she wanted to stop living a lie. She wanted to live the truth, to be an honest person. She wanted to be free from hiding her true self from her church. The struggle was intense. But I have a question: was it real or was it something she made up? Why do I ask? Well, it seems that Harvard extended an offer of employment to MacBain in September. MacBain was to serve as the project manager for Harvard’s Humanist Community program across the country. Apparently MacBain falsified her resume, claiming to have received a Master of Divinity degree from Duke University. When Duke saw the announcement, they contacted Harvard informing them they had no record of MacBain ever having earned a Master’s of Divinity.

The hypocrisy is impossible to miss. MacBain tells everyone that she left Christianity because she wanted to be honest. She hated the idea of living a lie. She wanted to be free to live an ethical life. She hated pretending Sunday morning after Sunday morning that she believed something she really did not. So what did she do? She ran off to an atheist conference and proclaimed her newfound atheism. Now she was free to live the truth. She was free to stop living a lie, to stop hiding things from people, to finally be herself. Or was she? In record time, she goes out and falsifies her resume, pretending to be someone she is not. The double-standard is maddening.

The real reason Teresa MacBain has been exposed as an atheist is because that is really what she has always been. She simply graduated from practical atheism to assertive atheism. She has never known Christ. She was never part of the Christian community. Had she known Christ and truly been a part of the Christian community, she would have remained with us. 

Who is Jesus? America’s Corruption of the Christian Religion

Believe it or not, accept it or not, America is one of the most idolatrous nations in the history of civilization. There are more versions of God, more versions of Jesus, and more versions of Christianity in this county than any other country in the world, or so it seems. The old song from Sinatra rings especially true in American religious thought: I did it my way. This is precisely where America is when it comes to religion. Now, this would not be so upsetting if it were not for America’s roots in the deep riches Christian intellectual thought. At one time, perhaps she was a different kind of nation. But those days have long since passed. In fact, they passed into the annals of history long ago, more so than most Christians want to admit. America has been playing catch-up with the rest of the secular world, and she has managed to do just that. In fact, from the vantage point of many observers, she is on the verge of taking over the prized lead position.

In Mark 8:27, Jesus asked His disciples an extremely important question related to our topic: τίνα με λέγουσιν οἱ ἄνθρωποι εἶναι; “Who are men saying I am?” Of course Jesus already knew the answer to this question. His question was for the benefit of the disciples. Jesus’ question was met with a variety of answers: John the Baptist, Elijah, or perhaps one of the prophets. Jesus then asked His disciples who they thought He was. Peter, so impudent and uninhibited thundered, “You are the Christ.” It is a very good question and one that every person coming into the world must answer sooner or later. Who is Jesus? The views are multifarious. But for Peter, the answer was obvious!

Some will say that Jesus was a good man. Others say He was a very wise philosopher who gave us some great principles to live by. Moreover, He even demonstrated how we could live out those principles in every-day life. Some say Jesus did not exist as a historical figure and that he is the construction of an over imaginative religious mind. Such a view is without historical merit and discredits those who hold it. Others admit He is the founder of the world’s largest religion. But they say He was nothing more than a fascinating man among fascinating men.

Some say Jesus was the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God, but not God of very God. In other words, He was a very special man, and perhaps the most special of all men, but he was a man nonetheless. His Messianic status should not be defined as deity. This view can even be discovered in supposedly evangelical Churches in the twenty-first century. The Mormons say that Jesus was the offspring of a god. He was the brother of Satan. He rose above all others because of his obedience and as a result, he has been promoted to the status of god. In fact, we too we can reach this status if we work hard enough at doing the right things long enough.

Jesus, after revealing Himself to His disciples informed them of His mission. He told them that He would be delivered over to the Jews and Romans and eventually He would be killed. He also informed them that after three days he would rise again. This was His mission as the Messiah. Evidencing that they had other intentions and plans for Jesus, Peter stood up and rebuked Jesus for this view. Peter had envisioned a literal, immediate King that would ascend to the throne of David and establish the Kingdom of God here and now. Peter and the other disciples had an agenda for the Messiah. They had certain presuppositions about what the Messiah would do once He finally arrived on the scene. Indeed, being murdered by the Jewish and Romans leaders was not part of their vision for what the Messiah would do.

