Podcast Pushing #2

More Podcasting

As usual, I have been continuing to listen to more podcasts, and I felt the need to leave a brief review and recommendation.

David Calhoun, Covenant Theological Seminary: Reformation and Modern Church History

Most people that I know, Christians included, lack even a basic understanding of church history. There is always talk of doing something different or something new when it comes to church, but very few people actually understand where they have come from and where they are going. This is one reason I recommend this seminary class on church history.

This class traces the origins of Protestantism from its roots in the Reformation to the modern day church. You will learn about the reformers like Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and Knox. You will discover the origins of the Lutherans, the Anabaptists, the Presbyterians, the Puritans, the Anglicans, the Episcopalians, the Methodists, and the Baptists. You will learn about Germany, England, Scotland, America, and beyond. You will follow through debates over theology, church polity, orders of worship, and political control. You will learn about the great revivals and missionary movements throughout history, following through the sweet years of evangelicalism and peaceful zeal as well as the bitter years of liberalism, heresy, racism, and warfare. The church cannot afford to be ignorant about her history.

Dr. Calhoun, the professor of this course, proves to be not only a brilliant teacher, but a Christian man worthy of our respect and thankfulness. Each lesson begins with a prayer for the class from the setting or historical figure of the lesson, and each lesson ends with a relevant quotation from scripture. You will be educated and edified by listening through these lectures.

The course is available freely to download.

Covenant Theological Seminary Worldwide Classroom

iTunes U (choose this if  you would like to subscribe instead of downloading each file individually).

Podcast Pushing

I love podcasts. One might say that I am addicted to podcasts. With the current iPod touch software, you can listen to podcasts at 2x speed, and I listen to about 3 or 4 hours of podcasts a day during down time at work. If you consider that I’m listening at 2x speed, you could reasonably say that I consume 6 to 8 hours worth of material throughout a normal day! That being said, I think it would be helpful for me to review, summarize or recommend materials on this blog for the up-building of the church and to just keep my own thoughts organized. I would encourage you to consider whether it is worth your time to download and listen to these resources. If so, you may find PodShifter a useful tool for speeding up the podcasts.

Timothy Tennent: Introduction to Buddhism (20 Episodes)

At the time of this recording, Dr. Timmothy Tennent is lecturing at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Dr. Tennent is an expert on world religions, and has many years of missionary experience in Buddhist parts of Asia. This 20-lesson series will help you develop a working understanding of Buddhism in such a way that you will really begin to understand your own faith better and understand the worldviews that Buddhist people hold.  Unlike much material in the realm of apologetics, his lectures are not just a box of arguments against Buddhism, but really a comprehensive introduction to the doctrinal evolution and practice of Buddhism as a whole. The tone is academic and engaging for me as a Christian yet I would feel entirely comfortable giving them to a Buddhist. These lectures are highly recommended.

Timothy Tennent: Introduction to Islam (24 Episodes)

Like his Introduction to Buddhism, Dr. Tennent’s 24-lesson Introduction to Islam will help you develop a working understanding of Islam. As an Abrahamic religion, Islam shares a similar worldview to Christianity and Judaism and thus requires much less lecture time than the Buddhism lectures to explain how Muslims view the world. While far from being sympathetic to Islam, Dr. Tennent avoids widespread misconceptions about Islam (especially radical Islam) without sparing them criticism where criticism is due. He does expose some historical facts that can be the dagger-to-the-heart of the Islamic religion, but his process is far more systematic and composed than simply shooting down the religion. It is crucial as Christians that we understand other religions before we consider debating them if we are remotely interested in seeing them consider the gospel of Jesus. Highly Recommended.

