"Nice!"

If you practically grew up in a broad/mainline evangelical church like I did, it's likely that you've been charged with acting in a less than Christian-like manner—apart from actual Scriptural imperatives. This is because one of the chief commandments of the moralist is niceness.

It seems that for men, at least, less testosterone is more. While I cannot accept the cheesy posturing of a Mark Driscoll, the times, I believe, demand the employment of creational endowments that serve to augment passion in the defense and protection of orthodoxy, testosterone being one of them (the rap sheet of this hormone includes the crime of inducing un-niceness).

I'm not sure if Tim Challies' hormone levels were higher than usual at the time he wrote this post, but he sure wasn't nice to the nice men. To that I exclaim, "Nice!"

Another post on an article by someone not particularly renowed for niceness can be found here. Hehehe.

Of Nice and Men

By virtue of the generosity of two men, namely, Dr. D. G. Hart and Dr. R. S. Clark, do I present to you this article on a perennially relevant topic that once appeared nowhere outside of the Nicotine Theological Journal. The article was featured in the October 2005 issue.

Of Nice and Men

In a recent foreword to a book advocating Norman Shepherd's peculiar brand of covenant theology, John Frame attacks some of Shepherd's critics as "stupid, irresponsible and divisive." Apparently, someone complained about Frame's lack of civility, so he issued an apology, which the publisher slipped into the front cover of the book, a sort of moral errata sheet, saying that he should not have described those (including "official statements of two small denominations,") who say that Shepherd's doctrine denies the gospel as stupid. By way of mitigation, he appeals to Calvin, "who used such expressions rather freely." He says that he knows he is risking his reputation as a "peacemaker" by using strong language.

Westminster Wednesday: Intrusion Ethics

The Decalogue is Moral Law (henceforth, "Law"). It is the expression of God's moral will and is binding on every human being by virtue of the Covenant of Creation. When the reprobate is judged on the Last Day, he will be judged by virtue of his inability and failure to keep the Law perfectly, whereas the elect will be judged as righteous (keeper of the Covenant) by virtue of his union with Christ (the One who obeyed the Law perfectly for the elect and bore the penalty of their failure to keep it in the same way).

Given the binding nature of the Law (as an agent of damnation for the reprobate and as the means of manifesting existentially one's union with Christ through obedience for the elect), the particular instances in the Old Testament of seeming contraventions to it may cause confusion to some. What of the Canaanite genocide? Rahab's lie? Etc. Aren't these instances of the Law being broken, with God giving approval? This is where Meredith Kline's notion of "intrusion ethics" comes into play.

Developing on Geerhardus Vos' biblical theology (notably its deeply eschatological character) and Cornelius Van Til's ethics (notably "common grace"), Kline proposes that these instances of seeming law-breaking in the O.T. were actually in-breakings of the consummation (future kingdom) in the context of redemptive history that was functioning typologically.

So, in fact, the massacre of the Canaanites was a type of the future judgment and destruction of all the reprobate in hell.

Dr. Jeong Koo Jeon, in his essay entitled Covenant Theology and Old Testament Ethics: Meredith G. Kline's Intrusion Ethics, explains :

Westminster Wednesday: Luther's Underdogism

Martin Luther first made mention of the theology of the cross (theologia crucis) in the Heidelberg Disputation. In it, he listed the following theses:

1. The law of God, the most salutary doctrine of life, cannot advance man on his way to righteousness, but rather hinders him.

2. Much less can human works, which are done over and over again with the aid of natural precepts, so to speak, lead to that end.

3. Although the works of man always appear attractive and good, they are nevertheless likely to be mortal sins.

4. Although the works of God always seem unattractive and appear evil, they are nevertheless really eternal merits.

5. The works of men are thus not mortal sins (we speak of works that apparently are good), as though they were crimes.

6. The works of God (those he does through man) are thus not merits, as though they were sinless.

7. The works of the righteous would be mortal sins if they would not be feared as mortal sins by the righteous themselves out of pious fear of God.

8. By so much more are the works of man mortal sins when they are done without fear and in unadulterated, evil self-security.

9. To say that works without Christ are dead, but not mortal, appears to constitute a perilous surrender of the fear of God.

10. Indeed, it is very difficult to see how a work can be dead and at the same time not a harmful and mortal sin.

11. Arrogance cannot be avoided or true hope be present unless the judgment of condemnation is feared in every work.

12. In the sight of God sins are then truly venial when they are feared by men to be mortal.

13. Free will, after the fall, exists in name only, and as long as it does what it is able to do, it commits a mortal sin.

14. Free will, after the fall, has power to do good only in a passive capacity, but it can do evil in an active capacity.