You see, the disciple’s version of the Messiah and God’s version of the Messiah were not exactly the same. In God’s version, the Messiah would establish His spiritual kingdom immediately, providing for the redemption of His elect. Thus Christ said He would build His Church on the Rock! It was this Church that Christ’s blood redeems from all of fallen humanity. This was the mission of the Messiah. This isn’t the only time that man’s beliefs for an ideal state contradicted God’s plans. In fact, it happens to be the case that unregenerate men always create a version of God, Christ, the Church, and God’s plan that is quite different from His.

In America, Jesus is a loving person who wouldn’t judge or condemn anybody. The American Jesus is a very different Jesus from the one presented in Scripture. America’s Jesus is as flexible and nimble as the individual wants him to be. This Jesus is the best pop-psychologist we could ever hope for. He can be an all-loving, non-judging, happy go lucky, care-free, do whatever you makes you feel good about yourself kind of Jesus. The important thing is that in America, Jesus is whatever you want Him to be. He is accepting of the gay lifestyle just as it is. After all, sex is love, and gay sex is gay love. Abortion is understood because Jesus respects a woman’s right over her own body. Jesus loves women. Divorce is perfectly acceptable under any circumstances. Jesus wants us to be happy. He understands we make mistakes when we get married sometimes and He is not going to hit us over the head for just wanting to be happy. The American Jesus is tolerant of everything except intolerance and of course any version of Jesus that contradicts him. The American Jesus is the founder of an American Church where anything goes, everyone is welcomed, and God is whatever or whoever the individual wants him to be. The American Jesus gave us the Bible, and he allows us to update it accordingly in order to keep pace with modern enlightened viewpoints, and science of course.

When Jesus rebuked Peter He said something very interesting to him. Get thee behind me Satan for you do not serve the interests of God, but of man. In other words, Peter’s idea of Jesus’ mission was a man-centered idea that served the interests of man and not God. Peter simply wanted to preserve Jesus’ life. He wanted Jesus to ascend the throne now! He wanted to throw off the Roman yoke. He wanted God’s theocracy to begin immediately. Now, at face value, I cannot find fault with any of these things in and of themselves. The problem is that Peter was giving no consideration to God in his reasoning. Peter’s idea was the product of autonomy. He thought Jesus had come to fulfill his ideas of what the Messiah should be and do. Peter thought Jesus was supposed to create a particular state of affairs. Peter was wrong.

The American culture has done precisely the same thing with its version of Christianity. We, too, have a particular kind of Jesus in mind when we hear that name. We also have a particular state of affairs in mind that we think Jesus should be producing in our lives, our communities, our Churches, our country, and even the world. We impose our cultural freedoms onto God, Christ, and the Christian Church thinking we can create a God, a Jesus, and a Church from our own imagination. We feel quite at home making these adjustments. We can make them everywhere else in our lives, why not the sacred? From this particular state of affairs, many of us force onto Jesus an idea that is simply not real. Rather than accepting the Messiah for who and what He is and submit to His work in the earth and humbly accept His mission and work in our lives and world, we begin with our desired state of affairs and force that state on Jesus. And in so doing, we create a false Jesus. In other words, when turn the Jesus of Scripture into the idolatrous Jesus of a sinful heart. We have created 300 million Jesuses in America. And when we stand them in our mirrors, the image we see staring back at us is all too familiar.

“Jesus is reverenced in the cultic setting and in actions otherwise (and in Jewish groups) reserved for God.” [Hurtado, At the Origins of Christian Worship] From her inception, the Church has recognized that Jesus is God of very God. As God, He is the sovereign Lord over all of creation and has full right to our undying loyalty and devotion. What right do we have to reshape Jesus or repurpose Christianity to be what we want it to be? Such an act is not only preposterous, it is idolatry.