John Piper: Pastoral Theology (9 mini-classes ranging from 3 to 11 episodes per class)

Most people who know me know that I am a fan of all things Piper. This lecture series is no different. If you are a Piper veteran, you have probably have heard most of this considering the the topics are fairly standard John Piper: Christian Hedonism, Future Grace, Biblical Inerrancy, Sexual Complementarity, an so on. The real gem of this lecture series is the class on TULIP, or the five points of Calvinism. Piper goes point by point through the five points of Calvinism addressing them from scripture and addressing problem texts and defending them from common accusations with composure through scripture. I had problems with the mp3 tags not matching the lectures, so be careful when you download them to be organized.

D. A. Carson: The New Perspectives on Paul (iTunes only, 3 episodes)

D. A. Carson is a reformed, evangelical academic who you need to know about. He is a book writing machine (wikipedia reports he is at 57), and he is always well versed on contemporary issues and willing to write and speak about them. His lectures on the New Perspectives on Paul are no exception. The New Perspectives are a very complex, loosely connected series of academic perspectives about the teachings of the Apostle Paul that seek to reconsider whether Paul was addressing legalistic Judaism when he presents dichotomies of faith and works. The movement is extremely controversial because, unlike many liberal movements to redefine Paul, the New Perspectives are essentially a conservative movement arguing on the basis of scripture rather than undermining it. The ramifications of the New Perspectives will influence how justification is understood, and there are arguments floating around these circles for justification, at least partly, on the basis of works. The New Perspectives are finding their way into Calvinist circles with mixed responses. These lectures serve as a fine introduction to the perspectives and critical analysis of the assertions regarding Paul.

Not Being Calvinist, Part 3: Suffering

Introduction

Spectacular Sins

This is the third and final installment of a blog series aimed to serve my Arminian brothers. As fellow Christians, we have responsibilities to care for the well being of all members of the body, regardless of our theological differences on secondary issues. For this reason, I am concluding this series with a discussion on suffering. Much of what I am writing I learned from John Piper’s book Spectacular Sins, which takes specific examples from the Bible where God is clearly in control over human suffering, even when that suffering came from human sinfulness.

Blame God?

During catastrophic suffering, the question that tends to come up is, “Did God cause this to happen?” The difficulty of this question compounds if the suffering is a direct consequence of sin. Typically, Calvinists and Arminians divide in the way we answer this question.
The question itself is a painful catch-22: if you say yes, you make God look mean, and if you say no then you make God look powerless. To make this question more concrete, lets use an example: a girl is raped by a man and is left questioning, “Where was God?” It should go without saying that were this to actually happen, the girl should be nurtured by her Christian friends and counseled by professionals and doctors, but from a theological perspective, here are two takes on it:

The Arminian: “God did not want for this to happen and is wrathfully angry against the rapist who chose to rape this girl, but he did not prevent it because that would violate human free will, and God does not violate free will.”

The Calvinist: “God did not want this to happen because he commands against it and he is wrathfully angry against the rapist who sinned due to his enslavement sinful flesh leading him to choose to sin, but he did sovereignly will that the event come to pass and will therefore redeem it for her good.”

You can see both dangers in these statements. The Arminian view envisions a God who must wring his hands powerlessly and refuse to step in to rescue his daughter due to a seemingly arbitrary love for free will. The Calvinist view can make God look like a sinner for willing that sin exist. Suffering is going to be with us until the new Heavens are created, so we should figure out where we stand and have a lot of Bible to back us up so that we can best serve our brothers and sisters while they are in need and endure our own suffering.

Scriptural Evidence

We can have the most feasible arguments in the world for what we believe about suffering, but without God’s revelation, they are worthless and cannot be trusted in. In the midst of suffering, to place your hope on a flimsy, plausible argument will not help you endure the pain. We need the rock solid promises of God to anchor us in the stormy gales of suffering.

1. God’s control over the mundane
Matthew 10:26-33. Here we see Jesus explaining that even tiny unimportant details, like the death of worthless birds and the number of hairs on a person’s head are under the direction of the Father.

