How Powerful is Common Grace?

Posted on 22 May 2013 by Seth Meyers

A friend wrote to me recently:

We’ve spoken of this often, but I still struggle with the teaching of Total Depravity whereby, it is asserted, sin affects everything, including the mind on spiritual and earthly matters. Practically speaking, I am not satisfied with the answers I receive concerning some of the most rank pagans producing work far superior to Christians. How is it that self-indulging men like Wagner can produce  Ride of the Valkyries and a homosexual like Tchaikovsky can produce The Nutcracker and his First Piano Concerto? If we say that common grace can lift them to such intellectual heights, then aren’t we practically saying the same thing as those who say that man’s mind is not completely corrupt?

The Arminian says that because of sin, man is a 5.

The Calvinist says that because of sin, man is a 0, but common grace can take us to a 5 and beyond.

So practically, what is the difference? Prevenient grace or common grace takes us to a 5 and beyond.  

That question is so thoughtful, that I wanted to post it with a portion of my reply:

You present a tricky dilemma, but isn’t the difficulty removed by an appeal to the gospel? In the gospel though they can do many wonderful things because of common grace, sinful men can never savingly seek God without special grace. And though Tchaikovsky did some wonderful things because of common grace, he never savingly sought God.

In expanded form, special grace is that power to seek God savingly. Common grace is that power to image the beauty of God implicitly regardless of the sinner’s humility, repentance, conformity to Christ, or lack of these Christian graces. Saving grace has an effect on the mind, but it is not the only way for the mind to be improved. The epistemic damage done by sin can be reversed or at least alleviated in many ways, which is one reason why careful thought about art, beauty, and enduring forms is essential.

I think your argument could be recast with just two clarifications:

“The Arminian says that because of sin, man is a 5 in terms of his moral ability.

The Calvinist says that because of sin, man is a 0, but common grace can take us to a 5 and beyond in terms of skill and beauty that don’t explicitly require the sinner to humble himself and submit to Christ’s Lordship.”

Thoughts?

Seth

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Pop Music is Seeping

Posted on 18 May 2013 by Seth Meyers

“[Pop music] has seeped into our sensibilities in such a way that nothing that antedates it really sounds like music to us. … To dismiss the cultural effects of music as insignificant or merely a matter of taste, is like dismissing the study of sociology itself as merely a matter of taste.”

David Gordon, Why Johnny Can’t Sing Hymns

The whole book is readable, insightful, and often quotable.

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Extra-biblical Ethics

Posted on 16 May 2013 by Seth Meyers

Sometimes Sola Scriptura is turned on its head to mean we are only required to do what can be explicitly proof-texted from the Bible. The argument seems to be: without a specific statement from Scripture, then we are free to do whatever we want.

Here’s a list of 10 (and it could have been longer) obviously inappropriate actions that aren’t directly forbidden in Scripture.

  1. Preaching in your underwear.
  2. Disciplining newborns.
  3. Calling the president by his first name in a face-to-face meeting.
  4. Arriving at church late.
  5. Talking about your intimate experiences publicly.
  6. Using crude words in conversation with your wife.
  7. Coming to a public gathering with body odor.
  8. Children calling their parents by their first name.
  9. Playing heavy metal at a funeral.
  10. A groom wearing shorts and a t-shirt to the altar.

Of course, admitting this list exists and seriously discussing why each item is on the list may force an unwitting post-modern to admit that culture is not neutral. Thus, standards of beauty must be carefully extrapolated from Scripture and life rather than the more common cavalier attitude, “I like it, and there’s no verse that says I can’t.”

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Getting Back on Track

Posted on 16 May 2013 by Seth Meyers

Due to furlough traveling and busyness, I’ve been absent for about a month from posting, but hopefully that will be corrected now as I’ve got a better connection, and some of the busy work is done now.

Thanks for your patience, eager reader.

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WORLD | The media and President Obama’s view through a Gosnell lens | Ken Blackwell | April 16, 2013

Posted on 18 April 2013 by Seth Meyers

WORLD | The media and President Obama’s view through a Gosnell lens | Ken Blackwell | April 16, 2013.

Mariners have been familiar with the Fresnel lens for nearly two centuries. It refracts light from a lighthouse to magnify the life-saving capacity of the illumination.

Now, we are seeing a new kind of lens we can call a “Gosnell lens,” which refracts light in such a way that the object in view is not seen. It deflects all critical examination of what we plainly see in front of us. The Gosnell lens is named for Kermit Gosnell, who is on trial in Philadelphia for the murder of seven infants born alive and one mother. His alleged victims are all poor, mostly minority. Normally, this kind of trial—with plenty of gore—would be a major news story. After all, if it bleeds, it leads, right? Not this time.

Gosnell is an abortionist, and we have known for decades that when abortion is in the picture, all bets are off. The major news media are pro-abortion. Not just “pro-choice,” but pro-abortion. They agree in the main with Lawrence Lader, who founded NARAL Pro-Choice America: “Abortion is central to everything in life and how we want to live it.”

Read more… (opens in a new window)

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Apologizing for Slavery

Posted on 16 April 2013 by Seth Meyers

When somebody who has never owned a slave apologizes for slavery to somebody who has never been a slave, then what began as mushy thinking has degenerated into theatrical absurdity–or, worse yet, politics.

Slavery has existed all over the planet for thousands of years, with black, white, yellow and other races being both slaves and enslavers. Does that mean that everybody ought to apologize to everybody else for what their ancestors did? Or are the only people who are supposed to feel guilty the ones who have money that others want to talk them out of?

This craze for aimless apologies is part of a general loss of a sense of personal responsibility in our time. We are supposed to feel guilty for what other people did but there are a thousand cop-outs for what we ourselves did to those we did it too.