Interesting Post Concerning JP Holding - The Most Rude Internet Apologist Professing Christ

JP Holding

Holding is responsible for several derogatory web pages devoted to yours truly because I exposed his tactics to some well-known ministries that had linked to his site without knowing much about him. All I had to do was share some of his comments and an email exchange and they severed ties with him. He responded by posting some extremely slanderous lies about me on web pages devoted entirely to me. He has all but destroyed his credibility among reputable Christian ministries and even most atheist websites. Apparently, according to this article, he hasn't changed a bit.

This is precisely how we are NOT to disagree with one another. It is an embarrassment to the Christian community to see this kind of behavior anywhere, to include the internet.

The Mind of the Christian

Διὸ ἀναζωσάμενοι τὰς ὀσφύας τῆς διανοίας ὑμῶν νήφοντες τελείως ἐλπίσατε ἐπὶ τὴν φερομένην ὑμῖν χάριν ἐν ἀποκαλύψει Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. (1 Peter 1:13)

Therefore, preparing your minds for action, be self-controlled, fix your hope on the grace being brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (My translation)

The letter of the Apostle Peter is one of the most fascinating works among the NT documents. IT garnered serious attention among early church fathers but did not quite receive the same attention as the Pauline corpus. “In the sixteenth century, however, the letter of 1 Peter as a whole suddenly rose to special prominence among the NT writings under the power influence of Martin Luther. In his “Preface to the New Testament” 1522, Luther ranked 1 Peter among “the true and noblest books of the New Testament” containing “the true kernel and marrow of all the books.” [Elliot, 1 Peter]

The letter, which contains more OT relative to its size than any other NT document, except perhaps Revelation, may have much to contribute at a time of renewed interest in the theological interpretation of Scripture. [Peter R. Rogers, Theological Interpretation of the New Testament, Vanhoozer] Indeed, Peter’s prolific use of the OT should, at a minimum cause one to pause and contemplate how and why he uses it as often as he does. Clearly he is employing a pinpointed and strategic approach in his project of edification and encouragement to the Asian Christians.

Persecution was not an abstract notion for believers in Asia Minor; they were undergoing fierce repercussions for their faith. Peter encouraged believers to endure in the face of difficult times. He did this by promoting a biblical worldview among the believers. [Kostenberger, Kellum, Quarles: The Cradle, The Cross, And The Crown] Foreign, but becoming more a little familiar to those of us in the West and especially in the Americas, is the concept of being persecuted for Christian beliefs. Peter’s audience was all too familiar with a culture that was clearly hostile to the gospel and to the Christian community specifically. The worldly group among which the Christians lived was constantly pressing the believers to abandon their faith, their newfound value system, their new group of Christian brothers and sisters, and return to the group of their tradition, of their childhood, of their culture. This pressure was constant and it was evidently in the process of increasing. It was to Christians living in this environment that Peter addresses in his letter.

Peter addresses his audience as aliens, scatter about, who are chosen by God. He gives God glory that He has caused both himself and these Christians to be born again to a living hope, to an inheritance which is imperishable. He reassures them that they are being kept, not by their own power or their own will, but by the power of God. He points out that their various trials are nothing more than God working in them to strengthen and further purify their faith. He rejoices that God sent the Holy Spirit into those by whom the gospel has reached these Asian Christians. It is because of everything I just mentioned that Peter makes the statement I quoted at the top of this post.

Therefore, or for this reason, gird up the loins of your mind, says Peter. The NAS translates this phrase as the common Greek idiom that it is: prepare your minds for action. The undefined aspect of the participle with the present tense of the controlling verb is why I translate the participle as preparing rather than having prepared. The idea is that since your mind has now entered a state or preparation for action, you must be self-controlled. That is, not controlled by contrary forces or competitors. These forces come from within and without. The internal sins of lust and anger are examples. The external force of persecution and pressure are also good examples. These two are not neatly disconnected in this letter however. After all, it is the external pressure to pursue the internal lusts that is creating the hostile environment for the Christians to begin with.

