Andy Stanley On Scripture & Infallibility

Recently a video of a question and answer format with Rev. Andy Stanley was on youtube. That video has since been taken down. In that video Rev. Stanley said,

“The foundation of our faith is not the Scripture. The foundation of our faith is not the infallibility of the Bible. The foundation of our faith is something that happened in history.

Bret responds,

Here Rev. Stanley tries to rip apart revelation from redemption. Sure, the foundation of our faith is something that happened in History (i.e. — Redemption — Christ’s work on the Cross) but I could not know about Redemption apart from Revelation (Scripture). So Stanley introduces a false dichotomy between Redemption and Revelation suggesting that our foundation is the Redemptive act but denying the foundational nature of the Revelation that communicates to us the reality of the Redemptive act and its meaning.

Elsewhere in the vanished video Rev. Stanley could say,

“You can believe that the Adam and Eve were a creation Myth. That’s OK.

Bret responds,

Rev. Stanley goes on to say that he doesn’t believe the Creation myth because the Bible says so but because Jesus talks about Adam and Eve and since Jesus has credibility because he rose from the grave therefore Rev. Stanley says he can believe what the Bible says about Adam and Eve.

Of course the problem here is that the place where we read that Jesus talked about Adam and Eve is the Scriptures. So if you don’t believe the Creation myth because the Bible says so, then why would one believe it because a Jesus believes it? After all, the Redemption acts of Jesus are recorded in the Bible as well. Could not the resurrection account be just as mythological as Adam and Eve?

McAtee Contra a Detractor who is Contra the Athanasian Creed

Recently I stumbled upon the offerings of a recently retired pastor from a denomination that has historically Reformed roots. I thought I would interact somewhat with the the musings of this honored retiree. I have deleted portions that were descriptive of the gathering described. The context is a Episcopalian Church service the retired minister (RM) had attended.

Retired Minister (RM) wrote,

It being Trinity Sunday the priest in a strong and affirmative voice read the Athanasian Creed … I had never heard it read aloud in worship before. Frankly, I was appalled.

The Athanasian Creed is part of my tradition (Reformed), one of three ecumenical creeds (along with the Apostles’ and the Nicene)…. by now it is almost never recited or even referred to in worship, a ghost of the past, buried in the back of hymnals, hymnals that in many churches, if they have them at all, are never opened…

Bret responds,

We have hymnals. We open them weekly. As a congregation we together confess Christ weekly, in a responsive fashion from either the Confessions (3FU) or the ecumenical creeds as found in the back of the hymn books. A brief explanation is then given after the Congregational Confessional recitation. The old creeds are not everywhere forgotten and the back of some hymnbooks, where the saints who have gone before reside, are still visited. Though, on the whole, I’m sure the retired minister is probably correct. It is likely the case that not only is the laity unfamiliar with what lies buried in the back of those hymnals, but I would guess the Pastorate likewise is clueless. I would argue that therein is one reason why the contemporary Church is so inert.

RM wrote,

I will simply raise some questions that occurred to me when I heard the creed read aloud in worship and let you answer them.

Fair enough. RM provides the questions and Bret provides some answers.

RM wrote quoting the Athanasian Creed,

Here’s how the Athanasian Creed begins (in the Book of Common Prayer translation): “Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith. Which Faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the Catholic Faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance.” My own denomination has given the creed a more modern translation, which reads better but seems also designed to take some of the edge off the language of the creed. It reads in the part I just quoted: “Whoever desires to be saved should above all hold to the catholic faith. Anyone who does not keep it whole and unbroken will doubtless perish eternally. Now this is the catholic faith: that we worship one God in trinity, and the trinity in unity, neither blending their persons nor dividing their essence.” This seems to obscure the flow from the desire for salvation to the requirement for salvation, which is, according to the creed, adherence to the catholic faith; and which, strengthening the point, must be kept “whole and undamaged” (integram inviolatamque); which the creed defines as worship of the Trinity, “neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance (Neque confundentes personas, neque substantiam separantes). In other words, if you don’t have the right view of the Trinity, you will perish eternally.

Here’s my first question, one that came unbidden to me as I listened to the reading of the creed: isn’t this salvation by theology?

Bret Responds,

As personal belief is always inclusive of and is embracing some kind of theology we would have to ask, with more then a little incredulity, if what is being suggested by RM is that salvation has nothing to do with belief? (i.e. — Theology?)

