Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth

Good post on Triablogue. Read it to understand the title. Very thought-provoking. The thoughts that it provoked in me:

Jim Pemberton said...
It seems to me that people generally promote discipline in those areas they consider fundamental to morality and they promote liberty otherwise.

Political conservatives hold to traditional values and leave everything else up to personal responsibility as a matter of some liberty. Rebelling against traditional values, political liberals have declared liberty in those areas while developing a different set of moral strictures otherwise.

Both general schools of moral thought are arbitrary when untethered from biblical revelation, even where they happen to be similar to it.

A critique of “A Color-Blind Denomination”

Todd Benkert, a white brother, wrote an article on race relations and his friend, Raymond Dix, a black Pastor, wrote a thoughtful article critiquing it. Both articles are worth a read. In the comments on Pastor Dix' article Todd made an astute observation that has a practical application to the matter at hand:

"sin issues are not solved in the abstract."

I agreed and added a few lines to his observation:

Jim Pemberton February 26, 2012 at 10:11 pm
 
“Sin issues are not solved in the abstract.”

Great observation. I’ve often heard abstract truths offered as solutions to practical outworking of sin. I may have given some myself. The abstract is the foundation for practical solutions, but we don’t do anyone any favors unless we also come across with something practical we can use out of it.

“In our focus on Jesus we must strive toward unity in Christ in real and concrete ways.”
Amen. And I would add that it’s a long time coming. Most people toss only the abstract in the ring because they don’t really want to deal with the problem. It’s like they say, “See? I have the solution. Now I’ve done my part and can wash my hands and go back to my comfortable life while you have to figure the practical out on your own.”

For the matter of race relations, if we are serious about it, it requires actually developing relationships cross-culturally. Friends are friendly, but also know, trust, and love each other well enough to deal with each others’ sin.

Having the Mind of Christ - Having Faith Based on Knowledge

Fellow commenter on SBC Voices, Christiane asked a rhetorical question on Jared Moore's response to John Franke's book. Silly me likes answering rhetorical questions.

Jim Pemberton February 20, 2012 at 3:41 pm
“If I ‘rationally’ understood the great mysteries, then it wouldn’t be called ‘faith’, would it?”

Christiane,
I can agree that you likely don’t understand, or don’t yet know, what Biblical faith actually is. The definition of faith that you imply here is placed in contrast to knowledge.

However, let me encourage you in your faith to pursue the knowledge that you have available to you by virtue of the Holy Spirit. Biblical faith goes hand-in-hand with knowledge (Eph. 4:11-16; Phi 6; 2 Pet 1:3-11) and we who have faith also have the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16). There is no question that we have faith by virtue of some knowledge given to us by God and that this faith is strengthened by pursuing greater knowledge. Therefore, we don’t pursue knowledge for its own sake, but we have knowledge for the sake of our position of salvation in Christ and the mission of His Body.

And I offer this encouragement also to all of you - seek to know God and understand Him. He hasn't simply given us information to absorb on our own, but He has given us the Holy Spirit to help us understand Him. Pursue this understanding.

Understanding and Responding to John Franke’s Nonfoundationalism

This article on SBC Voices by Jared Moore is very instructive. It's long, but very well done. My own comment adds only a drop to the bucket full of what Jared wrote:

Jim Pemberton February 20, 2012 at 5:04 pm
 
I think Franke here is guity of at least one common error: there is a difference between the truth and knowing the truth. Many people conflate truth with epistemology, talking about the truth with regard to how we know the truth. However, this denies that the truth that has been revealed to us is actually knowable.

But in one sense I see the issue that Franke is trying to address here. It seems (seems) like Jesus and the Apostles treated the OT scriptures often willin-nilliy. Jesus talked about how the Son of Man was to be raised up like Moses raised up the serpent (John 3:14) or that Jonah was a sign of Christ (e.g. Mat 12:39). But the NT meanings aren’t revealed by an exegesis of the OT passages. In these examples, Jesus is using those accounts as illustrations of something else he was trying to teach. That’s not to say that those accounts weren’t given originally in part to provide material for NT analogy, but we don’t have the place of being able to invent our own meaning for things like this. Jesus and the Apostles did – we don’t. So their use of OT scriptures is instructive to us, but we can’t fully base our methods of exegesis on them.

What Unbelieving Pagans Know about God and Why They Are Responsible for It

Justin Taylor observes the following in an article about Romans 1:18-21:

First, the object of their knowledge is God’s “invisible attributes.”

Second, he explains the location of their knowledge of these invisible divine attributes: “in the things that have been made.”