The phrase ἀναζωσάμενοι τὰς ὀσφύας τῆς διανοίας, according to Lowe-Nida means, (an idiom, literally ‘to bind up the loins of the mind’) to prepare oneself for learning and thinking—‘to get one’s mind ready for action, to be ready to learn and to think, to be alert.’ The word was used to facilitate the lifting of long garments and binding their tails so that one could walk. The girding up of the robe is a sign that one is ready for departure. It is interesting that Peter uses it so close to the coming of Christ and in the context of referring to these Christians as aliens scattered about. A coming departure from the way things are certainly seems to be in the air.

Sociologist Richard Arum released a study a couple of years ago that found that large numbers (of college students) didn’t learn the critical thinking, complex reasoning and written communication skills that are widely assumed to be at the core of a college education. In fact, Forty-five percent of students made no significant improvement in their critical thinking, reasoning or writing skills during the first two years of college, according to the study. After four years, 36 percent showed no significant gains in these so-called “higher order” thinking skills. Link here: Critical Thinking Study

The practice of exercising one’s critical thinking skills is no less problematic among Christians than it is among secular society. However, the problem for Christians is that it is an egregious sin for us to engage in the cultural behavior of intellectual slothfulness. The proclivity to avoid deep, serious, thought-provoking ideas and discussion is foreign to Christian praxis and detrimental to Christian discipleship. It violates God’s design for Christian behavior.

Peter tells us to prepare our minds for action. But to what kind of action does Peter allude? He tells the Asian believers that they are to not be conformed to the former lusts, which were in ignorance. The human mind is an interesting thing. Jonathan Edwards believed “That the Will is always determined by the strongest motive,” or by that view of the mind which has the greatest degree of previous tendency to excite volition.” [Edwards, On Freedom of The Will] Our minds determine our behavior. Whatever controls the human mind controls human behavior. Is it any wonder that Peter told the Asian Christians to prepare their minds for action? The Christian husband that sees a beautiful young woman taking an interest in him first runs the scenario through his mind. Is his mind prepared for the battle that is about to be thrust upon it? Paul told the Romans they were to be transformed by the renewing of their mind. He told the Corinthians that Christians are continuously engaged in destroying speculations. These weapons of our warfare are evidently intellectual as well as spiritual in nature. The battle seems to be, to a large degree, a battle of the mind. A sanctified and holy mind produces a sanctified and holy will. Observe the acts of sin in our own lives and we are sure to see the connection those acts have with how we think about such behavior. The mind is indeed an extremely significant part of the human being.

Later in his letter, Peter points another area where the mind plays a significant role. Specifically, he informs us that we are to set Christ apart as Lord in our hearts and prepare to give an answer for the reason of the hope that is in us. While modern westerners make a sharp distinction between the heart and the mind, this is not the case in Scripture. The two can be and often are interchanged and serve as a reference to the whole person as opposed to distinct parts. To set Christ apart as Lord in one’s heart is to set Christ apart as Lord in one’s mind. To say that Christ is Lord of my mind is to say that you have fully surrendered your entire intellect to think the thoughts of God after Him. That is to say, your pattern of thinking is modelled after God’s pattern of thinking. Paul said, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” We are to be of the same mind that Christ was. That is an astounding truth: one that is not easy to get grasp.

This has significant implications on the enterprise of Christian apologetics. There are a number of web sites claiming to be Christian apologetic sites. There are more books than one could possibly imagine talking about the subject. Some of these books are well written, and serve the body of Christ very well. Unfortunately, most apologetic ministries focus on Peter’s command in 1 Peter 3:15 and twist that text to say that Christians are commanded to provide a reasoned or rational defense of theism. This is not at all what Peter commanded the Asian believers to do. Peter’s language specifically tells us to be prepared to give an answer for the reason that we have hope. What is the reason for our hope, or the cause for our hope? It is exegetical folly to contend that ‘reason’ in this text means human logic, or rational thought, or formal argumentation. We could just as well exchange the word ‘reason’ with ‘cause’ in this text. That is the simple meaning of what Peter commands.

In addition, Peter nowhere commands the Asian Christians to defend a ‘general theism.’ His order is really quite specific. In commanding us to give an answer for the reason of cause of our hope, he is commanding us to share the gospel. Moreover, the gospel is not the gospel unless the triune God, as described in Scripture, is the God that Christians set out specifically to proclaim. If we are to defend the hope that is in us, we must defend Christian theism. We must defend that God revealed in Scripture. In addition, we must defend Scripture and all that it reveals about the person and work of Jesus Christ who is Himself the very center of God’s plan of redemption. It is through Christ that we catch our clearest glimpse of the glory of God revealed to us in all of God’s revelation.