If salvation doesn’t have some relation to proper belief (theology) then what are the parameters for membership in the covenant community?

If salvation does not bear relation to Trinitarian theology then why aren’t Mormons saved? Why aren’t JW’s saved? Why aren’t Socinians saved? Why aren’t Sabellian Modalists saved? Why aren’t Arians saved? (All Trinitarian Heresies.)

Now, of course we are not saved by perfect Theology, or by a perfect understanding of the Trinity. (Who then could be saved if perfect theology was required to be saved?) However even Jesus taught that there was correspondence between Salvation and Theology when He said, “And this is eternal life, that they may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.”

Now, all the Athansisan creed requires is that our knowledge of God includes his Trinitarian reality. Surely, a retired minister of a storied Reformed denomination would not suggest that epistemologically self conscious Unitarians like Servetus could be saved or epistemologically self conscious polytheists can be saved?

RM continues to ask probing questions,

And, if so, just where is this taught in the Scriptures?

Bret responds,

I’m not sure what is being asked in terms of what is being sought.

I don’t think he is asking where in the Bible the Trinity is taught.

Maybe what is being asked is, “where is salvation by theology taught in Scripture?”

If that is what is being asked then I would offer passages like John 17:3 cited earlier. Jesus said that eternal life (salvation) is knowing God. Scripture teaches that God is Trinitarian. Hence, one can not know God if one does not know Him according to His Trinitarian reality.

Or maybe what is being asked is, “Where does the Scripture teach that the Trinity must be embraced in order for one to be saved.” The answer to that question, I think, would be, “which member of the Godhead would we delete the ascription of deity from all the while still believing that we could remain Christian?”

If we don’t embrace the Trinity, how is Christianity still Christianity? And if Christianity is no longer Christianity then how can we speak in terms of a salvation that is Christian?

To which the answer would be … “And this is eternal life that they may Know thee, the Only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.”

RM asks,

And, further, what kind of God would punish his creatures eternally for failing to get an abstruse theological point right? What sort of justice is that? What sense does it make?

Bret responds,

The Trinity is an abstruse theological point?

I’m sure the Sabellians, the Arians, the Modalists, the Socinians, and any number of assorted heretics throughout Church History will be glad to hear that the Trinity is not a theological point worthy of getting wrong or right.isn’t

One wonders what other abstruse theological points are not worthy of a creature being punished eternally for failing to get? Why aren’t the Virgin Birth, or the Resurrection, or the Ascension, or Pentecost, the Deity of Christ, Justification by Faith alone, Original Sin, Imputation, or any number of other core Christian doctrines also abstruse theological points that can be dismissed as points over which a nice God would never punish His creatures eternally? One wonders, what theological points in Redemptive history aren’t abstruse so that they really aren’t necessary to believe since a nice God won’t throw body and soul into hell for failing to get abstruse theological points?

Question — What Kind of God would punish his creatures for failing to get an abstruse theological point right?

Answer — A Just God?

Maybe the only creatures who will be punished eternally are those people who think abstruse theological points have eternal implications.

RM continues citing more of the Athanasian creed,

But this is only the beginning of the creed. It has two parts, the first a sort of puzzle poem to the Trinity:

The Father is uncreated,
the Son is uncreated,
the Holy Spirit is uncreated.

The Father is immeasurable,
the Son is immeasurable,
the Holy Spirit is immeasurable.

The Father is eternal,
the Son is eternal,
the Holy Spirit is eternal.

And yet there are not three eternal beings;
there is but one eternal being.
So too three are not three uncreated or immeasurable beings;
there is but one uncreated and immeasurable being.

And on it goes, ending the first part with, “Anyone then who desires to be saved should think thus about the trinity.” The creed then turns to the two natures of Christ… As it does it doubles down on the theme that salvation depends on having the right theology. Again I quote from the older translation: “Furthermore, it is necessary to everlasting salvation : that he also believe rightly the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the right Faith is, that we believe and confess : that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man; God, of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds : and Man of the substance of his Mother, born in the world; Perfect God and perfect Man : of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting.” Once again the argument is that salvation requires right thinking, and right thinking requires the right view of a certain theology. What of those Christians who lived in the four centuries before the time of the Council of Chalcedon? Were they saved like Abraham by a grace extended to those who lived before the revelation of the Trinity and the Two Natures? Is this what Jesus came to call us to: the right theology of the incarnation? Just asking.

