Scripturalist Apologetics

I recently decided to reread John Robbins’ systematic dismemberment of Objectivism, Without A Prayer: Ayn Rand and the Close of Her System. Admittedly, this is my third time around.  The first time was more years ago than I care to remember when I purchased John’s original work,  Answer to Ayn Rand. Later when that book was reedited, expanded and released, I read that version too. I suppose what motivated me now to pick up Without a Prayer again was finally reading Atlas Shrugged last year after a few vain and failed attempts to read it during my college years.  I confess, regardless of my love of capitalism, and my concern for my Objectivist friends and acquaintances over the years, I thought the book was a tedious bore and couldn’t make it through the first few hundred pages (my old tattered Signet paperback with excruciatingly small type runs 1084 pages).  It was only after someone sent me Steve Moore’s Wall Street Journal piece, “Atlas Shurgged: From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years,” that I finally took the plunge and plowed my way through the totality of Shrugged which is still a tedious bore.  That’s not to say that Rand’s philosophy is boring, but I confess that periodically having characters launch into oddly placed chapter length philosophic monologues and tirades gets a bit tedious. I suppose what attracts so many to Rand’s novels is what repulses me.  I know when I’m being propagandized.  Just give me the philosophy without all the window dressing. That’s why I have always found her book, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology to be a much better doorway into her philosophy than her novels.

Shrugged aside, what I am particularly enjoying about Robbins’ reply to Rand this time around is not so much his meticulous examination and destruction of Rand’s Objectivism (frankly, there isn’t much left of her philosophy after the third chapter), but rather it’s his application of Gordon Clark’s Scripturalism.   Clark’s profound insights into epistemology and other areas of philosophy provides the necessary tools that allows Robbins to completely dismantle the foundation of Objectivism and everything else collapses from there.  Consider the following insight into the nature of truth that Robbins uses as a crowbar to separate Rand’s rickety Objectivist structure from its foundation:

Truth is a characteristic of propositions, and of nothing else. How a concept can be true or false [Rand] did not explain.  “Cat,” spoken, heard, or read without context, is not true.  It is not false.  It is meaningless.  If it is an answer to a question, it is an elliptical expression, meaning “That is a cat,” or, “My favorite animal is a cat.” But without context, “cat” is as meaningless as “boojum.” All by themselves, single concepts and single words are meaningless. They are neither true nor false. Rand made the same mistake that Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, and Hegel made: thinking that concepts per se are true.  If we are to know truth, if we are to discover truth, we must think in terms of propositions, not concepts.  Truth — knowledge — comes only in propositions. “Conceptual truth” is a contradiction in terms. Truth is a relationship between a predicate and a subject.  If there is no predicate, there is no truth.  If there is no subject, there is no truth. Neither an experience, nor an encounter, nor an observation, nor an isolated concept, nor a single word can be true.

Truth, of course, is an insuperable problem for empiricism: Truth cannot be derived from something non-propositional, such as “observations.”  Unless one starts with propositions, one cannot end with propositions.  One cannot logically infer more than one begins with.

Without a Prayer is a brilliant lesson in how Scripturalist apologetics is done.

Calvin and Keister Tag Team the Federal Vision

The following is from Lane Keister’s systematic dismemberment of Joshua Moon’s floor speech that was given on the floor of the Siouxlands Presbytery in defense of Greg Lawrence (the man who was determined by two separate investigative committees to be a Federal Divisionist and a man who should be brought to trial but continues to evade prosecution).  While I recommend the entire piece, I selected just the portion below because the quotes Lane provides from Calvin (and one from Peter Barnes) are so devastating to the entire false FV scheme of baptismal regeneration and the covenant  that they deserve special recognition.

I have to admit, I was extremely impressed by the job Lane did dissecting and demolishing every one of Moon’s historical and exegetical arguments.  Frankly, I am surprised Lane hasn’t been brought up on some frivolous Ninth Commandment charge by Moon’s whining session for failing to protect and care for Moon’s good name.  That’s because after Lane is finished with him, I simply don’t know how Moon can show his face in any Christian presbytery.  OK, and to be charitable, Moon’s arguments would probably carry some weight in Doug Wilson’s Confederation of Federal Divisionists and Phony Evangelicals,  but I did say “Christian presbytery.”