The life of the believer is a life that seeks humble obedience before the God who created us. If we accomplish the intellectual ability to construct the most sound, forceful arguments the world over and fail to show love and respect to the outsiders, we have accomplished nothing. Without love, the best apologetic in the world is nothing more than an impotent argument produced by a godless and empty shell of a false Christian. On the other hand, love dictates that we bring our intellect and other skills to bear in service of our great King. Jesus said we are to love the Lord our God with all our minds. That means we purify our thought process, purging worldly lusts and shallow, vain pursuits. It also means that we exercise our ability to discern and make judgments about claims that refute or serve to contradict Christian truth. This requires serious effort. We are commanded to refute those who contradict. The Christian apologist is one who balances his rebuke and correction of the godless with a sincere and humble heart that is apparent in the words he uses and the way in which he treats his opponents. To ask which one is most important is a false disjunctive. It’s like asking if oxygen to the brain is more important than blood to the brain. The answer is both!

The Philosophy of Christianity

According to Christianity, the state of affairs that has obtained is what the Bible declares it to be. And what is that, exactly? God created the heaven and the earth from nothing over the course of six days in history past, approximately 6,000 years or go, give or take a few years. All things that have come to be owe their existence to creative act of God who is Himself sovereign Lord and ruler of all things.

According to Christianity, all human knowledge is the product of divine revelation. Human beings know things only because God chose to reveal them to us. God accomplished this through natural and special revelation. The fear of the Lord is the beginning, not the end point of all human knowledge. According to Scripture, all the treasures of knowledge are deposited in the person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who is Himself the second person of the Triune God.

According to Christianity, human morality is derivative of the divine law, which is itself derived from the divine lawgiver. What God deems holy and righteous is holy and righteous because it is a reflection of His perfect moral character. The divine law, which is the basis of all human morality, is the reflection of God’s divine character.

According to Christianity, the ultimate authority for human knowledge is the Bible. The Bible is the self-attesting divine standard by which we know anything at all and by which we ought to order our lives. The Word of God, as it is called in Christianity, needs nothing to justify belief in it. It is, by nature, self-justifying. Should Scripture require justification for belief that rests outside of itself, this would nullify its self-attesting and authoritative nature. Christianity boldly, radically, and without apology teaches that the Bible is the inspired and inerrant Word from God in written form as it came to us in the original autographs and that the copy we have today is an accurate copy of that Word given to us from God.

According to Christianity, human beings were created by God for a purpose. Hence, the inevitable and relentless search for meaning and significance in life is the fruitless endeavor of a creature determined to find that meaning apart from its purpose. Without God as His creator, man is a meaningless, purposeless accident produced by random chance without significance or value.

According to Christianity, humanity turned its back on its Creator not long after creation. Ever since that time, man has rebelled against God, choosing rather to walk in autonomous rebellion at various levels. Man continually breaks every one of God’s commands repeatedly, continuously disregarding his Creator.

Christianity teaches that humanity is in desperate need of radical and miraculous redemption. Without this redemption, humanity is doomed to self-destruction. Humanity is without the necessary tools to redeem and rescue itself. This is the teaching of Christianity.

Christianity unflinchingly asserts that Jesus Christ is the only hope for humanity. Redemption can be found only in the blood sacrifice that Jesus Christ made at Calvary. Christianity contends that faith in Christ alone and only faith in Christ alone can save humanity from eternal wrath. Only those who have trusted Christ as their Lord and Savior will avoid eternal judgment and experience the loving embrace of God as their Father.

Christian teaches that only the hearing of the gospel of Jesus Christ can generate faith in the human heart. Without this gospel, faith in Christ is impossible. Without faith, salvation is impossible. Without a preacher, hearing the gospel is impossible. Hence, all those who have never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ, along with those who have heard and have not repented, are doomed to eternal damnation.

