I will be away from home, except briefly on Saturday night, from tomorrow morning until next Wednesday or Thursday. So there will probably be no new posts or replies to comments on this blog for about a week, although your comments will continue to be welcome.
While I have the opportunity, I wish all my readers a very happy Christmas. May you all know the joy that comes from the birth of our Saviour, Messiah and Lord.
For various good reasons I don’t write much about my work on this blog. But I do put a bit about it in my occasional newsletters, which I put on my personal website with links from my home page, which is I am afraid rather basic in design. I have just uploaded and added links for my latest newsletter, which explains my current work situation. I have also linked to two more articles of local interest which I have written for Baddow Life newspaper, about which I blogged in June.
I have also at long last updated my blogroll, the list of links to other blogs on the right hand side of my blog page. I have added several blogs which I read regularly, and some others which I would like to. I have deleted a couple which are no longer active (nothing personal with those whose blogs I deleted) and one which I have not read for some time. And I have updated the name of Tim Chesterton’s blog. The blogs are listed in no particular order. I hope you can also find something interesting there. As will be clear to any of you who have been following my recent posts about Adrian Warnock’s interview with Dr Wayne Grudem, I by no means agree with the content of all the blogs which I link to; but I do find them interesting, and sometimes provocative.
…except apparently to those which agree with him and with Dr Grudem.
He outlines his new comment policy in what has now become a footnote to every posting on his blog:
Comments posted since 15 Dec 2006 have been approved by Adrian Warnock or an associate but do not necessarily reflect his opinion. Please be cautions of older comments and content on sites with links from or to this blog. …Comment moderation introduces a delay to discussion, and due to the volume of comments, many will be rejected. Writing a post on your own blog with a link to this page may be a good alternative.
Well, I am here taking up his last suggestion.
But what does his new policy mean in practice? I wrote a comment on part 7 of Adrian’s interview with Dr Wayne Grudem, actually before this new policy came into force (which means that it should have been approved because it met the policy in force at the time), which was rejected. I asked Adrian why, and submitted a revised comment, but this was also rejected. The comment was entirely on topic and of general interest, as Adrian appears to accept. And for once I was agreeing with and supporting Dr Grudem’s position. But it seems that Adrian will not allow me even to refer to the fact that Dr Grudem has rejected the positions which I hold on other issues.
Adrian’s blog has become one of the most respected in the Christian blogosphere. Does he now want to “castrate” it (see the PS below re such language), turning it into a forum for himself, Dr Grudem and others who agree with them to pat one another on the back? At least this kind of castration is reversible, although it needs to be reversed quickly if Adrian is not to lose his reputation as a good blogger.
Here is my comment on part 7 of the Grudem interview, in its original form as posted 12/14/2006 10:55:16 PM and then deleted:
Well, having been condemned by Grudem for being a “feminist” and again for not accepting that penal substitution is a complete description of the atonement, I am glad not to be condemned a third time for being in a paedo-baptist denomination, the Church of England!
But actually in fact the C of E in practice, and semi-officially at least in our diocese, recognises dual modes of baptism and allows them to continue in parallel. In my congregation, it is up to each family whether they want their child to be baptised as an infant; in practice most church members choose instead to have a dedication service, whereas it is outsiders who want a proper infant baptism! Adult believers are encouraged to come forward for baptism by immersion (in our church in a borrowed portable baptistry), or if they have already been baptised as an infant for “renewal of baptismal vows”, which comes to almost the same thing, usually immersion in the same water, but cannot be officially called baptism. Alternatively, some are baptised as believers at other churches, camps etc, as I was before there was a “renewal of baptismal vows” service; and no one complains as long as we don’t teach publicly that everyone should do the same. Indeed a friend of mine who was baptised in this way, and didn’t hide it, was recently accepted for ordination in the C of E. We are not allowed to teach that infant baptism is invalid, but we can opt out of it for ourselves. We cannot insist on believers’ baptism as a condition for church membership – but then most UK Baptists don’t either.
While this kind of compromise is certainly not ideal, it does seem to work in practice. Of course the C of E loves compromises, and this one is much more acceptable than some of the others!
Adrian rejected this, and I asked him why. I understand that there could be a problem with the word “condemned” in the first paragraph. I wrote the following to him in an e-mail (links added):
Well, what can I say? Would you prefer “damned”? As far as I can tell that is what Grudem is trying to say, about both “feminists” and Chalke supporters. Not exactly bridgebuilding! But I will leave Suzanne to complain about this. Grudem was not quite so explicit in what he actually wrote. He did say, completely without foundation, that “Chalke is denying the heart of the Gospel.” But he doesn’t quite say that Chalke is going to hell, and so he might not say the same about me.So how about “Well, having had my beliefs rejected by Grudem for being a “feminist” and again for not accepting that penal substitution is a complete description of the atonement, I am glad not to be rejected a third time for being in a paedo-baptist denomination, the Church of England!”? If I start the comment like that, will you accept it? Well, I’ll try it and see.
