Category Archives: Theological Issues

Posts on theological issues not in other categories

Driscoll's Horrible Histories

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Dave Warnock (no relation to Adrian) has posted on What Driscoll really said about God and hate, partly in response to my own post on the matter, whose title, in the sincerest form of flattery no doubt, he has simply copied.

Alastair, in an update to his original post, gave links to audio files of three of Driscoll’s talks from his visit to Edinburgh:

But I note that the talks from the MenMakers conference are not available online, at least not from this site. These include the second talk on which I posted, the one in which, according to Adrian, Driscoll said a single man “cannot fully reflect God”.

Unlike me, Dave has in fact listened to one of Driscoll’s talks, the one on sex. He writes:

An interesting review of Church History, more akin to the Horrible Histories genre than anything else I have heard. … This is definitely not something you want to listen to if you are a single man.

Well, in that case, as a single man, I won’t listen to it, I will just recommend that you read Dave’s not exactly positive response. “Horrible Histories” indeed! I will copy that line, to flatter Dave.

What Driscoll really said about God and hate

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Thanks to Alastair Roberts, who was there and has presumably now transcribed a recording, we can now read what Mark Driscoll really had to say at the Edinburgh conference about God and hate, as part of his talk on the atonement. Previously we had to rely on Adrian Warnock’s summary of his words. And it turns out that Adrian’s summary was rather misleading.

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"Children of wrath" and a puzzle over Calvinism

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I have been following, and occasionally contributing to, an interesting comment thread on Alastair Roberts’ post Does God Love or Hate You? This discussion arose out of my own post about Mark Driscoll’s teaching “God hates you”. In comments today on Alastair’s post the issue has come up of what it what it means to be “children of wrath”, the traditional wording at Ephesians 2:3.

I realised that there is something puzzling about the meaning of this phrase. This is basically a Hebrew idiom, “children of …” meaning “people characterised by …”. More fully, a literal translation is “by nature children of wrath” (RSV). TNIV interprets as “by nature deserving of wrath”. But Alastair seems to understand the phrase as meaning “destined for wrath”.

The puzzle is what this means, especially for those who take a Calvinist position. For this phrase is a description not of unbelievers, but of the past state of the believers to whom the letter is addressed. So Calvinists, who believe that God predestined and foreknew that these people would become believers, can hardly understand the phrase as meaning “destined for wrath”. Continue reading →

A Complementarian in Canada

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I mentioned in my last post Rev David Short, Rector of of St John’s, Shaughnessy, Vancouver, and a leading member of the Anglican Network in Canada which is breaking away from the official Anglican Church of Canada. He came to Vancouver from Australia, the conservative Sydney diocese. His church is, I am told, the largest Anglican congregation in Canada, and its financial contribution, expected to be 10% of the parish income, will no doubt be important to the Network.

A reader has pointed out to me that Short holds a complementarian position and, contrary to the rules of the Anglican Church of Canada, opposes the ordination of women. This has also been mentioned in comments here, and looks like being a tricky issue for the Network. As evidence for this, I was sent a link to some of Short’s sermons, with a recommendation of the (29 minute) sermon Prime Rib on Genesis 2:18-25, from 19th October 2006, which I listened to and made a few notes on.

I must say I was pleasantly surprised by this sermon. Yes, Short is complementarian, but this is the relatively acceptable face of complementarianism. Continue reading →

Not brains on a stick

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John Hobbins has made an interesting point, which many of you may not see because it is hidden underneath some Hebrew in a post on Psalm 100 which seems a bit heavy to digest on top of turkey and pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving day (not that I am eating them, but John is and no doubt most Americans are):

Verbal acclamation of יהוה [Yahweh, the LORD] was part of a kinesthetic act of worship. You shout. You whoop it up. You process into God’s presence. Hasidic Jews and charismatic Christians know this. Others approach worship as if they were brains on a stick.

Well, as I posted before I tend to be kinesthetic. That is surely why I don’t relate to worship which appeals to “brains on a stick”. And maybe that is part of why I love charismatic worship – but the other part is the presence of the Holy Spirit among the people of God.

Thanks, John, and enjoy your feast and the rest of your holiday!

Mark Driscoll: "I murdered God", "God hates you"

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If Adrian Warnock’s summary of his words is to be believed, in a sermon on the atonement, preached yesterday in Edinburgh, Mark Driscoll said:

A war is brewing over this issue. This is the issue we must be willing to fight over. If we lose this, we lose the gospel. … if you deny this, you have essentially lost the Christian faith …

I MURDERED GOD!