Bret responds,

Are not those with greater light more accountable than those with lesser light? Doubtless those with lesser light will be held to a standard not inconsistent with God’s full revelation but still as those who had less light. Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required. Those Christians who lived with lesser light and still threw themselves upon Christ’s mercy, trusting Christ alone for salvation, will doubtless be saved. But living in a time of less light is no excuse to us who live in a time of more light to suggest that doctrines like the Trinity are inconsequential and shouldn’t be taught as a core doctrine of the Christian belief paradigm.

I might ask if Jesus is calling us to a wrong theology of the Incarnation? Is Jesus calling us to ignore the doctrine of the Incarnation as inconsequential and abstruse? Since the work of Christ is related to the right doctrine of the Incarnation, I do think that Jesus is calling us to a right theology of the Incarnation.

Does our Retired Minister have doubts about the Trinity? The Two Natures of Christ? The doctrine of the Incarnation? Doubtless he is perfectly orthodox on these matters but just wonders if the Church is majoring on the minors when it teaches Christian doctrine.

Retired Minister,

The creed ends this second and last section with another warning in the case that the hearer has missed the first two: “This is the Catholick Faith: which except a man believe faithfully, he cannot be saved.” … I wondered for a moment whether in that little church (where the Creed was read) at that moment I was witnessing the death of a creed. And I wondered if it mattered.

Bret responds,

The death of the Athanasian Creed may not matter, but when “Christians” quit confessing and believing the truth contained in the Athanasian Creed eventually, someday, one might find that it matters a great deal more than they thought.

Really, it is more than a passing strange Christianity for one to deny the necessity of affirming the Trinity, for one to deny the necessity of affirming the Virgin Birth, for one to deny the necessity of affirming the hypostatic union of Christ? Surely the Christian faith is more than that, but just as surely it is never less than that. Just as surely, not everyone in the pew is going to be as conversant with these doctrine as Doctors of the Church, but that fact doesn’t make these great theological truth any less important or necessary.

My favorite Memorial day story from my Grandfather who fought in WW II

My Grandfather Jacobs spent much of his life as a dairy farmer in Indiana. He was as rough hewed as one might expect given his less then tender upbringing. The man had a work ethic like no one I’ve ever met or known since. My Uncles (His Sons) tell me that his work ethic was even more intense when they were growing up then when I knew him and when I was around he was still working 16 hour days.

Grandpa Jacobs won a bronze star in Europe for disobeying orders while with the Big Red One. He was ordered to wait for ground support before moving forward. Instead, he cleared an obstacle from the road and continued to push on. I suspect there was more to the story then that but like most war vets he tended towards understatement when it came to these kinds of war stories.

However, the story I want to tell from Grandpa Jacobs was about another episode of his disobeying orders. He did not earn any medals for what I am about to tell. However, he may have slept better at night because he disobeyed these orders.

This story was told to me on Lake Michigan sometime in the late 8o’s or early 90’s. We were all on my Step-Father’s large fishing boat and were fishing. This is a story about the nobility of a man in disobeying orders.

My Grandfather was in WW II fighting in the Battle of the Bulge. As some of you know the Germans were at this point in the war so short on man power they had taken for soldiers those men who had seen too many winters or alternately too few winters. The German ranks were bolstered by the too young and the too old.

My Grandfather’s company captured some of these men (boys) in the midst of battle. He was ordered by somebody in the Chain of command to “take them out back and shoot them.” I can imagine that this was a fairly common order and in the heat of a intense battle such a order, from a certain perspective, is understandable. One can easily imagine that there was not enough man power to assign men the task of watching and keeping prisoners.

As he told the story Grandpa Jacobs told us that he told the officer who gave the command that, “I have boys not much younger than this age at home. I can’t do that.”

And he didn’t.

I don’t know what happen to those boys. He probably didn’t either. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if others were found to obey the order. There is a reason that someone once said, “War is Hell.”

But the fact that he disobeyed that order is the proudest live story I am somehow connected with from WW II.

And it also reminds me that War is such a terrible terrible reality that it should be pursued only as the last possible option and only in the context of Christian Just War Theory.

Boy Sodomites Of America

Boy Scout Oath

On my honor, I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.