And the answer quickly came back: no, Adrian would not accept this. Why not? He gave me a rather unconvincing reason, which I will not publish because this was in a private e-mail. But it seems to me that the real point is that he doesn’t want any reference on his blog to any disagreement with Dr Grudem. He just wants to post Grudem’s propaganda without allowing for any proper discussion of its validity.
Adrian, if I have misrepresented you in any way, you are welcome to comment, but I will be convinced only if you open up your blog again to proper discussion of the issues you raise.
PS: Here is another comment I made, this time on part 5 of the Grudem interview and in response to Donna L. Carlaw’s comment on that post of 14 December, 2006 23:38, which Adrian has at least not yet accepted:
Donna wrote “a good help mate will see when her husband needs her gentle intervention. She can do that without further wounding him by castration.” Then she explained this with “I do believe that a woman can be a strong help mate without seeking to knock her husband out of the leadership role in the marriage. That is what I meant by “castration”, removing him from his God-given position because of his handicap.” (typo corrected)This is an example of one of the worst logical fallacies and methods of argument, labelling one’s opponent’s position with a highly pejorative label (like “castration”), when it has no connection at all with the literal meaning of that label, and implicitly arguing that the position is wrong because it bears that label.
Donna, how would you react if I wrote something like the following: “An egalitarian man does not rape his wife”, in a context implying that complementarian men do, and then explained this with “by ‘rape’ I mean ‘exercise a leadership position over'”? Of course I would not dream of using such language. Maybe some egalitarians have done so, but not in this discussion. Please let’s keep this kind of rabble rousing argument out of this blog.
“No need to apologize“, you think, Donna? On the contrary, every need, for your explanation has made your slur worse, rather than better. If your mother can take the lead over your invalid father “without making a man feel like less of a man“, without castrating him physically or presumably in the non-physical sense you have in mind, then why can’t the same happen in a marriage in which the couple agree on an egalitarian relationship? Note that I am not talking about a case where a wife “assumes authority” or “usurps authority” over her husband (something which Paul rightly did not allow, although he reserved “castrate” for the Judaising false teachers of Galatians 5:12) but where this relationship is agreed between the couple.
I didn’t write what I could have done (but which would surely have guaranteed the rejection of this comment), that Dr Grudem also uses the kind of argument by attaching pejorative labels which I objected to Donna using. One of Grudem’s favourite pejorative labels is “feminist”, which is not as bad as “castrate”, but by arguing in this way at all he is encouraging others down the “slippery slope” into using labels like “castrate”. Actually I wouldn’t be surprised if someone finds that Grudem has also used “castrate” in this way, but I don’t have any evidence for this.
Well, if Adrian’s new policy introduced 22 minutes after Donna’s comment stops people making generalised slurs of this nature on egalitarian women, and refusing to apologise for them, then maybe the policy is not all bad. But if he allows comments like this to be made, he should allow replies to them – if he doesn’t apply his new policy to them retroactively by deleting them, as he did to the original version of my comment, as copied above, posted 43 minutes earlier and then deleted.
UPDATE: Adrian has now accepted an even further weakened version of my comment on part 7 of the Grudem interview. So the answer to the question I put to him in a private e-mail:
Or is your policy in fact that you will not allow any mention that anyone might disagree with Grudem?
must in fact be “No”.
I realised that the opening of my posting above, “…except apparently to those who agree with him and with Dr Grudem”, was grammatically confused as “those” appeared to refer back to comments rather than to people, but was then followed by “who”. I considered correcting this to “…except apparently to those made by people who agree…” But it now seems clear that in fact Adrian’s policy is not directed at individuals, but the content of their comments. So I have corrected this to “…except apparently to those which agree…”
Adrian Warnock has deleted from this post on his blog a number of comments, at least four by Suzanne McCarthy and two by myself. He has not informed me that he has done this. He has mentioned this in a comment addressed to Suzanne on a post at the Better Bibles Blog, where he writes:
I have removed some comments over at my place that I feel are off-topic. This is one of them
Fortunately I have a copy of these six comments still open in a browser window and so can restore them to public view on this blog.
