On What Grounds?

The word “election,” or some form of it, is all over the Bible. God’s people are often spoken of as “chosen,” “foreknown,” “called out ones” (or saints), and “elect.” To argue against God’s choosing a people for himself is simply to deny what is plainly presented in Scripture.

Implications

Oscar Wilde said, “An idea that isn’t dangerous has no business being called an idea at all.” Ideas are dangerous things, and this is certainly no less the case when the ideas are about God. As we think through some of the implications of Calvinistic ideas, some questions naturally emerge. These are good and proper questions to ask. Whenever I hear people ask these questions, regardless their conclusions,

Stolen…but in good faith

This post was so good I had to rip it off broaden its publication.

Do you know the Orphan Man?

If you know anything of George Muller, then you are probably thinking this thought: “orphan-man.” And rightly so. Through the five orphanages that George Muller established in Bristol, England, he provided care for 10,024 orphans, of which 4 to 5,000 became believers. He also established over 117 day schools, educating roughly 122,000 children in England, Scotland, India, Malacca, British Guiana, Essequibo, Belize, Spain, France and Italy. An estimated 20,000 of these children were converted. His Scripture Institute gave out more than 270,000 Bibles in various languages and 1,440,000 New Testaments. £258,000 was raised for missions. In today’s American dollar, that is approximately $24,764,891.69 (via Measuring Worth). Over 109,000,000 books, pamphlets, tracts were published and distributed. Nearly 500 missionaries were sent, converting an approximate 20,000 souls. At his death, his possessions were a few pieces of furniture, books and £60. No earthly treasures, no retirement fund, no inheritance.
Amazing… the power of a believing man. More amazing still, the power of what that man believed in, condescending to us, using us as a means to His merciful and gracious ends.

information from the book George Muller by William H. Harding

see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Muller

his original narratives via Dust and Ashes Publications

[Shamelessly appropriated from Mutiny. Thanks, SG!]

Wisdom Framed

John Frame writes:

Why is it, I wonder, that in our circles whenever anybody gets an interesting idea, it produces a party that makes it a test of orthodoxy, leading to another party that opposes it, and then to battles between these parties in the churches? Why can’t those who think they have new insights quietly teach their insights to others while embracing them as brothers and sisters in Christ? If some don’t “get it,” why should that amount to heresy? Why not simply permit both views to be taught until the Spirit convinces God’s people generally that one view is Scriptural and the other is not?

There’s No Place Like Home

What does it mean to be “conformed to this world?” I think it means living in this world as if it were home. It is not.

The Problem of Evil is Hell

The assumptions: 

1. God exists before everything (including evil).
2. God creates something (heavens and earth?) and somehow, at some point evil is introduced (we can presume that God at least knew it was coming, and perhaps on some level, and for some reason, he intended it).

Five Propositions

Newbigin concludes chapter 4 with five propositions which serves as the launch point for the crescendo that is the final two chapters.

1. While the methodological elimination of final causes from the study of nature has been immensely fruitful, the attempt to explain all that exists solely in terms of efficient cause leads to conceptual absurdity and to social tyranny.
2. To recognize the place of final causes in the understanding of the world must lead to these questions: Is anyone there? Is there a word? This is because purpose is a personal reality and can be known only if the person whose purpose it is chooses to communicate it.
3. The church exists to testify that there is someone, that he has spoken, and that we can begin to know his purpose and to direct our personal and public lives by it.
4. The church, therefore, in its missionary encounter with modern Western culture, has to be quite bold and unembarrassed in using the language of testimony, since this testimony, so far from being capable of validation by methods of modern science, provides itself with the foundation on which modern science rests, namely, the assurance that the world is both rational and contingent.
5. When the ultimate explanation of things is found in the creating, sustaining, judging, and redeeming work of a personal God, then science can be the servant of humanity, not its master. It is only this testimony that can save our culture from dissolving into the irrational fanaticism that is the child of total skepticism. It will perhaps be the greatest task of the church in the twenty-first century to be the bastion of rationality in a world of unreason. But for that, Christians will have to learn that conversion is a matter not only of the heart and the will but also of the mind.

                                                    

All Created Beings Have a Sacramental Character

I’m reading Lesslie Newbigin’s Foolishness to the Greeks. Following is a very good quote from a very good book.

…I reject the division of human experience into a private world, where the “good” is a matter of personal taste, and a public world, where “facts” are regarded as operative apart from any reference to the good. I believe that all created beings have a sacramental character in that they exist by the creative goodness and for the redeeming purpose of God, that nothing is rightly understood otherwise, and that, nevertheless, God in creating the world with a measure of autonomy and contingency has provided for us a space within which we are given freedom to search, to experiment, and to find out for ourselves how things really are. I believe that the whole experience in the natural world, in the world of public affairs, of politics, economics, and culture, and the world of inward spiritual experience is to be seen as one whole in the light of this disclosure of the character and will of its Creator.

                                        (Foolishness to the Greeks, p.89)

See Romans 11:36