What Song Is That?

Have you ever had a tune stuck in your head that you just couldn't stop playing in your head? What's worse is when you get an awful song in your head that you can't get out of it. The words are on repeat even when you're not conscious of it. The tune is on your tongue. This is likely why the words of the song that warns children everywhere says, "Oh be careful, Little Eyes what you see. Oh be careful, Little Ears, what you hear." 

In a similar way, we each have songs in our heads that have been taught to us by the world. Everyone is singing one song or another with their explicit ideas or humming one tune or another with their attitudes and actions. 

When it comes to the song that Christian women are to sing and hum, it is made very clear in Titus 2 that it is one of a husband-lover and a child-lover. Look at those words carefully. It does not say to be one who is married and has kids. It says that one is to become the very essence of a husband and child lover. This means that the song that is sung in one's explicit declarations and the tune hummed by one's attitude and actions is the song of love for husband and children. 

This would make sense since the woman is saved through childbearing (1 Tim 2:15), that the command given before all commands is to "be fruitful in order to multiply, multiply in order to fill up the earth, fill up the earth in order to subdue it and subdue it in order to rule over it," and that the very image of God, the instrument of God to accomplish this goal of filling up the earth with covenant children is expressed then in having "other sons and daughters" (Gen 5). 

The world has a different song to sing, however, and it sings it loudly. It wants you to sing along. It is a hater of husbands and children. It wants you to roll your eyes at your pathetic husbands and to express how awful the burden of children is. It may be Ok with your expressing that you think your current children are worth it, you know, after you express what a burden they are; but it wants you to follow that up by statements such as, "I definitely don't want any more." Nothing makes children feel more loved than your saying how much you love them but how awful it would be to have any more of them. I personally say that about things I love too (e.g., time with my wife, money, love itself, the security of having food and shelter, forgiveness and peace with God), you know, all the things we only want a little of because we love them so much. If we love it, our motto is "a little dab will do ya."

It is now the weekend after a holiday we call "Thanksgiving," yet nothing but ingratitude for having children is often expressed by Christian women and far worse than this is that there is little thought of whether one is obeying the command to "teach the younger women to be lovers of husbands and lovers of children," to sing God's song to one another, in what they are communicating to one another. When Christian women get together they have an opportunity to lift up God's Word that proclaims children to be a blessing and that the quiver that is full of them is blessed by God. Instead, it is often used as an opportunity for the world to play its broken record yet again. If the same song you can hear at any pagan gathering is sung at our Christian fellowships something might be off.

I get it. It takes time for Christians in our day to understand what's happening. Many are recovering evangelicals and have been taught worldly ideas through it. Evangelicalism sings the same song as the world because Evangelicalism is a Christian cult, not an orthoprax Christian movement. Like any cult it has incorporated Christian ideas into it but not all Christian ideas. It warps certain ones to give a false worldview that is not consistent with the Christian song that has been sung for two thousand years (and I would argue from the beginning of time among God's people). Evangelicalism simply sings a different song on this matter than the church has always sung. It is incumbent upon recovering evangelicals to relearn that song and to sing and hum it everywhere.

I get that children are hard to bear. They are a burden. The world, however, teaches us that they are a burden not worth bearing and that is what must be corrected by God's Word. I used to be impoverished and went around calling my children "my gold." It is clear, however, that many consider children something much less than that. Whether a burden is worth bearing really depends upon what you think that burden is. Gold is worth bearing. More worthless items may not be. Perhaps if children were seen at least as valuable to women as money, time, and sleep it would be considered an even trade. Perhaps if they saw children as more valuable than those things, there would be a joy and praise in their music that is often otherwise absent. Instead, we get the dirge because children aren’t worth it in the eyes of the world’s fallen composer.

But when Christian women complain about children or bemoan the prospect of having more of them what they inadvertently sing is the world's song and the devil loves it. His goal is less covenant people, not a filling up of the earth with them. Everywhere and always he has tried to convince the world to sing his song. From Atra-Hasis to Margaret Sanger, he is relentless. The hardship of joining with God to create life in this world is brought on by him that we might give up, not only in seeing the good of it in our minds but believing the good of it in our attitudes and actions. 