I must agree with Adrian that some of Suzanne’s points, and my second comment which is in reply to those points, are somewhat off the immediate topic of Adrian’s post. So he has is acting reasonably by deleting those comments.
However, I have a very serious problem of principle with the fact that he has deleted both of the comments which point out an error of fact in his post. The error is in the words of Dr Wayne Grudem in part five of Adrian’s interview with him. These comments are of course entirely relevant to the post concerning which they were added as comments.
Adrian doesn’t seem to have a problem with being corrected himself. Indeed he was very gracious when I put him right about subordination within the Trinity in his recent post on the attributes of God. But it seems that he cannot take it when people find errors in what his favourite teachers have said. He wrote the following in a comment just before the ones he deleted:
O, and please be careful about being disrespectful to our guest around here. If I had Dr Grudem as a guest in my home and another guest was rude to him most likely I would ask that guest to leave.
Indeed it is right to be respectful to a guest – and to any guest, including any commenter on a blog, not just to those who have an academic position and a good reputation in certain circles. However, I do not consider it to be showing a lack of respect to politely point out errors of fact made by someone else. Indeed I would consider it disrespectful to avoid carefully correcting someone, to stop them perpetuating their error and potentially being even more embarrassed by public exposure. And I would certainly consider it disrespectful to the honoured guest, as well as to the person pointing out the error, to intervene in the discussion to prevent the guest from finding out about their error.
As for the particular issue in question here, since Adrian has not let me make the correction through a comment in his blog, I will have to make it more publicly, in a separate post from this one.
Here are the comments which Adrian deleted, unedited:
I don’t know why the TNIV is “a highly suspect and novel translation”, it is simply an update of the King James translation in this case.
I challenge Dr. Grudem to go back to the King James Bible and teach from that.
…
I am so disturbed by this action on the part of the authors of the Statement of Concern against the TNIV. It is my desire that this provocation of disunity be dismantled. These people, these issues are personal to me. This statement has caused such personal grief, and for what, in what way is the ESV a perfect translation and the KJV, the TNIV and the Luther Bible is not?
There needs to be grace and healing and humility. Not this display of why the TNIV is suspect.
“But in typical contexts, singular masculine gender pronouns encourage a starting picture of a male, not just a totally faceless entity”
This implies to me that Dr. Grudem thinks that the pronoun creates male semantic meaning – a male image in the mind. Does it do this in Greek?
In Greek, the pronoun is αυτος meaning ‘the same one as has been mentioned’. And the grammatical ending is masculine.
In fact, no one has ever suggested that masculine grammatical endings create male semantic content, or a starting picture of a male in the the mind.
So I cannot understand this argument of Dr. Grudem’s. He may feel that this is true in English, but the Bible was not written in English. We have to deal with this.
Let me be clear – the Greek pronoun αυτος does not create a male image in the mind that encourages us to receive Christ in our hearts.
Let’s look at this verse.
Rev. 3:20
20Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.
Why should we need the pronoun ‘him’ to create a starting picture of a male in a woman’s head. May not woman come to Christ untrammeled by the thought of a human male, not Christ himself, but the male who represents her in her relationship to Christ, as a picture in her head?
Indeed, if someone came to my door I would say, “Please let whoever is knocking come in and I will give them tea.”
I would not say “Please let whoever is knocking come in and I will give him tea.” I think not. I will welcome a woman as easily as a man.
I discussed this with Dr. Packer and he agrees on this – the generic ‘they’ is perfectly standard.
…
Peter Kirk said…
I was surprised to note that this would be my one hundredth post here at Speaker of Truth. All but the first two posts have been in just over six months. I wouldn’t have thought that I had posted so many times, at an average rate of just over one every two days.
Of course there have been times when I have been prolific – when I have not been too busy and have had worthwhile things to say, or at least things which seemed worthwhile at the time. And there have been times, including one just recently, when I have taken a short break from blogging here – because I have been busy with my real work or real leisure, or have had nothing to say; or else because I have instead been blogging and commenting elsewhere. In fact this is what I have been doing quite a lot in the last few weeks, blogging at Better Bibles Blog and commenting mainly there and at Adrian Warnock’s.
This Post 100 gives me an opportunity to reflect on this blog and where it is going. How have I been doing on meeting my aim, as described in my introductory post and in the blog header, of being “a speaker of truth to all mankind“, or better (except for the rhyme in the song) “to all humanity“?