I was and remain an Eagle Scout. At 14 years of age obtaining the Eagle Scout award was a pretty big deal for me and something to this day I look back upon fondly. The Boy Scouts didn’t give those awards away and anybody who received one worked pretty hard to get it. I was in an especially good Troop. Troop 100 (later 400) of Sturgis, Michigan was led by Leland Thornton, an outdoorsy yet professorial type. Mr. Thornton had help from several of the Fathers and it was a large Troop of at least 35 boys as I recall.

We did it all in this Troop. We gazed at and learned the stars, we learned all the knots, we navigated by compass alone, we learned canoing, sailing, and fishing. We learned basic first aid. We learned how to survive in the wild on only what the wild provided. We hiked, backpacked, and biked. We camped, learn to build a fire with only a flint, and worked on erosion prevention projects. We worked with our communities, our Churches, and our families. 40 years later my chief regret is that I don’t remember more of the technical skills I learned in those early years.

Because my times with the Boy Scouts of America was so good, I am especially saddened to see that they have voted to let sodomite boys into their organization. I suppose it was inevitable given the direction that the cultural winds are blowing but I am still a bit lachrymose that an organization that was, at least in theory, supposed to build men, has now capitulated to an agenda that eviscerates the very notion of manhood.

There have been those who have reasoned that the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) should allow sodomites into their organization on the basis that such boys could learn the arts of manliness in the Scouts and so somehow be rescued from their self destructive sodomite ways. Such reasoning, though doubtless well intended, was misguided for several reasons,

First, the sodomite agenda didn’t want sodomite boys in the BSA so that the BSA could cure the sodomite boys of their sodomy. The sodomite agenda wanted sodomite boys in the BSA so has to mainstream sodomy into every nook and cranny of American life. Hence, those who argues that sodomite boys should be let into the BSA so that they might be cured of their sodomy went on a grand adventure of missing the point. That they were missing the point should have been evident when the LGBT types made it clear that they would not stop protesting the BSA until sodomite Scout Masters were finally let in as well, which, will happen soon enough.

Second, even if one is to concede the good intentions of those who argued that the BSA should allow sodomites into the BSA one can still point out that such reasoning inverted the truism that “one bad apple spoils the whole bunch,” into “a bunch of good apples makes the bad apple good.”

Third, let’s just posit, for the sake of argument, that sodomites are converted to heterosexuality upon becoming Scouts and learning what it means to be manly men. Does anyone believe for a skinny minute that the LGBT crowd wouldn’t be up in arms demanding that the BSA be closed off to sodomite boys if suddenly sodomite boys were giving up their sodomite ways because of the influence of Scouting? The push to get sodomite boys into Scouts was never about redeeming sodomites. It’s always been about enslaving the sexually normal.

Fourth, the argument to allow sodomite boys into the BSA was strange from a parental perspective. What rational parent would want their tender young sons camping over night in a pup tent with a possible sodomite who could recruit their sexually blossoming pubescent son into the sodomite agenda? I understand having compassion for wayward boys and so wanting to open the doors of scouting to them in hopes it would cure them but what about compassion for the non sexually wayward boys who will now more easily be recruited into the sodomite lifestyle now that sodomites are going to be allowed into the BSA? Sometimes it really is true that the tender mercies of the well intentioned are cruel.

Of course now with the addition of sodomite boys into the BSA the organization will have to reinterpret the whole idea of, “of doing my duty to God,” not to mention the pledge to be “morally straight,” found in the Scout oath. Likewise the BSA will have to reinterpret the meaning of several words in their Scout Law. Words like “trustworthy,” “helpful,” “courteous,” “kind,” “clean,” and “reverent,” will have to be redefined in order for a sodomite to take such a vow with any integrity.

Of course the whole purpose of this move is to reinterpret the whole BSA organization from a boy friendly organization dedicated to helping boys channel their budding masculinity into a cornucopia of mostly outdoor activities into a political organization that will help advance the LGBT agenda. This move to accept sodomites is one more brick in the wall that is being built by the revolutionary Cultural Marxist agenda in order to de-Christianize civilization. This move is one more success story of the Cultural Marxists whereby their long march through the institutions has secured yet another victory.