So, while I will continue to pray that Lane may one day come to his senses and repent of his tragic exoneration of Doug Wilson on the doctrines of justification and imputation, I will say this piece has gone a long way in repairing his imagine at least in my mind.  I guess when the Federal Divisionists are stinking up his own Presbytery Lane is really a very good bare-knuckle brawler after all.

More Federal Division

There is an ongoing discussion and examination of Robert Rayburn’s widely circulated screed in defense of FV heretic Peter Liethart going on over at the Greenbaggins blog.  I highly recommend Bob Mattes’ excellent retort, Does God Practice Temporary Forgiveness.   Bob’s reply is devastating  and exposes the Romanish heart of  the Federal Vision.  So, while I’m more than happy to let Bob and the rest of those at Greenbaggins continue to dissect Rayburn, I was particularly disturbed by this little bit of sophism:

What is repeatedly revealed in the panel’s argument, alas, is a persistent failure to grasp the real status questionis and, consequently, the lines of argument are not drawn with the precision necessary to ensure a proper solution. This is true in respect to every issue the panel takes under its review. For example, in the matter of justification the panel fails carefully to distinguish between the causa materialis and the causae instrumentalium. Reformed theology does not doubt, for example, that faith is a cause of justification, but it is not its ground, which is alone the righteousness of Christ. The Word of God, the gospel, is a cause of justification, but not its ground (1 Cor. 15:2; Eph.1:13; 2 Thess. 2:14). And, in the same way, the works of a Christian’s life are a cause of the sinner’s final justification (whether as its vindication or its demonstration) while certainly not being its ground or material cause. Without attention to such careful distinctions and without the demonstration that Dr. Leithart’s view has been scrutinized in keeping with these distinctions the panel’s reasoning is an exercise in comparing, as we say, apples and oranges.

The above admission that “works of a Christian’s life” are an instrumental cause in justification  is quite amazing and one that I would think even a half-blind PCA presbyter would be able to discern.  Admittedly, Rayburn has any number of instrumental causes for justification in addition to mere belief alone (assuming he even has that), but the WCF only has one; “faith … is the alone instrument of justification” (WCF 11.2).

My guess is that Rayburn believes the average PCA presbyter is so dim-witted that they will be so wowed by his use of Latin phrases like “causae instrumentalium” that their eyes will simply  gloss over and not see exactly what he’s saying.  He might be right.  But, a denial of justification by belief alone could hardly be any clearer.  For Rayburn, works too are just as much an instrumental cause in justification as is faith.   With all the back and forth about which side is accurately representing “the Reformed tradition,” I have to wonder if either side is really keeping an eye on the Christian tradition, since at no time in the entire history of the Christian faith have the “works of a Christian life” been an instrumental cause of justification either now or in the final judgment.

For those who tempted to think I’m being unfair and that am not reading Rayburn “charitably” (of course to read someone “charitably” in FV Newspeak means to either agree or acquiescence) consider this from the PCA’s FV/NPP report:

The view that justification is in any way based on our works, or that the so-called “final verdict of justification” is based on anything other than the perfect obedience and satisfaction of Christ received through faith alone, is contrary to the Westminster Standards.

If the SJC is really interested in preserving the truth of the Gospel in the PCA, and I’m not at all convinced that they are, when they come back in March instructing the Presbytery of the North West to bring charges against Peter Leithart, they should include Robert Rayburn’s name as well.

One interesting side note for those following the Siouxlands FV Flying Circus, Rayburn is the father-in-law of that other FV cheerleader, Joshua Moon.  While certainly not as impassioned or as much fun to read as the Rayburn, for those interested in comparing the arguments of Rayburn with his son-in-law, since the family resemblance is impressive, I’ll leave the interested reader with a transcript I found of Moon’s public defense of Federal Visionist, Greg Lawrence given on the floor of the Siouxlands Presbytery.  I’d say enjoy, but even for those with strong stomachs,  I’ll say suffer. 