2. Jesus’ control over the weather
In the synoptic gospels, Jesus rebukes a storm and causes it to calm. Here we see more evidence of God’s control over nature, but specifically in preventing destruction by calming a storm. Whenever natural disasters occur, we must know that God had the power to prevent it, but for some reason known only to him, he allowed it. Therefore there is design in suffering and where God designs, he designs for good.

3. Job’s crediting God for his suffering twice
When Job looses all of his children and all of his possessions he credits God with taking these things away in spite of the fact that it was God who gave Satan permission to do these things, yet Job did not sin in this statement nor charge God with any wrong. After God gives Satan new permission to afflict Job himself, and Job is covered in sores, his wife tells him to curse God and die, but Job replies again crediting the affliction to God, and yet again it reiterates that Job did not sin with his lips.

4. Jesus crucified by the will of God
To crucify an innocent man is sin. God does not sin. Yet the Father willed that innocent Jesus be crucified. Why is this not sin? Because he was doing the highest possible good with this activity: glorifying God. Those who physically crucified him were sinning: centurions, pharisees, Pontius Pilate, and Judas, yet God in his wisdom twisted their sinful hearts so that they would sin in such a way that would accomplish God’s larger purpose in glorifying himself and saving the world.

Get Comfortable

God has dominion over the realm of suffering, and God is good. That is tremendously comforting news. The only way it would not be comforting is if you didn’t know that God is good, or if you are outside of his covenant. If you are unsure about whether or not you are in his covenant, you need to consider Jesus. If you believe that Jesus is the Son of God, who lived a perfectly righteous life and died to pay the penalty for your sins, rose again to secure your justification, you have repented of your sins, received the Holy Spirit and await the final hope of eternity with with him, then you are inside the covenant. You should be baptized if you have not been already. If you do not fit into this description, you are not in the covenant, but it is not too late! Believe in Jesus, repenting of your sins. When you are in his covenant, you can know that God works all things together for your ultimate good. There will be suffering, you can be sure of that, but with a firm anchor on the sovereignty of God, you will never be hopeless.

Not Being Calvinist, Part 2: Evangelistic Methods

Introduction

This is part two in a three part series about avoiding spiritual pitfalls that may arise from Arminian theology. As I stated in the first part and will state again, I truly believe that Arminians are brothers in Christ and that as brothers we have responsibilities to love one another that reach across theological lines. Out of love for Arminian Christians, I have dedicated this series to help them guard from spiritual vulnerabilities that Calvinists can be less sensitive to due to our differences in the understanding of predestination.

Why Evangelize?

One of the most common objections I hear when discussing predestination is that it removes the call to evangelize, since people are already predestined to be saved or not. In other words, the accusation is that it creates grounds for Calvinists to make excuses for not evangelizing or that it would mean that evangelism would have no purpose. These are good concerns to have, because it shows a love for evangelism, the lost, and fruitful labor. They will be addressed before I challenge some of the ways Arminianism or non-predestination theologies influence evangelism.

Obedience and Joy

First of all, the Bible commands Christians to preach the good news. Whether you believe in predestination or not, disobedience is disobedience. God will never respond positively to active disobedience under the guise of theological nuance. That being said, there is more to evangelism than cold, hard obedience. Predestination creates an entire perspective shift concerning evangelism that, when brought to fruition, yields a thrillingly joyful missionary life.

In Calvinist theology, God sends the missionary as a mouthpiece to preach the word of Christ, which the Holy Spirit uses to cause sinners to be born again and have their sins forgiven, and this word is the gospel of Jesus Christ. In other words, the missionary is an instrument that God uses to redeem sinners. God accomplishes this by nurturing the missionary through the Holy Spirit, who dwells within the heart of the missionary. When the missionary opens his mouth to preach the doctrines and news of the gospel that he found in the Bible, the Holy Spirit works in the heart of some listeners causing them to be born again and thus enabling them to believe in Christ for their salvation. Predestination becomes significant in every instance where God is involved, and God is thoroughly involved in every portion.

