Divorce: Always Disallowed?

Mention "divorce" to the common "born-again" evangelical and you most likely will be greeted with raised eyebrows, dilated pupils, an elevated heart rate, and a hasty blurting out of the following verse: "What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate" (Mark 10:9).

But is divorce really absolutely disallowed for the Christian? Are there not instances wherein Scripture permits the dissolution of marriage?

My pastor, Rev. Nollie Malabuyo, sheds crucial light on this very sensitive and important matter: No Divorce: Only in the Philippines…

Dispelling Some Misconceptions on Van Til's Apologetics

The following 2-part series by Richard L. Pratt, Jr. of Third Millenium Ministries, which aims to dispel the various misconceptions about Cornelius Van Til's apologetics, is a very profitable read.

If you've encountered folks who've proposed that Van Til's method is in opposition to magisterial Reformed thought, then the information contained below will help you in giving an apt reply.


COMMON MISUNDERSTANDINGS OF VAN TIL'S APOLOGETICS - Part 1 of 2 (HTML/PDF)

COMMON MISUNDERSTANDINGS OF VAN TIL'S APOLOGETICS - Part 2 of 2 (HTML/PDF)

    

The Blows Beckon Us Back

"It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes" (Ps. 119:71).

Why is it that something which would be absent in future glory be deemed by the Psalmist as something good?

Because suffering brings us back to God. It is reality on a megaphone blaring in our ears, "Creature!" It puts us in our rightful place—close to God, in a relationship of humble and grateful dependence on Him for everything pertaining to our well-being: "The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit" (Ps. 34:18).

Layne Staley Replies to Cornelius Van Til

"It is not difficult to see that the Christian position requires the apologist to challenge this whole approach in the interest of the knowledge of the truth. If man's necessarily discursive thought is not to fall into the ultimate irrationalism and skepticism that is involved in modern methodology, we must presuppose the conception of the God that is found in Scripture. Scripture alone presents the sort of God whose intuition of system is not bought at the price of his knowledge of individuality, and whose knowledge of individuality is not bought at the expense of intuitional knowledge of system. But such a God must really be presupposed. He must be taken as the prerequisite of the possibility and actuality of relationship between man's various concepts and propositions of knowledge. Man's system of knowledge must therefore be an analogical replica of the system of knowledge that belongs to God" (Cornelius Van Til, Christian Apologetics [New Jersey: P & R, 2003], ed. William Edgar, 158).

Or else one is forced to agree with Layne Staley that:

No Pastor, No Sanctification

Thabiti Anyabwile makes a laudable case, based on statistical data, for the predicament that afflicts many pastors. He states:

"Work long hours in a job with too many demands for too little pay. Many have the wrong skills and the wrong expectations. Families being pressured and battered. Pastors are discouraged and depressed. No friends, serious conflict once a month, and people who will not follow. Is it no wonder so many quit so soon?"

That Cosmic Slap in the Face

God's desire for His perfections to be reflected analogically in His creatures is no manifestation of divine hubris but the state of affairs as it must be in a universe with a Creator and the created—and a universe of another kind does not exist!

A Lutheran Lady Speaking the Truth

"Lutherans have a special understanding of vocation. It's not limited to one's job but every single relationship I have, including parent, child, friend, neighbor, parishioner and citizen. It's any position in which I am the instrument through which God works in the world.

So, for instance, God heals us by giving us doctors and nurses. He feeds us by giving us farmers and bakers. He gives us earthly order through our governors and legislators, and he gives us life through our parents. God is providing all these gifts -- but we receive them from our neighbors.

Luther wrote that fathers should not complain when they have to rock a baby, change his diaper, or care for the baby's mother, but instead should view each act as a holy blessing. Everything we do in service to others is a holy blessing" (Mollie Hemingway, Credo: Mollie Hemingway, italics mine).

Ain't it the truth? ;-)

The Camping-Finney Connection

May 21, 2011 came and went, the sands of time still trickle down, redemptive history is still playing out, Harold Camping has once again been proven a false prophet, and the status quo has been maintained—or has it?

If Christianity is painted with a broad brush (as it usually is by those antagonistic to it), then the latest Camping episode might prove to be another color option in the palette of the perceived untenability of Christianity.