Siouxland Stooges

For those who have been following the laborious maneuverings of the Siouxlands Presbytery of the PCA as they make believe that they’re really interested in dealing with suspected Federal Visionists in their midst, there has been some new, albeit not surprising, developments over this past weekend.  To briefly recap and bring readers up to speed, here is a quick rundown of the chain of events provided by Siouxlands presbyter and pastor, Wes White:

After nearly two years of attempting to get the Presbytery to deal with a man who claimed to me that he is in basic agreement with Federal Vision theology, the Presbytery has still not dealt decisively with the matter. I asked for the original investigation nearly two years ago. The Presbytery refused. I complained. The Presbytery refused. I complained to the General Assembly. The General Assembly sustained my complaint. The Presbytery decided to investigate. The committee came back 4-2 saying that there was a strong presumption of guilt. The Presbytery rejected the committee report by a 24-13 margin. I, along with others, complained. The Presbytery repented of being too hasty in its rejection of the committee report, and erected a new committee.

That new committee was to report at this meeting. They did so. They unanimously recommended that the Presbytery find a strong presumption of guilt. The Presbytery then decided to postpone consideration of this second committee’s report until September.

The Teaching Elder who was investigated requested to be “instructed.” So, the Presbytery recommended that a committee be formed to instruct him. One hitch. They said that all of those who would “instruct him” would have to be approved by the very Teaching Elder who was being investigated. So, who was nominated? A lot of guys who have supported him from the beginning. When TE Lane Keister was nominated, the TE under investigation said that TE Keister lived too far away. When RE Keister, TE Keister’s father, was nominated, the same TE said no. So, now this TE still under investigation is being instructed primarily by men who’ve supported him, including one who said that he’s in basic agreement with him.

You can’t make these things up.

Here we have Greg Lawrence ( the pastor of Christ Church PCA in Mankato, MN) who was investigated by two separate committees appointed by the Presbytery and who both found a “strong presumption of guilt” that Lawrence is in fact a proponent of the neo-legalism of the Federal Vision.  Yet, instead of following PCA Book of Church Order 31-2 which requires that following the finding of “a strong presumption of the guilt of the party involved, the court shall institute process, and shall appoint a prosecutor to prepare the indictment and to conduct the case,” Lawrence will instead be “instructed.”  Instructed in exactly what I have no idea, but according to White he’ll be instructed by one of his own supporters.

Now, I am not an authority on the PCA’s BCO, but I can find nowhere in the PCA’s constitution where “instruction” may replace “process” and where an “instructor” is a suitable replacement for “prosecutor”?  I confess, I am at a total loss to find anything within the PCA’s constitution where a pastor found to have “a strong presumption of guilt” pursuant to complaint lodged against him may request to be “instructed” instead of “prosecuted” and even control the appointment of those who will provide this so-called “instruction”?

But, maybe I’m just being a bit cynical. Perhaps the instruction will include how to use phrases like “forgiveness of sins” and “union with Christ” more ambiguously so as to avoid suspicion when speaking of the imagined covenant blessings the reprobate are supposed to receive through baptism.  Or, perhaps Lawrence will be instructed on new parliamentary techniques in order to buy even more time as the Presbytery finally frustrates the remaining anti-FV trouble makers and they leave the PCA in disgust.  Other instruction might include how to successfully thumb your nose at the PCA while having fun frustrating your opponents by exiting the PCA at the very last moment and by the backdoor as a “pastor in good standing” just like former FV PCA pastor and coward, Steve Wilkins.  Or, perhaps Lawrence will be instructed on the benefits of joining Doug Wilson’s apostate denomination, the Confederation of Phony Evangelical Federal Visionistas, where he can pretend that all the truly Reformed men throughout history have all been Federal Visionists.