When predestination is properly understood, it is clear that it does not destroy the work of the missionary, nor does it leave any excuse for not evangelizing (except, perhaps, that the Holy Spirit is not in you).

The Arminian believes that God has granted enough grace to every person alive to be able to exercise a free-will choice in which he may accept or deny Jesus, so the evangelism process looks something like this: God works in a missionary, sends a the missionary to sinners, the missionary communicates the gospel in a way that stimulates the sinner to choose to accept Jesus rather than deny him, then the atonement for sins is applied to the new believer upon his acceptance.

Not Responsible for Results

As you will notice in the Calvinist explanation of evangelism, the missionary is only involved with two parts of the salvation experience. The first is his own spiritual growth, where he is led by the Holy Spirit to the Bible, and the second is the preaching of the gospel. Neither of these actions are easy to accomplish, but they are at least not complicated to understand.

Notice though that there is an additional burden on the Arminian missionary: he must also convince the sinner to make the correct choice. This is where often the high calling of evangelism is blended with human salesmanship. Naturally, with all types of salesmanship, those features that are particularly attractive to people are exaggerated and those features that are difficult or unpalatable are ignored or under-emphasized. This will cause a natural tendency to speak less about sin, repentance, crucifixion, taking up the cross, and counting the cost of being Jesus’ disciple and instead emphasize secondary side-thoughts like God’s plans for your life, cures for your emotional pain, and finding peace from overbearing stress. In such cases, the purity of the gospel is compromised due to an artificial need to convince.

The Danger: It Works

The dangerous thing about applying the marketing method to evangelism is that it is highly successful in generating decisions of acceptance of Jesus, but highly unsuccessful at making true disciples. In the heat of apparent revival, the marketing methods will seem to be working well, but after a season of trial the missionary will discover that many of his converts never deeply believed in the true gospel and the church is full of people who seemed to be converted, but were really just attracted to the side-orders that come with the Christian life.

We must battle against this type of pragmatism, knowing that the gospel is the power of God for salvation, not techniques and salesmanship.

Not Being Calvinist, Part 1: Hardening of Hearts

Introduction

I know the title of this post is fairly provocative, not to mention the Calvinism-Arminianism debate itself is also controversial, so I want to first emphasize that it is not a Heaven or Hell issue. You won’t be damned for believing the wrong thing about predestination. This does not, however, mean that it is unimportant to be correct about it, or that there is no spiritual danger in being wrong. Let’s be quick to agree about gospel basics and readily embrace one another as brothers. As brothers, we have responsibilities to love one another and to earnestly promote one-another’s spiritual well being. This is why I write this post: that I may serve my non-Calvinist brothers.

This is why I have decided to write a three part blog series about three specific dangers that my non-Calvinist brothers should guard themselves from.

The Twofold Work of The Holy Spirit in Scripture

As Christians, we can all agree that the Bible is the Word of God, inspired by the Holy Spirit. This glorious truth is not lost from Calvinists nor Arminians, to my joy. Likewise, we all agree that the Holy Spirit helps us to understand the scriptures as they are read. Therefore, in reading the Bible, the work of the Holy Spirit is at least two-fold: inspiring the words and helping with the interpretation.

This fact is both a great comfort and a sobering thought. To know the absolute truthfulness of the Bible and that the Holy Spirit helps to reveal it should produce a lot of excitement, but also it leaves a lot of responsibility. When a person resists the work of the Holy Spirit for a sustained period of time, he grows hard of heart in that work. Therefore, since the Holy Spirit is doubly active and involved, reading the scripture without considering the seriousness of the words is spiritually destructive.

Hardening of Hearts

Remember the Pharisees who knew the scriptures well, but became hard of heart to the most basic things of God? They could not hear Jesus, and apart from the Holy Spirit overcoming their hardness of heart, they were not saved. How then can we avoid this tragedy? To hear the words with faith. The faithful reception and keeping of words of scripture applies not only to salvation related issues, but also to other Biblical doctrines that should be received with faith.