Thomas Sowell, Dismantling America

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The Power and Place of Ridicule

Posted on 12 April 2013 by Seth Meyers
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Nine Biblical Reasons We Live on a Young Earth

Posted on 10 April 2013 by Seth Meyers
  1. Death is a result of the Fall. (Rom. 5:12) Romans 8:20-23 confirms that all death is a result of the fall, not just human death. Therefore, no macro-evolution could have taken place.
  2. In the Millennium, regardless of your interpretation of these prophecies, the carnivorous nature of animals is removed. (Isa. 11:6) The Millennium represents a time when the effects of sin are being repealed. Therefore, the conditions of life in the Millennium represent the “very good” of Gen. 1:31.
  3. Exodus 20:11 compares the literal 24-hour Jewish Sabbath with the days of creation as well as the 7th day of rest.
  4. Gen. 1 describes the days with ordinals and “evening and morning.” In the only other places where these constructions are found, the days are 24-hour days. (Cf. Deut. 16:4 and 1 Sam. 17:16)
  5. Jesus assumed a young earth in the NT. In old earth cosmology, Adam and Eve happened 12-14 billion years after the first act of evolution/creation. This would put the creation of Adam and Eve relatively very near to the 21st century. But Jesus said they were formed at the beginning of creation. (Mark 10:6; 13:19)
  6. The “exegetical” problems with these hermeneutical conclusions are petty. For example, I heard an old-earth proponent argue that the earth was old because the sun wasn’t created until the fourth day. Therefore, the first three days could not have been solar days, and since they can’t be solar days, they must be long geologic ages. Interesting. Doesn’t he judge his position by “solar days”? Isn’t that the basic building block of the 14 billion years he claims the earth was alive?
  7. The Flood was global. “All the high mountains everywhere under the heavens were covered.” (Gen. 7:19) “The world at that time was destroyed.” (2 Peter 3:6) If the Flood was global, then fossils came from it not evolution. Also, the hermeneutic that produces a global flood also settles firmly 24-hour days just a few chapters earlier.
  8. The genealogies of Gen. 5 are meaningless if their 4,000 year record is actually 40,000 years (or more). Keep in mind that these genealogies do have Christological significance in Matt. 1 and Luke 3.
  9. Evolutionary theories are what would be expected if men are totally depraved–if they hate God (Rom. 3:11; John 7:7) and cannot stand his laws (Psalm 2:1-3). Christian academics who are swayed by the prevailing moods of the scientific community are also what would be expected if sin will increase as the last days draw toward consummation. (Matt. 24:12; Luke 18:8; 2 Tim. 3:1-5)
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Can You Accidentally Break the Third Commandment?

Posted on 10 April 2013 by Seth Meyers

Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

Recently, David de Bruyn has been insightfully plowing up the ground of the third commandment. But in my context, another question has been raised.

I have heard church members commonly say under their breath, “Isus” or merely “Sus” as an exclamation when something surprising happens, as they’re playing ball, or just in general language as a “filler.” However, this comes from the Afrikaans’ name for Jesus Christ. As such, they are breaking the third commandment if it is strictly interpreted.

Is it possible to dishonor God’s name even if you are using a language that you do not know? Is this kind of dishonoring so serious that it should be church disciplined?

The first question I’d answer in the affirmative. But for the second question, I would lean toward the negative for these reasons.

1. We are all ignorant about God to some degree at all times on all issues. All sins are committed within the context of some kind of ignorance. Yet this lack of knowledge does not remove our culpability seeing as we have a responsibility to prize God, thinking clearly and consistently enough about Him that we will be able to obey all His commands perfectly.

2. The Bible has examples of people who sinned ignorantly. When Uzza touched the Ark of the Covenant, he was probably not thinking that he would be required to pay the ultimate price for that seemingly insignificant action.  (1 Chronicles 13)

The next question is trickier to answer for me. How should the church posture itself toward someone who openly takes the Lord’s name in vain, but yet wants to join the church and be involved? I want to say “Yes” but can I?

The name of God represents His infinite dignity. So young people in church should not be allowed to speak of it in a flippant, trite, or passing manner. But our God is a Father who knows that we are dust. So young believers should receive from us a generous allotment of time as they grow in this particular command.

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Birthday of the Church

Posted on 8 April 2013 by Seth Meyers

When was the church born? When did it start? Here’s two well-known voices:

His [the Holy Spirit] coming to fill the assembled disciples at Pentecost establishes the church of the New Covenant. Clowney, The Church, 28.

On this point we cannot agree with those Premillenarians who, under the influence of a divisive dispensationalism, claim that the Church is exclusively a New Testament institution, which did not come into existence until the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost… Berkhof, 571.

If the church began in some sense at Pentecost (Clowney), then how can Covenant Theologians (CT) affirm that the OT believers were in the church?

If the church began in the OT (Berkhof), then what was the point of Pentecost? Was it merely a helpful add-on to their faith, but really not essential? If it was essential, then how can we explain that the OT believers did not have it?

I recognize that CT will argue that the church existed as believers in Israel during the OT, but the point still remains: if you press for an OT church, the worth of Pentecost is downplayed to some degree. If you flatten the distinctions between the two sections of Scripture, then the most obvious distinction–the coming and permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit–is also ironed out. To exalt the meaning of the Spirit’s coming in Acts 2 is to speak of distinction from the OT, and that is a very difficult shibboleth for many CT’s.

Is this a possible explanation for why Robert Reymond in his otherwise very helpful Systematic Theology devotes a mere 4 pages out of 1,093 to the third member of the Godhead?

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