Needless to say, there is some funny business going on in the Siouxlands.

But, the funny business doesn’t stop there.  Besides a good hammer to the head and twist of the nose, the suspected Federal Visionists and their enablers in the Siouxlands Presbytery have even provided the classic two-finger poke-in-the-eye by leveling a defamation complaint against one of the anti-FV men causing all this unwanted trouble and discord, Brian Carpenter.  According to White, “the Presbytery unanimously decided to investigate TE Brian Carpenter for breaking the ninth commandment in not taking care to preserve the good name” of Joshua Moon.

John Robbins Not So Quick Quote

The result of two centuries of irrationalism is that at the beginning of the twenty-first century, we are faced, not with a hopeful prospect, but with an even more dismal prospect than our great grandfathers faced a hundred years ago. The last hundred years has seen the resurgence of medieval Romanism and the emergence of Romanist zealot organizations such as Opus Dei. Medieval Romanism is not just confined to the Roman Catholic Church-State and its thousands of educational institutions, but has gained many adherents among nominal Protestants as well: The prolific authors Norman Geisler and R. C. Sproul, and many lesser known Protestant theologians and philosophers as well, are disciples of the official philosopher of the Roman Church-State, Thomas Aquinas. Their influence has misled most Protestants away from a Biblical and Reformed view of philosophy and apologetics and into a compromise with Rome. Medieval Islam, now usually called “fundamentalist Islam,” and medieval Judaism, with the establishment of the modern State of Israel in 1948, are on the rise as well. All three religions – Romanism, Islam, and Judaism – are false, militant, and violent. Devout members of each group hate, oppose, and plot against members of the other two. But today the date is 2006, not 1006, and the true believers of each of these medieval religions have access to nuclear, biological, chemical, and electromagnetic weapons.

Barring dramatic divine intervention, such as a new Reformation, or the second coming of Christ, the wars of the twenty-first century will be religious wars. They will be worse than the secular wars of the twentieth century. The three principal protagonists will be the three medieval religions that have warred with each other for centuries. Already the battles have begun.

The Theological and Historical Revisionism of John Frame

At the urging of Dr. R. Scott Clark I recently purchased the festschrift for Robert Strimple; The Pattern of Sound Doctrine. While my main reason for purchasing the book was to read Clark’s contribution and his defense of the so-called “well-meant” offer of the Gospel (I hope to have a review of Clark’s article published in the future), I came across the following in John Frame’s contribution to the festschrift dealing with the Clark/Van Til controversy:

On the question of analogy, [John] Murray makes another distinction. Our knowledge of God is analogical, in the sense that our knowledge is ”after the likeness of” God’s own knowledge of himself.   But what we know, the object of our knowledge, according to Murray, is not an analogy, but the truth: “Our knowledge of the truth is analogical, but what we know is not analogical; e.g., our knowledge of that Truth is analogical, but it is not an analogy of the truth that we know.  What we know is the Truth.”  Murray says that if what we know, the object of our knowledge, is a mere analogy, then we do not know the truth at all.

These statements address issues that were raised in the 1940’s controversy between Van Til and Gordon H. Clark. Van Til emphasized that our knowledge of God was analogous to God’s own, but not identical with it, seeking to protect the Creator/creature distinction.  Clark emphasized that our knowledge was the same as God’s own, seeking to prevent skepticism.  Murray’s formulation adds a valuable clarification to this debate: our method of knowing is different from God’s, though “analogous” to it; but the object of our knowledge, what we know, is not an analogy, but truth itself.

The Clark party was willing to say that our way of knowing (they called it the “mode”) is different from God’s. But they wanted to insist that God and human beings could know the same propositions (such as “Jesus rose from the dead”).  Van Til too was willing to say that God and man know the same propositions. In his Introduction to Systematic Theology, he says, “That two times two are four is a well-known fact.  God knows it. Man knows it.” But he wanted to insist that our way of knowing is different form God’s.  On these matters, the most heatedly debated of the controversy, Van Til and Clark actually agreed.  One imagines that if John Murray had urged his distinction on the parties during the debate, and if the parties had listened to him with a teachable spirit, much of the battle could have been avoided [80,81].