My first warning is that we be careful to receive all passages of scripture with faith, lest we grow hard of heart from resisting the Holy Spirit. Although this is written with Arminians and Non-Calvinist Christians especially in mind, it also applies to myself and my Calvinist brothers. To make a practice of explaining away any clear passage of scripture is an exercise in hardening the heart, whether it be a passage about predestination, election, baptism, justification, or any other doctrine. To seek out ways to explain away certain passages without sensitively changing your beliefs can harden you into methods of reading the Bible that are painfully detrimental, concerning even the cardinal doctrines of the faith.

Hardened Heretics

One of the more discouraging evidences of this hardness of heart can be found by browsing YouTube and watching some of the loudest and most vocal opponents of Calvinism. Many, if not most of them, have long departed from even Arminianism and the Christian faith entirely, going so far as to deny original sin, require moral perfectionism in order to be saved, teach salvation by the freewill exercise of good works, deny the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, and even deny the Trinity.

In looking at the extreme selectivity of scripture they use, you can tell that they are so hard of heart that they simply cannot even give an answer to passages that clearly refute them. I’m not even speaking about Calvinism any more but simple basics of the gospel such as salvation by grace through faith. Here, hardness of heart that comes from resisting the Holy Spirit about secondary issues, such as Calvinism, is leaving them outside of the Christian faith altogether.

Conclusion

These examples are extreme and tragic cases, but for the sake of my Arminian brothers, I want you to be warned against resisting the work of the Holy Spirit in reading the Bible. It is better to follow the Holy Spirit than to be right in your own mind, so read the Bible and be open to receive it for what it says. Even if you do not become Calvinist, you will grow strong and fall into a deeper love with Jesus as your savior.

Will Infants and the Mentally Handicapped be Saved?

The issue: Infants die, and it would be comforting to know if infants are saved.

Complications:

• The doctrine of original sin declares that people are sinful from birth. (See Psalm 51).
• The idea of infants in Hell is depressing, and seems unfair or cruel.
• The Bible gives no passage directly regarding infant salvation.

Here are a few positions that I have heard, but do not believe:

• Just as God elects whom he will save (Romans 9), some of these include infants. (Common among some Calvinists)
• Infants lack the forgiveness of Jesus, and will automatically go to Hell.
• God maintains an “age of accountability,” before which all children are saved. (Common among Baptists)
• Infants who are baptized will probably be saved. (From what I gather, this is what some Lutherans believe).

While the Bible does not directly address the status of infants and salvation, I think there are a few Biblical inferences that can give grieving parents hope without denying the doctrine of original sin.

Romans 5
12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— 13 for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.

While Adam’s sinful nature has been imputed to us, death spread because men sin, as is fitting with their nature. Keep in mind while David in Psalm 51 testifies, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me,” he is explaining why he commits sin, not making the statement that having a birth that brought him forth in sin caused him death.

Now I would base most of my thoughts here from verse 13 of Romans 5, where Paul says that sin is not counted where there is no law. To be sure, I don’t believe that this law is the Torah, but rather the conscience that we received upon eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and therefore all men have the law written on their hearts (Romans 2:14). So, the question would become, “Is the law present in an infant?” I don’t think it is. I will go on to show why.

Romans 7
7 What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” 8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. 9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. 10 The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. 11 For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.

Now this is some interesting talk. Again, Paul mentions that apart from the law sin lies dead, but what really strikes me is verse 9 where Paul firmly asserts that he actually was alive at one point, until the law came and produced death. So how was Paul alive at one point if, like David, he was conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity? I would suggest it is because the law comes to a human as they gain a conscience. Thus is seems fitting that the infants and some of the mentally handicapped, though born with original sin, have not died because they have no law.

It is for this reason that I believe that all infants will go to Heaven, as well as others who have not yet received the law written on their hearts.