The hope of all humanity is found only in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Only in Christ do we experience the redemption of our souls. Without revelation of God in nature and in Scripture, humanity is doomed to an existence of ignorance and irrationalism. This explains why intelligent people can justify the murder of unborn babies and call it a woman’s health issue or a woman’s rights issue. This explains why two men can kiss one another, have sex with one another, and do who knows whatever else to one another and intelligent people can call it love. This explains why public school systems have lost all their abilities to exercise common sense and basic decent judgment. This explains why we can no longer distinguish between art and the ridiculous nude events week at Brown, an Ivy League school no less. Redemption is to be found only in Christ. Humanity continues its downward spiral into immorality, ignorance, and irrationalism and no one in the world seems to notice. As for the Church, let’s make sure we keep the light on for them.

Intellectuals Are Less Likely To Embrace Christianity

The University of Rochester recently published a review of decades of research demonstrating that “religious people are less intelligent than non-believers.” A summation of 63 studies on the subject, the Rochester report cannot be dismissed by the religious community. We must recognize as an objective fact that people with higher IQs are turning to atheism.

“First, there is an incredible bias against theism within higher education.”

It seems to me that the author of the article, David Denison, locates his first cause for this problem in precisely the wrong place. We are not talking about theism in the general sense. Mr. Denison has tackled the subject of intellectual believers, or the lack thereof. Why does this question matter? Unbelievers are more intelligent, as humans measure intelligence, than believers. So why does this matter? Do we find it embarrassing? Does it bother you that intellectuals view Christian theism with intellectual contempt? Based on the study, it seems to bother some people.

Mr. Denison attempts to explain to us why intellectuals are turned off by Christian theism. He tells us that the first reason for intellectual repulsion is that the university has a built-in bias against Christianity. Since the university turns out the intellectual, then it follows that the intellectual embraces what the university has taught him. Well, he is right and wrong about this. He is correct insofar as the university’s disposition toward Christian theism is concerned. There can be little doubt that secular university is intellectually hostile to Christian theism. However, being a believer has absolutely nothing to do with a person’s intelligence quotient or level of education. In fact, I believe the reason that intellectuals and the highly educated are, for the most part, not believers, is located someplace else. The difference between being a Christian and not being a Christian is not located in the individual. That reason is located in God Himself. It seems that Mr. Denison’s analysis is affected more by a distorted theology than it is by psychological research.

Mr. Denison seems to have constructed a sort of humanistic Christian theism. But this is precisely the problem with much of modern American/Western Christianity. There is an amalgamation of humanism with Christian theism that has come to be identified as Christianity in modern culture. In this version of Christianity, men are the masters of their own fate, the captain of their own soul even while God is merely their co-pilot. In this version of Christianity, men decide that Jesus is the best option, He was a good teacher, He has good values, a nice social framework, and He is loving and flexible. Why wouldn't I accept Him? It is this version of Christianity that many intellectuals are rejecting. Mr. Denison is attempting to explain to us why that is and how we can fix it. But as anyone knows, misdiagnosis leads to a false prescription.

In 1 Cor. 1: 17-18, the apostle Paul wrote these sober words: “For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not in cleverness of speech, so that the cross of Christ would not be made void. For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” Apparently Paul thought that emphasizing strategy or technique when delivering the message of the cross ran the risk of nullifying the message. Paul said that he did not preach with σοφίᾳ λόγου, clever or wise words, like a philosopher, because that sort of approach would κενωθῇ, nullify the cross. These are not words we should gloss over as we read them. This word means, “to take away the power or significance of something—‘to cause to lose power, to cause to be emptied of power, to make powerless.”

Any attempt not to offend the intellect of the unbelieving community risks nullifying the power of cross. If we nullify the power of the cross, we have destroyed the power of the Christian message. If we destroy the power of the Christian message, we have effectively destroyed Christian theism. It is ironic that in his attempt to fix this problem of ‘intellectual rejection’ of the Christian message so that Christianity might attract more intellectuals, Mr. Denison seems to unwittingly take us to the brink of destroying Christian theism itself. The unintended consequences of this psychological approach ends up banishing biblical Christianity to the ash heap of unwarranted, pre-critical Greek mythology and ancient Jewish fables. It seems to me that our answer is best derived from Scripture. Why do intellectuals reject Christian theism?