At first blush it would seem if Frame is correct the entire controversy which has caused such a deep and lasting division between the respective supporters of Van Til and Clark was much ado about nothing.  Had only John Murray been able to mediate the division between these two men, provided both Clark and Van Til maintained a “teachable spirit,” the watershed that subsequently split the Reformed world in two could have been avoided.

There are a number of problems with Frame’s story, not least of which is Murray’s own argument as Frame presents it and which he culled from the mimeographed notes of one of Murray’s  former and unknown students, is as incoherent and irrational as any of those made by Van Til.  According to Frame, Murray maintains that our knowledge of the truth is analogical, but what we know is not an analogy; i.e., “Our knowledge of the truth is analogical, but what we know is not analogical.”  Not only is Murray’s argument self-contradictory, since our knowledge cannot both be and not be analogical, his conclusion that the object of our knowledge “is truth itself” begs the question.  How Murray arrives at “truth itself” which is “not an analogy” from the idea that our knowledge of the truth is analogical is indeed mysterious.  I don’t know how anyone could be “teachable” enough to embrace such an argument?  Drunk perhaps.

Which brings us to Cornelius Van Til.  According to Frame, Van Til believed in the identity of content between God’s thoughts and man’s thoughts, and, in fact, agreed with Clark.  In Frame’s retelling of things, the real cause of the controversy was Van Til’s insistence “that our way of knowing is different from God’s” and his desire to protect the Creator/creature distinction.  Now, Frame admits that Clark too insists that “our way of knowing is different from God’s,” so what exactly was Van Til protecting?  And, even if Frame is confused by the word “mode,” the Answer to the complaint filed against Clark states that  “Dr. Clark in the transcript [of his ordination examination] says God’s knowledge of a given object is not the same as man’s knowledge of the same object” [emphasis added].  The complaint simply ignored this little piece of information and instead wrongly claimed that “Dr. Clark holds that man’s knowledge of a proposition . . . is identical with God’s knowledge of the same proposition.”

In addition, the position of Van Til and the undersigned in the complaint was that the “how” of God’s knowing does not even relate to the doctrine of incomprehensibility.  In The Answer we read:

Tis’ the Reason for the Season

Quite a few years ago while lamenting about the loss of Christ in Christmas and complaining about the crass commercialism of this time of year, my boss at the time turned to me and said, “Well, Christ has never been in Christmas.”  I suspected that my boss, who was not  particularly religious,  was just being a tad bit cynical.  So I said,  “Of course Christ is in Christmas.  What are you talking about?”  Was my boss one of those closet Liberal atheists out to ban creches from public squares, keep kids in public schools from singing Christmas carols, ban the words “Merry Christmas” from the public square and replace it with the secular “Happy Holidays,” or remove the words “In God We Trust” from dollar bills?  Well, not only did he assure me that Christ had nothing to do with Christmas and that the holiday was a fabrication created by the minds of men,  he challenged me to look it up for myself, which I did.   Needless to say,  I have never looked at Christmas quite the same way.

So, for those still harboring sugar plum fairies in their thoughts and dreams, not to mention in their candle lit services,  PCA Pastor Andy Webb has provided a very timely and informative  historical sketch of the practice of celebrating Christmas in Reformed and Presbyterian churches.