The defenders of this move sought to do what is typically done in order to justify wickedness and malfeasance. They played the victim card. For example, BSA board President Wayne Perry said in a webcast: “It was never our intent to prevent young people from being part of this organization.” This is a ridiculous statement that can only gain traction because the populace has been so dumbed down and is unable to think critically. Of course the BSA historically has intended to prevent certain young people from being part of the BSA organization. Would the BSA even now accept boys who are into necrophilia into their troops? Would the BSA accept boys who were having a sexual affair with their little sisters into the BSA? Would the BSA accept boys who like farm animals into their troops? Perry’s comments are jejune and serve as an fig leaf to justify his immoral decision.

As another example of the played victim card came from Zach Wahls, an Eagle Scout raised by two lesbian mothers. Wahls said the time has come for change,

“There is nothing Scout-like about exclusion of other people, and there is nothing Scout-like about putting your own religious beliefs before someone else’s.”

So, in this statement we see Wahls puts his own religious beliefs that require all people to accept sodomy in front of the religious beliefs of those who don’t accept sodomy. Apparently, Wahls has no problem in excluding people who will not join the BSA because their boys could learn the finer arts of sodomy in the BSA.

What has happened with the BSA reminds us again that all ideologies are totalistic and so are dominion minded. All ideologies because of that, by default, have a plan for total victory which is their plan for absolute dominion. What the sodomites have achieved with this victory over the BSA is to have taken one more step towards remaking the world in their image through the taking of dominion over the BSA.

The Boy Scouts of America no longer exists. It has become the Boy Sodomites of America.

The Enns Hermeneutic

For a few years now Peter Enns and his “doctrine of inspiration” has been making waves in the Reformed / Evangelical community. Of course the fact that Enns could, with this “doctrine of inspiration” spend years at Westminster East should wave red flags for Christians in terms of supporting these institutions. I wish I could say that Westminster East was some kind of exception in regards to putatively White Hat Seminaries harboring significant error.

Anyway, I thought I would dip into the controversy and read something that explained a little bit what it was all about. Imagine my surprise when I picked up G. K. Beale’s, “The Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism,” and discovered that all Enns is pushing is a variant of neo-orthodoxy with a “History of Religions” school twist. There is nothing new in what Enns is thumping. This drivel has been pushed for decades. The fact that somehow this is seen as “new,” or, “innovative,” by some people speaks more of those people’s collective historical unawareness then it does to the fact that Enns has discovered a new and innovative Hermeneutic.

Beale, at least, recognizes that Enns has hardly come up with something new under the sun. In a trenchant critique Beale has this to say about the failure of Enns “Myth Hermeneutic.”

1.) Enns affirms that some of the narratives in Genesis, e.g. of creation and flood, are shot through with myth, much of which the biblical narrator did not know lacked correspondence to actual past reality.

2.) Enns appears to assume that since biblical writers, especially, for example, the Genesis narrator, were not objective in narrating history, then their presuppositions distorted significantly the events that they reported. He too often appears to assume that the socially constructed reality of these ancient biblical writers, e.g., their purported mythical mindsets, prevented them from being able to describe past events in a way that had significant correspondence with how a person in the modern world would observe and report events.

3.) Enns never spells out the model of Jesus’ incarnation with which he is drawing analogies for his view of Scripture.

4.) Enns affirms that one cannot use modern definitions of truth and error in order to perceive whether Scripture contains truth or error. However, this is non-falsifiable, since Enns never says what would count as an error according to ancient standards. This is also reductionistic, since there were some rational and even scientific categories as the disposal of ancient people for evaluating the observable world that are in some important ways commensurable to our own.

5.) Enns does not follow at significant points his own excellent proposal of guidelines for evaluating the views of others with whom one disagrees.

6.) Enns’s book is marked by ambiguities at important junctures of his discussion.

7.) Enns does not attempt to present to and discuss for the reader significant alternative viewpoints besides his own, which is needed in a book dealing with crucial issues.

8.) Enns appears to caricature the views of past evangelical scholarship by not distinguishing the views of so called fundamentalists from that of good conservative scholarly work.

Enns’s hermeneutic is basically a hermeneutic of post-modern tolerance. When embraced the consequence is that the reader of Scripture is the one judging Scripture (what is myth and what isn’t) as opposed to being the one who is under the judgment of Scripture. Enns himself might be comparatively “conservative,” but allow his hermeneutic to be officially sanctioned in the Church (and it already is sanctioned in a defacto way in most churches … for Pete’s sake if it could live for years and years at Westminster East, clearly it is hard to see how it wouldn’t already be ensconced in the Church now) and the consequence will be all kinds of novel postmodern conclusions as putatively drawn from Scripture.