Let me end with a little biography of myself, since I too have been on this journey out of Kinderhassville. Everywhere I went, whether churches or schools, pastors and professors alike would tell me that my gifting to understand the Bible was not common and that they thought I was meant to do something great in the world because of that ability. Students at my schools would say it. I had an old mentor who was in charge of an international ministry call me out of the blue one day after not seeing him in decades and tell me that he had been praying over a mountain of people in his life and my name came up as one who was supposed to do something great. He died a week later as if it indicate that God had this one thing left for him to tell me. So many people thought I would be this great reformer of the modern church. I believed it myself right up until the point when I was made sick at an early age in my career, impoverished, and thrown into obscurity. While in exile, I tried hard to reestablish that path, thinking that this was simply one more obstacle in the way to this great ministry God had for me. Whether studying or writing, I attempted to reacquire what I thought had been lost. All the while my children would constantly interrupt me with things they thought were important. They would come in and sit on my lap and tell me about something they were doing or ask me a question of some sort. The feeling that I could do so much more and be so much better without these interruptions would constantly come over me. But eventually one's theology trickles down to his attitudes and I began to hum a different tune because I began to have a different song playing in my head. My children were my ministry. They were the place of reformation. Their interruptions were God's regular daily schedule for me, giving me opportunities to teach them the gospel and disciple them. I wish I had understood it earlier. Many a thing was destroyed and many an opportunity wasted because I was confused as to where and upon whom the currency of my time in life was to be spent.

I will not likely be the great reformer everyone thought I was going to be. I'm nowhere near it. I live in obscurity and will likely die there. My reformation is happening at home. My children and the little church at which I shepherd is my ministry, not some global movement. I have been called, not only to sing God's song to them, but to teach them to hum it with joy too. This is my ministry because it is every Christian's ministry, whether they can partake in the act of childbearing and childrearing or not. 

It is my hope that when Christians gather together, especially Christian women, they will be mindful of Titus 2 and sing and hum it to one another, that they would encourage one another in the Lord's creational work rather than discourage one another from it.

The world works hard now to blast its music through whatever speakers it finds willing. It works hard to get Christians to join its choir. All you need to do is to not be critical of its song but to be sympathetic toward it, to basically agree with it, to hum its tune. But be careful, Little Ears, what you hear, and, O Christian, be careful, Little Mouth, what you sing.

Which View of the Image of God Is More Consistent with Christian Orthodoxy?

 If the ontological image of God is moral responsibility and decision making, intellect, relational, etc. then is not man also made in the image of anything else that has those qualities? Does he not image the devil? Demons? Angels? Even other men? What special relationship is there between man and God if man also images all of these other beings too? 

Is it not that man is physical and these others are spiritual? Is that not the difference between them all? But is not that also the difference between man and God? So how is it that man's physical nature can be God's image?

Most of these advocates don't believe that man images God physically, as that would make God physical in their minds, since they think that the word "image" means "reflection in some way." But this is part of the problem. The word "image" does not mean "reflects an appearance of" or "looks like in some way" to where we can only look at spiritual qualities of God and see how the relate to us.

The word "image" here refers to a cult image. A cult image is a physical image that provides a medium for the god to work in the world. Through this physical image, the deity uses it to create order in a particular area, in his temple and then in the city in which the temple resides. It represents the deity's domain and sphere of rule. From that sphere, chaos is thwarted by the deity's presence and work through the idol/image. But one would have to say that the image of God is functional and not ontological in order to say that man is God's image in his physical nature. In other words, if man is God's image in his physical nature and the word "image" means "looks like" then either the Mormons are right or the word "image of God" refers to man's function as God's physical medium in the world, not something that evidences that man is like God in his ontology in some way.

I think this is a real problem for those who define the image of God the way that they do. They are essentially arguing that man only images God in some spiritual way. which is the adoption of a gnostic view. Man, in his spirit, reflects the divine, but not in his crude or evil physical form. 

Hence, it seems that the functional view would be the view more in line with orthodoxy and the ontological view assumes a gnostic view of man, where his physical nature must be disregarded when speaking of the image ontologically. 

They All Have Become ἄχρηστος

 Romans 3:12 argues that humanity all together has become achreiow, a word translated as "worthless." Someone arguing on FB for the inherent value of man found other English glosses that he thought fit his argument better to where it was translated as "unprofitable" or "unserviceable." 

Now, this is a distinction without a difference if this debate is known well. The entire point is that if man is unusable for any service or unprofitable for any service then the word is conveying the same thing by being translated "worthless." 

Here is the BDAG entry for both the verb and noun.