15. Nor could the free will endure in a state of innocence, much less do good, in an active capacity, but only in a passive capacity.

16. The person who believes that he can obtain grace by doing what is in him adds sin to sin so that he becomes doubly guilty.

17. Nor does speaking in this manner give cause for despair, but for arousing the desire to humble oneself and seek the grace of Christ.

18. It is certain that man must utterly despair of his own ability before he is prepared to receive the grace of Christ.

19.That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in those things that have actually happened.

20. He deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross.

21. A theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls the things what it actually is.

22. That wisdom that sees the invisible things of God in works as perceived by man is completely puffed up, blinded, and hardened.

23. The law brings the wrath of God, kills, reviles, accuses, judges, and condemns everything that is not in Christ.

24. Yet that wisdom is not of itself evil, nor is the law to be evaded; but without the theology of the cross man misuses the best in the worst manner.

25. He is not righteous who does much, but he who, without work, believes much in Christ.

26. The law says "Do this", and it is never done. Grace says, "believe in this" and everything is already done.

27.Actually one should call the work of Christ an acting work and our work an accomplished work, and thus an accomplished work pleasing to God by the grace of the acting work.

28. The love of God does not find, but creates, what is pleasing to it. The love of man comes into being through what is pleasing to it.

Carl Trueman offers some edifying insights on the foregoing, which I see as the theology of the cross speaking to the three main legs of philosophy, namely: metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.

Triperspectivalism and the Heretical Fringe

I decided to inform myself about John Frame's triperspectivalism using his own primer found here.

The impression that I got is that his method seeks to find a Trinitarian imprint to everything in reality. I would certainly agree with the premise that all of creation is indelibly marked with Trinitarianism in that the One-and-the-Many, evidenced in the universal-particulars relationship found in every created object, is a creaturely analogization of the mystery of God as being One and Three Persons. However, the aspect of Frame's take on this that rubs me wrong is that (based on my understanding of his proposition) if the complete picture view of truth (exhaustive) is only available to God, then the ectypal truth available to the creature (man) must consist in "perspectives" that cannot claim to be the single body of ectypal truth delivered to man, but that the various perspectives contribute to the apprehension of this true ectypal corpus.

In other words, my particular take on truth is always incomplete and necessitates that I engage the truth perspectives of others in order to progressively arrive at complete ectypal veracity. The implications on the Reformed creeds and confessions cannot be missed. Frame states,

"So I think that perspectivalism is an encouragement to the unity of the church. Sometimes our divisions of theology and practice are differences of perspective, of balance, rather than differences over the essentials of faith. So perspectivalism will help us better to appreciate one another, and to appreciate the diversity of God's work among us."

What I hear him saying is that the Reformed consensus is just a perspective among others, and that we would do well perhaps to hearken to the likes of Joel Osteen, Rick Warren, Rob Bell, etc. in order to progressively arrive at unified Christian truth. But then how would error be spotted? The determination of heterodoxy must necessarily be predicated on a perspective as being the only perspective. If he claims this as "the essentials," then by what overarching perspectival standard did he arrive at this delimiting conclusion?

His threefold division of normative (God's revelation), situational (objects, the created order), and existential (man in interaction with the former two) is well and good, in my opinion, but then the permutation of this triperspectivalism, as applied by him, into multiperspectives that are each given credence does give rise to a pluralism that is dangerous and precisely what the Reformed creeds and confessions were meant to curb.

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.

Cornelius on the Caveman's Club

While the unregenerate, the natural man, knows of the true God (not some notion of generic "deity", cf. Rom. 1:18-20) by virtue of being created in the image of God and by the testimony of the Decalogue engraved in the human heart, he suppresses this knowledge in wickedness, desiring autonomy and the liberty to judge metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical truth on his own terms.

In light of this, only the Reformed apologetic is meet for the task of toppling down these erections of hubris. Cornelius Van Til states:

"It is but to be expected that only in the Reformed faith will we find an uncompromising method of apologetics. Calvinism makes no compromise with the natural man either on his views of the autonomy of the human mind or on his views of the nature of existence as not controlled by the plan of God. Therefore Calvinism cannot find a direct point of contact in any of the accepted concepts of the natural man. He disagrees with every individual doctrine of the natural man because he disagrees with the outlook of the natural man as a whole. He disagrees with the basic immanentistic assumption of the natural man. For it is this basic assumption that colors all his statements about individual teachings. It is therefore this basic assumption of the natural man that meets its first major challenge when it is confronted by the statement of a full-fledged Christianity" (Cornelius Van Til, Christian Apologetics [New Jersey: P & R, 2003], ed. William Edgar, 146).

Only the Reformed ray gun is capable of blasting away the club from the caveman's hands.