Third, he explains the duration of their knowledge, to the effect that this has always been the case: “ever since the creation of the world.”

Fourth, he points to the quality of their knowledge: it is “clearly perceived,”

Paul adds all of this together and draws the inescapable conclusion (oun, so, therefore) for those who know God but suppress his truth: “they are without excuse.” None can plead ignorance, therefore none can excuse their moral responsibility and culpability.

Paul continues to explain what he means in verse 21. Their knowledge of God should lead to two appropriate responses, but instead we see two regrettable reversals: (1) they refused to honor God as God and (2) they refused to thank God for his wonderful gifts.

Read the whole article for the details.

I commented that this is one reason I don't believe in atheists. I don't believe they exist.

To explain this thought:

On the one hand, I love the irony of claiming to not believe in people who believe they don't believe in the existence of God. Simply claiming God or someone doesn't exist doesn't mean that they do. But the truth is that they do know of His existence and have chosen self-delusion in an attempt to escape His sovereign right over them.

Justin ended the article with this:

Studying just these few verses gives us enormous insight into what the pagans know and why they are responsible. May it motivate us to bring the gospel to those who are both near and far.

I couldn't agree more. Paul wrote this section for a reason. I can imagine that atheists would be incensed to be told that they really know God down deep and have simply suppressed that knowledge. However, if the Holy Spirit so enlightens a person of their internal motives for denying God, then this passage could be used by Him as a means for that enlightenment, and subsequent conviction.

So perhaps the information Paul gives in this passage is indeed evangelistic in nature. Do not fear causing someone to be incensed if it may change their heart.

Maybe we hate Calvinism because we don’t understand it.

Dan Barnes, promoting a view of soteriology he calls Wovenism, considers that non-Calvinists hate Calvinism becaue they don't understand it in this SBC Voices article. I speculate that it goes both ways and charge that we must try to understand the positions of people who disagree with us.

Jim Pemberton February 16, 2012 at 3:48 pm

That’s why it’s important to try to understand whoever you decide to oppose instead of assuming that you already understand. And it goes both ways. James White and Greg Koukl both always preach to learn what those who oppose you truly believe.

I think the reason we don’t is because the human intellect has a kind of inertia. We tend to think that the way we understand the world is the only way to understand the world and we resist trying. In terms of Bloom’s taxonomy, I believe this falls under the category of analysis. We each have established systems of categories in our minds for analyzing information. The difference between one level of intelligence and another is the number of different categories we have. The reason people “talk past each other” is because one person speaks out of one system of categories and the other person analyzes what was said using a wholly different system of categories.

Incidentally, this is an important hermeneutical principle. We often analyze what the Bible says based on categories established by our present-day culture and popular philosophies. However, we must learn to understand the Bible using the categories that were used by the human authors that God used to produce the scriptures. This principle shows up in all good hermeneutical systems using different verbiage to describe and label it. But the point is that this is a practice that we need to master in order to understand the Bible better. So why not apply it to help us understand each other better?

We have ADS on this site?

Doug Hibbard notices that ad blockers have been filtering some good information on SBC Voices:

Then it dawned on me. I use an ad-block plug-in for Firefox and Chrome. I don’t see ads on many websites–here, Facebook, Twitter, even Amazon.com’s internal ads don’t show up when I browse through them. I have been blissfully filtering my internet experience and blocking out advertisements for several years now. And in that, I have become so accustomed to the filtering that I don’t even think about it. It’s automatic and is hidden: I don’t even see an icon that says “ad-blocked” like I used to back in the dark ages. Like 2007.

Conclusively, we would all claim that the Bible is our ultimate filter. We do not want to do, nor encourage others to do, anything that is unbiblical. Yet there are portions of Scripture that are open to interpretation and we come to those spaces with preset filters. It’s hard to see the things that we filter out, and rarely do we like our filters challenged. We need to think through it, though. Pray through it.Keep re-examining ourselves and drawing closer to seeing what we have been missing. There is truth in the Word of God that we will continue to miss if we only listen to those who meet our filter.

I responded:

Jim Pemberton February 15, 2012 at 3:43 pm
 
I’ve heard it oft said, and I’ve said it myself from time-to-time, that I get something new out of it every time I read this book or watch that movie. The reason is because of the filters we used the first time that have been eroded as we suddenly noticed something that conflicted with those filters. One good practice for studying a scripture to prepare a sermon is to read the passage multiple times. The reason is to wear down those filters so we are better assured that the message we are preaching is the one commended by the passage and not information from some filter we were unaware of.