ἀχρειόω (s. ἀχρεῖος) (t.r., S., Vog.; by-form ἀχρεόω Tdf., W-H., M., Bov., N25; SIG 569, 31; s. B-D-F §30, 2) 1 aor. inf. ἀχρειῶσαι LXX; 3 pl. pf. ἠχρείωκαν Da 6:21. Pass. 1 aor. ἠχρεώθην; pf. ptc. ἠχρειωμένος (Philo Mech. 60, 16; Polyb. 3, 64, 8 al.; Vett. Val. 290, 1; OGI 573, 16: LXX; ἠχρειώθησαν Just., D. 27, 3; Theoph. Ant. 2, 35 [p. 188, 29]) in our lit. only pass.

① make useless, outwardly, in symbolism, of damaged sticks Hs 8, 3, 4.

② of becoming a liability to society because of moral depravity become depraved, worthless of pers. Ro 3:12 (Ps 13:3; 52:4).—M-M.

ἄχρηστος, ον (s. χρηστός, χράομαι; Theognis+) pert. to not serving any beneficial purpose (in Gr-Rom. society gener. pert. to lack of responsibility within the larger social structure, s. antonyms εὔχρηστος, χρηστός) useless, worthless, perh. in wordplay on the name Onesimus and certainly w. the term εὔχρηστος (as Hv 3, 6, 7; cp. Hs 9, 26, 4; Jos., Ant. 12, 61) Phlm 11 τόν ποτέ σοι ἄ. who was once useless to you (ἄ. τινι as EpArist 164); ἄ. of a slave Epict. 1, 19, 19 and 22 (cp. wordplay χρήσιμον ἐξ ἀχηρήστου Pla, Rep. 411a). W. περισσός Dg 4:2.—Hv 3, 6, 2; Hs 9, 26, 4; ὀξυχολία ἄ. ἐστιν ill temper leads to no good m 5, 1, 6.—DELG s.v. χρή. M-M. TW.

Arndt, W., Danker, F. W., Bauer, W., & Gingrich, F. W. (2000). A Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament and other early Christian literature (3rd ed., p. 160). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Man is worthless in terms of his function, and is, therefore, worthless in terms of his form. That is the point of it. 

If gold is no longer valuable due to its servicing function, it is no longer valuable, period. But one might say, "If gold were to lose its monetary value, it could still be used for other things. But that is to say that it is not rendered unserviceable but rather merely had a change of service. So this is not what the word means. Another might say, "Well, even though the gold has no other function, it can still be valuable to the owner. But this is a misunderstanding as well. If it is pleasing in its appearance or just in its existence to the owner then it is serving a function and is, therefore, serviceable/functional/valuable. Changing the translation with other synonyms does not help the case. 

Likewise, the Hebrew word it is translating in Psalm 14:1 is the word שָׁחַת, which is something that is ruined in terms of its function. It is rendered useless as it no longer functions for the purpose it was created. 

Man no longer functions in any good way, which is the point of Romans 3:9-18. He, therefore, does not have value as something that is in some way pleasing to God just by virtue of being man (Rom 8:8). He is not pleasing in function, and therefore, has no value in form. 

This may sound awful to our modern ears but I would suggest it is the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are not like gold that simply has no monetary value but is still valued by its owner due to some inherent worth or delight. We are more like garbage that has no value whatsoever and is good for nothing but to be thrown away.

Instead, God, in His great mercy and love has chosen, without being compelled by some inherent worth or value in man, freely and without attraction to man's worthiness, decided to redeem what was without value and give the worth and value of the Son of God to worthless people. Those who have been redeemed are now the most valuable creatures that could ever exist. Those who are called by the gospel are being offered the inexpressible and exclusive riches of Christ's value to God and may now obtain this free gift through faith in His Son. 

Fallen man is no longer valuable as God's image but he may become so through the One who is most valuable, and as the images of God, instruments of creation and life, Christians, our duty is to express this magnificent offer to everyone everywhere. The barren may become fertile again by the magnificent work of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In this way, I wonder if those who argue so rigorously that man must retain some inherent value realize that they may actually be diminishing the glory of the gospel in doing so. If man is inherently valuable as the image of God then why wouldn't God value him and save him? Who wouldn't buy back some gold? But only a God whose love and mercy is beyond measure buys back garbage and makes it into gold.

Jesus Is More the Image?

 I was reading comments on FB concerning the image of God debate this morning and it seems clear that there is a bit of a confusion concerning ontology and function. The statement was made that Jesus is more the image of God than fallen man, and I immediately thought to myself, "In what way?"

 Likewise, in a recent conversation a couple of my fellow church officer's had at a conference with another conference attendee, I was accused of divorcing ontology/form and function with my view, an accusation of which I was surprised since the exact opposite was going on. It is those who believe that fallen man is God's image who must either slip into a gnostic division between form and function or agree with me that the form should not be called the image of God. Let me explain.