Here is a sample:

In the Puritan Settlements of New England, the celebration of Holidays simply did not occur outside of the few Anglican enclaves. The pilgrims who emigrated to Plymouth spent their first Christmas in America working in the fields. By spending the days on which holy days were observed in a cycle of routine work these Puritan settlers showed their utter contempt for what were to them symbols of the corruption from which they had fled. Attempts by non-Puritans visiting the colony at Plymouth to observe Christmas were initially tolerated, but when it was discovered that they were actively engaged in games and revelry on this day they were angrily told by Governor William Bradford: “Your Conscience may not let you work on Christmas but my conscience cannot let you play while everybody else is out working”

After this, attempts to celebrate Christmas in the English way were punished, and Bradford noted years later that “no one had tried to celebrate Christmas since that second year.” Other American Colonies such as Massachusetts and Connecticut also outlawed the observance of Christmas and after the laws abolishing holy days were passed in England, the Colonies gladly followed with their own. Even after the Restoration monarchy forced the repeal of these laws in the Colonies in the 1680s, the practice of not observing holy days remained. While it may no longer have been strictly illegal, socially and ecclesiastically holy days were anathema. The Puritan Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and the other Dissenters of New England were all unified in their belief that holy days were an abomination, and no proper part of the worship of the people of God. This common belief was to remain in place well into the 1800s.

Samuel Miller appears to be largely correct then when he declared that “Presbyterians do not observe Holy Days.” This was certainly the understanding of the first Presbyterians, it had been codified in their creedal documents, and it had been their practice both in Scotland and America for over 200 years. What then happened in the 19th and 20th centuries to change the practice of Presbyterians?

So, cozy up to the fireplace with a nice cup of eggnog and your favorite laptop and read the rest of Andy’s ode to Christmas here.

PCA Pastor Peter Leithart to be Charged

A panel of commissioners from the PCA’s Standing Judicial Commission (SJC) made up of Fred Greco, Samuel Duncan, Dewey Roberts, Bill Lyle, and Jeff Owen has investigated a complaint filed against the Pacific Northwest Presbytery (PNW) for theological delinquency in their exoneration of PCA pastor and Federal Visionist, Peter Leithart.   You can read their preliminary decision in the case here.   Keep in mind their decision is just a recommendation and still has to be upheld by the entire SJC meeting in March, but I think it is safe to say their decision will be sustained.

While one might be excused for believing that this might be an occasion where a PCA pastor will finally be tried for heresy, you have to remember this is the PCA.

According to the decision it seems Leithart will not be charged with teaching heresy or for advancing what is without question — and as the report clearly demonstrates — a false gospel, but rather something more akin to favoring worldly recreations on the Lord’s day.

The panel’s argument is that the PNW”s failure to find a strong presumption of guilt in the case of Leithart is akin to affirming that Anglicans or  Reformed Baptists are within PCA confessional boundaries simply because they affirm some of the “central tenets of the Standards.”  The panel reasons, “This does not mean that Anglicans or  Baptists are within the Standards.  In the same way, Leithart appears to hold some views that place him outside the fundamentals of the Standards, as adopted by the Presbyterian Church in America.”  Of course, this is true.  However, last I checked an Anglican (unless he happens to be N.T. Wright or some other neo-liberal) or a Reformed Baptist isn’t necessarily a Christ denying heretic.  Leithart is.

I also found this particularly disturbing:

The only conclusion that a [PNW] court should reach…would be that there is a strong presumption of guilt that some of the views of Leithart are out of accord with some of the fundamentals of the system of doctrine taught in the Standards. This does not mean Leithart is a heretic. He is not. This does not mean that Leithart is not or whether he is a Christian. He is. This does not necessarily mean that Leithart is outside of the broader reformed community. The sole question to be determined is whether Leithart’s views place him outside of the Standards, as adopted by the Presbyterian Church in America.

Here again we have the PCA’s highest court referring to a man who boldly denies the Gospel, considers the doctrine of imputation “redundant,” and maintains that sinners are brought into union with Christ through the magic waters of baptism as their “brother.”  As I’ve said elsewhere, the Judaizers in Paul’s day never had it so good.

Even if  this tepid first step may one day end in the actual adjudication of an actual Federal Visionist within the PCA, it still might be another colossal waste of time, ink, paper, and prayer.  That’s because Leithart has plenty of time between now and March to decide whether he wants to stay and fight for the corrupt and phony gospel he believes or simply skedattle like that other FV queen and coward, Steve Wilkins, for the safe FV confines of the  Confederation of Make Believe Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC).  The ball is in his court.