Paul informs us in 1 Cor. 2:14, “But the natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually appraised.” The Greek word appraised here means, “to make a judgment on the basis of careful and detailed information.” But this appraisal is a spiritual one. It is the exercise of a spiritually minded man, one who has been born again by the power of the very message being appraised. The intellect of the unbeliever is spiritually dead. 2 Cor. 4:4 says that the god of this world has blinded the mind of the unbeliever. The unbelieving intellect is in no condition to evaluate Christian theism intellectually or otherwise.

“Secondly, I believe the present Church culture in America is unfriendly to intellectual scrutiny.”

At face value, I cannot disagree with this statement. The problem lies in its interpretation. I cannot say what Mr. Denison is getting at. If he is referring to the miserable plight of the modern aversion to all things intellectual in the Christian community, the hard work of honest critical thinking about understanding the Christian system of truth, I am onboard. Thinking is hard work. Thinking about the content of Scripture, interpreting God’s message requires time, dedication, and high degree of energy. The sad truth is that most Christians would rather be watching some pathetic American reality show, having a picnic, a shallow conversation over lunch, playing games and various other means of entertainment than working hard to understand the philosophical, skeptical, cynical, and unbelieving challenges that confront us in our culture every day.

The problem is that I cannot say what Mr. Denison is driving at. If he means that we have to be open to challenges about our deeply held theological commitments handed down to us by the long orthodox tradition in the Church, then he is little more than one more emergent guy seeking to reinvent the wheel and escape from the authority of the believing community for the sake of autonomy. Should we examine and reaffirm ancient Christian teachings? Absolutely. But can we be open to modern liberal ideas that Scripture should be judged by autonomous human reason whether or not it is inspired by God Himself? We simply cannot be open to such nonsense because the very starting point for such a practice is by definition non-Christian and open rebellion. Can we be open to the possibility that Jesus was not divine? We cannot. Can we consider it a possibility that Christ did not raise from the dead? Under no circumstances whatever!

In summary then, Christians do not become Christians because they are smart, and because they figured out that Christian theism is the most cogent philosophy of life available to humanity. Scripture tells us that God intentionally did not choose the intellectually elite for salvation. (1 Cor. 1:20) The world has not come to know God by its own wisdom. (1 Cor. 1:21) God has destroyed the wisdom of the wise and the cleverness of the clever. (1 Cor. 1:19) If Mr. Denison wanted to know why unbelievers score higher on the IQ test or might have a higher level of education than believers perhaps he should have consulted God for that answer. God has given us a clear answer to this inquiry. Imagine the boasting Christians could do if we were able to point to a study that demonstrates that Christians are smarter than the rest! But so that no man could boast, God did it His way!

Am I sometimes embarrassed by intellectually lazy Christians who seem to think there is no hard work involved in being a Christian, intellectually or otherwise? Indeed I am. The truth is that Christians, even if we are not the intellectually brightest from among humanity, should still be the best thinkers. The reason for this is that our intellects have been born again, being renewed by Scripture. Our intellects have been awakened to the true beauty of God’s creation. We are, as Christians, thinking God’s thoughts after Him. We are supposed to think just as God thinks. We are to think in His pattern of thinking. We should cultivate a real fascination with what is excellent in terms of life, meaning, purpose, reality, art, science, and the amazing wonder of it all. Our sense of appreciation for the finer things should be being refined daily. Only the Christian can see the real beauty in Vincent Van Gogh, Rembrandt van Rijn, and Leonardo Da Vinci. Only the Christian can hear with wonder and with fascination the true genius, and the real magic and the incredible power in the music of men like Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, and Bach.

The Pope, The Homosexual, The Church, and The Gospel

I want to take a few words to interact with Pope Francis’ recent comments about his apparent vision of what the Catholic Church should be. While the pope’s comments seem to deviate from the Christian teaching about homosexual behavior, they stop short of overtly encouraging the Church to adopt an entirely different position even though there is a veiled hint that that is where he wants to go. I will place my reactions to the pope’s comments immediately after his remarks.