The “to all humanity” part seems to be going well. ClustrMaps has allowed me to keep an eye on how many people have been reading this and where. Currently hits are running at 7735 since 12th June, which is more than 40 per day, although the rate seems to have dropped off a little recently probably because I have been less active. And the hits have been from all over the world, except Antarctica (but then I don’t aim to be a speaker of truth to penguins!): from every major English speaking country and many other countries, and probably from every state of the USA. I realise that these hits include search engine robots, but I know that I also have a significant human readership. But I would welcome more feedback in comments.
But how am I doing with being “a speaker of truth“? This phrase, by the way, is not just from the song by Martin Smith; it is a biblical concept, for in Ephesians 4:15 we are told that
speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the head, that is, Christ.
(Ephesians 4:15, TNIV)
Have I been speaking the truth? Well, I certainly haven’t been lying, at least not deliberately. But perhaps I have been more putting forward interesting speculations, of my own and others’, rather than promoting sure Christian truth. It is the latter that I believe God has called me to do, and perhaps I should start doing so.
Don’t worry, I am not going to start blogging dogmatic assertions about Christian doctrine. That’s not my style, and there are plenty of other dogmatic and sometimes offputting bloggers. And I won’t simply regurgitate the works of famous Christians of past centuries, or even of our own time. What I want to speak is God’s truth for today and for the readers of my blog. And I aim to do so in a prophetic way. In saying this I make no claim to inerrancy or infallibility, although some cessationists accuse charismatics of making such claims, something which in fact only a few wild extremists do. But I look for the guidance of the Holy Spirit in what I write here so that it can be helpful to my readers.
So, what is this blog going to look like in the future? That depends on where the Holy Spirit leads. So I can say truly and reverently that only God knows.
I will be away from home from Wednesday 4th to Wednesday 25th October, working on my Bible translation project. I will be staying in a major city in a country where the infrastructure is not quite up to western standards. I should have Internet access, but only dial-up and not always reliable or fast. I will also be rather busier than I usually am at home. Therefore I will not have as much time as usual to spend on blogging. So don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from me for a few weeks. But then I may find time to post something. Also I will continue to receive comments, by e-mail, and will try to respond to anything significant.
I don’t want to say too much about my project here for various reasons. I can say that I will be working with a team of local translators and two other outsiders on the final stages of checking a new translation of the New Testament. I may say more on my return.
PS: I have now worked out how to blog by e-mail, so maybe I will keep in touch that way.
In a post on his blog today, linking to sermons by one of his heroes, Adrian Warnock wrote:
C.J. Mahaney is well-known as the acceptable face of charismaticism.
I commented in response:
If CJ “The Father killed the Son” Mahaney is “the acceptable face of charismaticism“, then may God preserve the non-Christian world from its unacceptable face!
Adrian deleted my comment, as he did not want to open up a new debate on this matter. In fact I had no intention of taking it any further, but maybe others would have tried to reopen the debate we had in June. (By the way, I don’t want to reopen it with this post either.)
Well, I sympathise with Adrian to some extent. He recently had the comment thread on an excellent post on the charismatic debate hijacked by an irrelevant discussion about Benny Hinn. But in this case I was responding directly to a statement Adrian was making about Mahaney. It seems that Adrian is not willing for his statement to be questioned. He allowed all kinds of frankly libellous accusations to be made against Hinn (in fact he could probably get in legal trouble for publishing them), before eventually calling an end to that discussion. Could it be that he is so sensitive to a negative opinion about Mahaney because he doesn’t personally agree with it?
Is censorship “the acceptable face of charismaticism”?
Lingamish has invited me to be a Bible Puzzler, and I have agreed to be an occasional participant. The purpose of this is:
- To demonstrate Bible study skills.
- To model collaborative scholarship.
- To promote application of the Bible to real-world situations.
He is looking for a few more bloggers to join him, so if you are interested please contact him, by comment on his new blog. Meanwhile I will be interested to see how this series goes.
Rich Tatum has added me to his PneumaBlogs list of “Select Pentecostal, Charismatic, and Assemblies of God Bloggers”.
I am encouraged to see from my hit counter (click the map on the right side panel, or here) that I am gaining readership from all round the world, from every continent except Antarctica, including something over 70 locations in the USA, one in the Yukon and one right in the middle of the Australian desert – if the higher resolution version of the map is accurate.
I guess my Scholarly and Fundamentalist Approaches series and my Bible Deists posting have been popular. The latter has been linked to from Henry Neufeld’s Participatory Bible Study blog – thank you, Henry. This may have generated a number of extra hits. Henry offers a useful, and freely downloadable, introduction “I Want to Study the Bible” – although I would never have the patience to read through a passage his recommended twelve times! And, from a brief look, there is a lot of other good material on that blog.