Besides, one of the PCA Pastors in the minority who filed the complaint against the PNW, Jason Stellman, wrote on R. Scott Clark’s Heidelblog:

I for one would actually prefer he spare the church the time, energy, and money it will cost to try him. I have no desire to prosecute a case against Peter (though I will if need be). His case is unique in that he already ministers in a CREC in Moscow, so he has little to lose by just joining the denomination that best fits his theology. I mean, what good would it do for him personally or professionally to be deposed from a NAPARC church? He has to know that that’s what will happen if he insists on staying.

Leaving the issue of time, energy, and money aside (does the defense of the Gospel really have price?), Stellman does have a point.  What possible incentive can there be for Leithart to wait around to be charged even for some lesser offense than the one he deserves?  He could still end up getting defrocked and can no longer dishonestly claim to be a pastor in good standing.  That could be potentially embarrassing to Doug Wilson, the defacto pope of the Confederation of Make Believe Reformed Evangelical Churches.  I mean, allowing a defrocked former PCA pastor to continue to preach in their phony churches and teach in their phony Christian schools would go a long way in damaging the illusion that they’re really a Reformed Evangelical denomination.

On the other hand, I do get the sense from reading Leithart, and from the fact that he immediately and openly challenged his Presbytery by firing off a letter expressing his opposition to the PCA’s FV/NPP report only days after the report was adopted, that he is a proud and arrogant man.  He might even think he is clever  enough to outsmart the men on the SJC.   And, given what we see so far from the SJC’s preliminary decision, he might be right.

In a telling note, I did find it interesting that the PNW report exonerating Leithart reached its conclusion in light of “The dialectical character of biblical teaching famously produces tensions that remain difficult, if not impossible to resolve.”  Now where have I heard that before?  Hmmm?

Crampton Refutes Anderson

Denson was nice enough to point out in the combox to another post that Dr. W. Gary Crampton’s devastating refutation and review of Vantilian James Anderson’s Paradox in Christian Theology is now available at the Trinity Foundation website.

One of my criticisms of the review, if you want to call it that, is that I only wish Dr. Crampton spent more time examining Anderson’s use of Alvin Plantigna’s epistemology of warrant to justify his belief in the (imagined) logical paradoxes of Scripture, that are, or so we are told, irreconcilable at the bar of human reason. It struck me when reading Anderson’s book that his use of Plantinga’s epistemological method (and I don’t think he was abusing Plantinga here) that magically makes believing in a logically incoherent revelation “rational,” points to the utter uselessness of Planting’s entire epistemic endeavor. I would think a critique along those lines would also go along way in providing the death-knell for the entire misnamed “Reformed Epistemology” movement.  If Plantinga’s scheme can provide warrant for believing contradictory nonsense while still being rational for doing so, then it can provide the epistemological justification for believing all sorts of anti-Christian nonsense.

Another (minor) criticism is that I wish Dr. Crampton spent some time discussing Anderson’s contention that the so-called “paradoxes of Scripture” result from what Anderson anagrammatically calls “MACRUEs” or “merely apparent contradiction resulting from unarticulated equivocation.”

With those minor asides, I very much appreciated Crampton’s review along with his succinct encapsulation of Robert Reymond’s arguments exposing the dangers of holding to the false belief that there are logical paradoxes in Scripture (play close attention to Reymond’s second point).   Crampton writes:

The fact is, however, that a logical paradox (even an apparent contradiction) cannot be “rationally” believed, because one would not know what to believe. If one statement even “apparently” contradicts another, how would one know which to believe? What could be more obvious than this? It is not “rationally” possible to believe such paradoxes. Robert Reymond posed three insuperable obstacles to the notion that the Bible contains logical paradox.

First, as noted above, the issue of what is and what is not a logical paradox is totally subjective. Therefore, to claim universally that such and such a teaching is a paradox would require omniscience. How could anyone know that this teaching had not been reconciled before the bar of someone’s human reason?