If man is ontologically God's image, he cannot be something else. He can only be what he is ontologically. Since God did not make man in any way the devil's image, he cannot, by nature, be the devil's image, which is to say that he cannot, by nature, be evil.

Now, of course, we do not believe that man's created nature is evil, but this is missing the point. My point is that if man is made as God's image, he can only function that way. He cannot function in any other way.

What this means is that the image must be divorced from any moral quality, as we know that man does become wicked. The image, therefore, cannot have anything to do with God's goodness, a right relationship with God, etc. If it does, then we have a contradiction between form and function. The gills on a fish are breathing air, its fins may fly, and a bird's lungs can breath water. Form and function are linked. No one can act contrary to his ontology because no one has the ability to act beyond his limitations. 

If man is the image of God by nature, however, not only can he not be anything else, he cannot act in accordance with any other nature. That means that if there is a moral quality to the image at all, man must not only remain inherently good, but can do no evil.

This, we know, is not true. So what is really going on here?

I think that what is truly going on is the old "image and likeness" view that some have held in church history due to tacking on an extra image of God to man. The first is that man is the image of God only in certain human abilities. In other words, in a sort of generic humanity. Man can reason, have relationships, make moral decisions, etc. but this generic humanity has no moral quality to it. It is amoral, and therefore, can fall toward the good or the evil. 

Then there is a moral function assigned to the man that is also called the image or likeness of God (some people divorced the words image and likeness in order to support this paradigm), so that man is actually the image of God in two ways, one ontological and one functional. The functional image does not necessarily flow from the formal image because the formal image is generic and we know that man falls and becomes evil in function, so it can only be generic.

Now, here is the issue. If man's abilities, like rationality, being relational, able to make moral decisions, is the ontological or formal image of God, then we must also say that the angels, the devil, demons, etc. are also the formal or ontological image of God. I might even argue that some animals fall into this category, depending upon how we define "moral decision making" and how that might be distinguished from what unbelievers do but I digress. This would be a rather novel doctrine but it follows necessarily if that is the way we define the image. But it also means that saying that someone is the image of God in the formal sense doesn't really mean much. One is merely saying that everyone is a higher created form than anything that does not have those qualities but there is no special relationship in it.

Likewise, I actually affirm that humans are made this way ontologically. My contention has always been that this is never called the image of God in Scripture. Scripture always discusses the image of God as the functional image, so to make up another definition for the term that includes all of humanity is simply applying biblical terminology to something that is never associated with that terminology. 

However, many do not divorce the moral quality of man from the ontological image, and this is both where we have a logical problem and a slip into gnostic thought. Now, to be clear, gnostic thought does not confuse form and function, as these people often do, but rather posits two forms/two ontologies to humanity. Man does evil because he is ontologically evil by nature in his flesh, but he can do good because he is ontologically good in his spirit. So man has two ontological natures, one good and one evil. The reason why this is the case is because he can do good or evil, and since ontology cannot be divorced from function, he must have two ontologies. 

What those who are offering up is that man has an amoral ontology, something with which I would agree, but a moral duty to use that ontology to be in right relationship with God and do good upon the earth as the instrument of God. Again, we all agree. The issue is whether this is also to be called the image of God and only Scripture and logic will help us here.

So what becomes extremely important is understanding what an image is in the ancient Near East rather than assume we know what an image is because our English word for image sounds like Scripture is talking about a reflection or something. An image in the context of a temple (I realize the idea that Genesis 1 is a cosmic temple is another issue) is talking about a cult image of the deity. In fact, leaving behind even the idea that Genesis 1 is a temple, the fact that you would have the phrase "the image of [insert deity]" shows that we are talking about a cultic image. 

So what is a cultic image and how does it function? Imagine someone creating an image for Marduk. He ontologically makes the image in such a way so that it can function as an image. He is making this image for Marduk but let's say someone steals the image and puts it in the temple of Sin, the moon god, in order to function as his image now. It is no longer the image of Marduk even though it was originally made for Marduk. The reason why it can be used this way is because it is not inherently the image of Marduk. It is not ontologically the image of Marduk. It is simply ontologically an image but it can function as either the image of Marduk or the image of Sin or any other god it is used for. 

Now, part of this understanding is knowing that the images in the ancient Near East did not necessarily look like the gods they were imaging. That is why one could have images that were animals that represented various strengths or domains, or it could be made as some sort of human figure that could represent any god, or a combination of both. So the word "image" does not automatically mean "looks like in some way" when we are talking about a cult image. That is an important point that is often misunderstood.