It's bad enough that true, historic, catholic, biblical, and Reformed Christianity has Finney's fiendish formula to contend with, but with the massive media coverage that this latest Camping debacle has generated, it would not be difficult to see that more hardening and darkening are inevitable.

"God Doesn't Give a Pat Answer About Contraception"

Another fine, Christian and Reformed resource on the issue of contraception, brought to my attention by Ptr. Wes Bredenhof:





Also available here

And another by my pastor, Rev. Nollie Malabuyo: How Should Christians View Birth Control?

Contraceptives: The Balanced, Christian View

The RH bill is currently the rave in Philippine news. Celebrities flank both sides of the debate, with Manny Pacquiao adopting the con side.

What does a balanced, Christian view on contraceptives look like? Read on:

"'May Christians use birth control?' That is our question for tonight’s question box. I take it for granted that this question has married Christians in mind; to ask this question in any other context is to presuppose sin. So, may Christians who are married use birth control without sinning or otherwise dishonoring God? This is an emotional issue to many people, so I will try to be especially sensitive in my handling of it.

Vos on the Difference Between Eschatological Faith and Justifying Faith

The Lord Jesus Christ exercised eschatological faith but never justifying faith. The Christian exercises both.

More below:

"The chapter from which our text is taken is preeminently the chapter on faith. It illustrates the nature, power and effects of this grace in a series of examples from sacred history. In the context the prophecy of Habakkuk is quoted: 'The righteous shall live by faith.' We remember that in the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians also the same prophecy appears with prominence. Abraham similarly figures there as the great example of faith. In consequence one might easily be led to think that the development of the idea of faith in these epistles and in our chapter moves along identical lines. This would be only partially correct. Although the two types of teaching are in perfect accord, and touch each other at certain points, yet the angle of vision is not the same.

Hawking Folly: Caveat Emptor

"The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God'" (Ps. 53:1).

Ethically, it is as foolish to deny the existence of God as it is to engage in self-deception, denying that which one knows to be true in a wicked refusal to come to grips with what one's heart, mind, and environment are screaming to be true. Lying to oneself is indeed stupid. Romans 1:18-22.

Epistemologically, truth values necessarily depend on predetermined categories. That is to say, knowledge of particulars depend on knowledge of universals. Concomitantly, knowledge of universals depend on knowledge of particulars. Epistemological perichoresis. For any of this to make sense, consistency is required. Scientists refer to the "laws" of the universe. The conundrum is that science fails to account for why these laws must consistently function in the way that they do. The ground for consistency is absent when looked for empirically. Hence, there is no escaping the God by whom "all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him" (Col. 1:16). Attempting this escape is folly.

Metaphysically, objects could not be recognized for what they are without the consistency required by this recognition. This is indissolubly related to the epistemological point. Being, created/finite being, is not something arbitrary but derived (cf. Acts 17:28). Try to imagine what non-being looks like, feels like, tastes like, smells like, sounds like.....OK, stop! It's foolish, it can't be done.

What does someone engaging in ethical, epistemological, and metaphysical folly look like? Find out here.

"Natural Law = Decalogue" — Calvin

"Natural law was promulgated by God at creation and implanted in the human consciousness. We only know God because he has revealed himself, but he has revealed himself to us from the very beginning. Thus to say that a law is natural is to say that it is revealed in and constitutional to creation.

In the Institutes, he (Calvin) equated explicitly natural law to the Decalogue. At the beginning of his exposition he said 'that interior law' (lex illa interior) 'which we have described as written, even engraved upon the hearts of all, in a sense asserts the very same things that are to be learned from the Two Tables.' In book four, discussing civil polity, Calvin made the same point.

It is a fact that the Law of God which we call the moral law is nothing less than a testimony of natural law and of that conscience which God has inscribed upon the minds of men. Consequently, the entire scheme of this equity of which we are now speaking has been prescribed in it.

Far from being a conduit of the Classical or Thomistic view of the lex naturalis Calvin made a very sophisticated revision of the concept of natural law by removing it from the Stoic and Thomistic corpus of 'self-evident' truths and identifying it with the content of the Law revealed in the Garden and at Sinai and in the Sermon on the Mount" (R. Scott Clark, Calvin on the Lex Naturalis, Stulos Theological Journal [6/1-2, May-Nov 1998], 17-18, italics original).