Second, even when one claims that the seeming contradiction is merely “apparent,” he raises serious problems. “If actually non-contradictory truths can appear as contradictories, and if no amount of study or reflection can remove the contradiction, there is no available means to distinguish between this ‘apparent’ contradiction and a real contradiction.” How then would man know whether he is embracing an actual contradiction, which if actually found in the Bible (an impossibility, according to 1 Corinthians 14:33 and 2 Corinthians 1:18-20), would reduce the Scriptures to the same level as the contradictory Koran of Islam or a seeming contradiction? If Reymond’s analysis here is sound (and it is), then Anderson’s RAPT “warrant” for holding to the concept of logical paradox is “unwarranted.” The reason being that one cannot “rationally” believe “a set of theological claims even when those claims give the appearance of inconsistency” (262). The acronym RAPT (Rational Affirmation of Paradoxical Theology) itself is oxymoronic. There is no “rational affirmation” possible of a logical paradox.

And third, once one asserts (as with Neo-orthodoxy) that truth may come in the form of irreconcilable contradictions, “he has given up all possibility of ever detecting a real falsehood. Every time he rejects a proposition as false because it ‘contradicts’ the teaching of Scripture or because it is in some other way illogical, the proposition’s sponsor only needs to contend that it only appears to contradict Scripture or to be illogical, and that his proposition is one of the terms…of one or more of those paradoxes which we have acknowledged have a legitimate place in our ‘little systems.’” This being so, Christianity’s uniqueness as the only true revealed religion, will die the death of a thousand qualifications.(22)

In all Dr. Crampton provides another devastating critique of those Vantilians, like Anderson, who  hold up the Scriptures as presenting to the mind of man an impenetrable morass of apparent contradictions, something they wrongly call “mysteries,” to which we are to bow in submission all in a sick perversion of Christian piety. These men, while pretending to be Reformed, are really the Reformed faith’s greatest enemies. Their thinly veiled affirmation of biblical contradictions (insofar as they appear and must remain to the human existent at least without some further revelation which is neither forthcoming nor to be expected) are hostile to true religion and are nothing more than religious fetishes fashioned in their own minds as they provide  a caricature of the true biblical Creator/creature distinction so badly mutilated by Van Til and his many followers.  As Dr. Crampton observes:

In the words of Gordon Clark, the Westminster theologians and the Reformers before them “believed that God’s revelation can be formulated accurately. They were not enamored of ambiguity [as is found in logical paradox]; they did not identify piety with a confused mind [which is the result of logical paradox]. They wanted to proclaim the truth with the greatest possible clarity. And so ought we.”

Crampton’s review also provides a warning to anyone who might be looking at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina where Anderson teaches to further their theological studies.  With professors like Anderson your money would be better spent elsewhere.  Although finding a seminary that doesn’t already adhere to Anderson’s deeply held conviction in a paradoxical and contradictory faith is getting increasingly harder to find, that is, if possible at all in these dark days.

Martin Luther Quick Quote

For years I had heard the quote from Luther to “let our sins be strong” or to simply “sin boldly.”  Luther’s point was that Christ died for real sins and not the sins of our imaginations or the imaginations of others that some would seek to impose on us. The quote is from a letter that Luther wrote to Melanchthon in 1521 concerning the question of whether or not monks should break their vows. I had never read the letter before and only came across it last week in another helpful post from Dr. R. Scott Clark over at his Heidleblog. Interestingly, Luther’s famous saying was mentioned again in a sermon this morning. So, here is the relevant portion of that letter:

If you are a preacher of mercy, do not preach an imaginary but the true mercy. If the mercy is true, you must therefore bear the true, not an imaginary sin. God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. We, however, says Peter (2. Peter 3:13) are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where justice will reign. It suffices that through God’s glory we have recognized the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. No sin can separate us from Him, even if we were to kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day. Do you think such an exalted Lamb paid merely a small price with a meager sacrifice for our sins? Pray hard for you are quite a sinner.