Now Driscoll can confess this of himself if he likes, but he seems to require every Christian to confess the same. Now I have committed a large number of sins, but I do not confess to this particular murder, or indeed to any murder. Continue reading →

The root of John Piper's wrong theology

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I may have got myself into trouble with some comments I made on Adrian Warnock’s blog, on his post 2 Corinthians 5 and Romans 5 – Two Critical Passages on Justification. This post is part of Adrian’s series on John Piper’s new book The Future of Justification. I was commenting mainly on these words which Adrian quoted from Piper:

Justification . . . happens to all who are connected to Christ the same way condemnation happened to those who were connected to Adam. How is that? Adam acted sinfully, and because we were connected to him, we were condemned in him. Christ acted righteously, and because we are connected to Christ we are justified in Christ. Adam’s sin is counted as ours. Christ’s “act of righteousness” is counted as ours.

In my first comment I argued that Piper is here basing his theology of justification on an analogy with Augustine’s understanding of original sin, an understanding which is faulty because, as widely recognised and as I explained in a previous post here, Augustine misunderstood Paul’s meaning in Romans 5:12 based on a poor Latin translation.

I went on to begin to sketch out some alternative views of my own. Continue reading →

Convert or Die?

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I have put off responding to Doug Chaplin’s challenge, passed on from John Hobbins, to name my top ten Bible verses. Maybe I will do this sometime, but don’t hold your breath. I always find it difficult to name my favourite anything, and with Bible verses it is harder than ever.

Doug nominated me for this Bible verse challenge as “someone who seems to think entirely differently from me on so many things”. Well, yes, we have big differences on a few issues, such as reservation and adoration of the eucharistic elements. But in fact as brothers in Christ we think very similarly on far more issues – although I don’t so often comment on them on Doug’s blog.

For example, take Doug’s response to the new “Convert or Die” meme, in which he explains why he did not become a Roman Catholic. Although I have never come close to going over to Rome as he did, I could echo all of his reasons for not doing so, although I might also add a point about the Eucharist.

Having refused (for now) to take up the meme which Doug did tag me with, I will now take up the “Convert or Die” meme with which he didn’t tag me, or in fact anyone. If this is breaking the unwritten rules for memes, I don’t care! The meme originates with Nick Norelli, who has made a good choice of WordPress template (!). The question is:

If your life depended on it and you absolutely had to change your denomination/religion, what denomination/religion would you convert to?

Well, how do I answer that one? Continue reading →

A Solid Rock Ledge on the Slippery Slope

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The argument is sometimes made that there is a “slippery slope” of “concessions” by the church to modern culture in the area of inter-personal relationships, and especially gender issues. The various stages on this slope are, perhaps:

  1. Abolition of slavery;
  2. Women in leadership in the church;
  3. Full acceptance of homosexuality in the church;
  4. The latest one I have read about: acceptance of “polyamory”.

Now to be fair by no means all of those who use the “slippery slope” argument start it with abolition of slavery. But some do. And the general argument seems to be that acceptance of one of these stages necessarily opens the way to the next stage. So, the people who argue like this position themselves with pride on a supposedly solid mountain top, often based on a fundamentalist understanding of the Bible, and condemn any shift from this position as starting on the slippery slope. Perhaps they are thinking in terms of the psalmist’s image of his feet slipping in Psalm 38:16 and elsewhere.

But is the slope in fact a slippery one, or is it broken by a ledge or barrier made of solid rock, a “shelf of rocks” as Ben Witherington renders part of Matthew 16:18, of biblical truth? Can this determine how far Christians can legitimately part company from one another without betraying the gospel abandoning their faith?

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Reflecting Culture, not Changing Attitude

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Chelmsford Anglican Mainstream quotes from an interesting press release from Changing Attitude, a pressure group which is “working for gay and lesbian affirmation within the Anglican Communion”, and of which the Bishop of Chelmsford is a patron. The press release, written by Davis Mac-Iyalla, director of Changing Attitude Nigeria, is interesting for its argument that full acceptance of homosexuality in the life of the church is analogous to the abolition of slavery.

Now in my post yesterday A further implication of Christianity being cross-cultural I noted (quoting an older post) that

slavery is accepted in the Bible because it was accepted by all in the cultural context, but this does not imply that it is normative for Christians.

In other words, it is right for Christians to support the abolition of slavery because the acceptance of slavery in the Bible was a culturally relative matter. This argument is in practice accepted by almost all Christians today, although it was highly controversial in the 19th century. Many evangelicals, including myself, apply the same argument to biblical passages which appear to teach that church leaders must be male, but this remains a controversial issue.

But does the same argument apply to homosexuality, as Mac-Iyalla seems to claim? Where should the line be drawn between what is culturally relative and what are the fundamental and unchangeable principles of the Christian faith?

Continue reading →