"The church's pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently," Francis said. "We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel."

I don’t think anyone would disagree with the perspective that “disjointed doctrines” are unhelpful, confusing, and should be avoided by the church. The problem with this sentence is that there is no way to tell what it is the pope is getting at. Is this an attempt to belittle dogma? The Christian teaching on doctrine is that Scripture is a unified word from God that logically leads to a unified system of doctrines working together to reveal to us the God who created us. The pope’s comments are simply too obscure to understand. Secondly, we are also at a lost to understand what the pontiff means when he says, “We have to find a new balance.” What kind of balance is he talking about? Is this a balance between theology and social good? We simply can’t be sure. As far as the moral edifice of the church is concerned, no such thing exists, not really. Where the Roman Catholic Church is concerned, she lost her moral edifice when she started killing people for the gospel and never recovered it. Her continued protection of pedophile priests has destroyed any moral authority she may have had left after centuries of corruption. As for the protestant churches, her tolerance of wicked members and her refusal to stand for truth in teaching and in living has left her morally impotent. True morality flows from the moral nature of the God of the gospel, which is proclaimed by the true Church week in and week out.

There is no need to compromise the old ways of holiness and sanctification. The Church does not need to soften her teachings on homosexuality, abortion, and the exclusive truths of Scripture in order to remain morally influential in the culture. Her duty is to shine her light by proclaiming precisely these truths and living holy lives in front of a generation of human beings who hate God more than ever, if such a thing is possible.

"It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars!" Francis said. "You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else."

First of all, unbelievers are not seriously injured persons. Eph. 2 tells us that unbelievers are dead. They are blind, not able to see the light of the gospel. They are deaf, not able to hear the truth of the gospel. They are not able because they are not willing. They love their sin. They do not want to give it up. Sure, they will take God, but only if they can keep their sin. It’s like a woman who tells her husband she loves God but proceeds to divorce him contrary to God’s command. The homosexual says they love God, even though they commit acts that God abhors. The pope is wrong. These are not wounds and they are not described as wounds in Scripture. Unregenerate men are described as dead. They hate God. They do not seek God. They are all unrighteous and living in depravity.

"The church sometimes has locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules," he lamented. "The most important thing is the first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you. And the ministers of the church must be ministers of mercy above all."

The pope sounds much like a universalist here. Has Christ saved you? Whom has Christ saved? Is the pope implying that biblical mandates prohibiting homosexual behavior or other sinful behaviors are meaningless? Again, it is hard to say. It seems that he desperately wants to go there.

"This church with which we should be thinking is the home of all, not a small chapel that can hold only a small group of selected people. We must not reduce the bosom of the universal church to a nest protecting our mediocrity," he said.

Is the Church the home of all? Jesus said that those who find their way into the Church, which is God’s called out ones, are few in number. He said that the number of those who find destruction will be high. Again, the pope seems to be expressing a lot of worldly philosophy and no biblical theology in his comments. In addition, he seems intentionally vague.

But he continued: "A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: 'Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?'

Here we see a false disjunctive employed by the pope. He should know better. God looks at every unbeliever’s sin with wrath and indignation even if he looks at the person with mercy. But God does not extend mercy to all, at least not to the same degree. Romans 9 is clear that God extends mercy to whom He desires to extend mercy. If we follow the pope’s reasoning, we are left wondering if God judges anyone’s sin at all. If the gay person is endorsed by God, does this mean that God endorses the adulterer, the fornicator, the rapist, the murderer or perhaps Hitler?

The modern age seems to have fallen headlong into an irrational abyss where modern men can no longer collect their intellectual wits about them. Fools we have become because we have forsaken the law of God, which separates us from the beasts of the field. Recently a young man accidentally carried his hunting knife into a High School football game. When he realized he had it, he went to security to turn it in because he knew he had violated a rule. How did the school administrators reward him? They suspended him for ten days. Older generations would be more than a little shocked by the utter lack of decency and common sense that has come to dominant our society.