However, if an image was made specifically with ontological qualities where it could only be the image of Marduk and never anything else, then it cannot function as an image for any other god. This is where we run into a problem. If man is the image of God ontologically, then he cannot function as the image of the devil in any way. If man is only an image ontologically, however, who was made to function as the image of God, then man may walk out of God's temple and into the devil's to image him because although the form of being an image is inherent the function of being the image of God is not. The form is being an image so man must image something by nature. Form and function cannot be divorced. But this means that man is not ontologically the image of God but rather an image made to function as the image of God in a right relationship with God as His instrument of creation and good in the world.

This goes back to our FB discussion. If man is formally the image of God, then Jesus cannot be more the image of God in that sense at all. That would mean that He is more than human in His created nature as a man. That would be heresy. Jesus is God as the Creator but He is fully man, not more and not less. 

Likewise, if we are merely saying that Jesus is more the image of God than fallen man because He functions as the image of God, then we would all agree that He is more than but I would say that He is more than fallen man because fallen man does not function as the image of God at all. He functions as the devil's image.

So what is it to really say that Jesus is more the image of God than fallen man but to agree that fallen man is not the image of God? If one says that fallen man still retains some good moral quality to him in his function then we must move on to prove total depravity from Scripture against what is clearly the beginning of Pelagian or Semi-Pelagian anthropology. 

In the mean time, this problem of form and function is resolved by merely allowing Scripture to guide our vocabulary in the matter and categorize the philosophical view of what man is in distinction from other creatures with some other nomenclature.

As a last comment, it is interesting that Reformed folk in general tend to ask the question, "By what standard?" when it comes to legal and ecclesiastical definitions but even if they come to the understanding that the ontological image of God is not biblically attested seem content to use unbiblical definitions of phrases when it comes to this issue.

Why Evangelicalism's View of Essentials Produces Rotten Fruit

Ideas have consequences. I know that should seem obvious but we've so downplayed the importance of ideas today that a reminder doesn't hurt. I'm told there is a sign hung at the entrance to Auschwitz that reads, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." It's a fascinating thing that most evangelicals are staunchly committed to their religious ideas concerning what is essential and what is not, but have little understanding of their own history concerning how they got those ideas. We've all heard the mantra that is falsely attributed to Augustine, "In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, and in all things charity." Certainly, in all things charity but what is assumed to be essentials and non-essentials is a matter of debate, and it is a vitally important debate at that.

The story, although severely oversimplifying, is basically this in a nutshell. Liberalism, which adopted the ideas of the Enlightenment, like egalitarianism and inclusivism, did not like the restrictions that Christian orthodoxy placed on the church in light of the philosophical and scientific fads of the day as well as the fatigue of religious infighting stemming from what were considered the "religious wars" and continuing through denominational splintering.  They desired a much more inclusive orthodoxy that had a wider base than what historic Christianity could offer so that everyone could join hands in order to fight the moral decay of the culture due to the undermining of Christianity by secular culture. Coupled with an egalitarian tendency to see authority as tyranny and an inclusive tendency to see doctrine as that which divides, many liberals taught that those who denied what was historically considered to be orthodox was not definitional for who could consider themselves a Christian, even though many of them held to traditionally orthodox tenets themselves.

In fact, one of J. Gresham Machen's points in Liberalism and Christianity is that Liberalism is not a different religion just because it denies certain doctrines. Liberals may affirm every one of what were called "fundamentals." Instead, what made it a different religion is the idea that one could still claim to be a Christian even though he rejected one or more of them. In other words, liberalism is not the denial of certain doctrines but the belief that doctrine should not divide.

Fundamentalism, historically named, was a counter-movement that often missed the mark by attacking liberalism by affirming those things that liberals often denied or claimed were unnecessary to believe as a Christian. Rather than understanding that liberalism was not a denial of orthodox doctrines but a redefinition of orthodoxy that placed a lesser importance on an affirmation of those doctrines, it spent most of its time defending these particular doctrines and not as much time defending the idea that these doctrines were necessary because they were at the foundation of a Christian worldview, which is what was really being attacked. Hence, the foundations were held but the rest of the house was allowed to fall into decay.

As a result, in the 1950's, the Enlightenment worldview displayed itself in the church's adoption of Neo-Evangelicalism in the West. Assuming the liberal ideas of inclusivism and egalitarianism, along with the fundamentals of their parents, Evangelicalism denounced the divisiveness of most doctrines but held to the importance of those their parents had called "fundamentals." In other words, both of the essential components of fundamentalism and assumptions of liberalism concerning doctrine were adopted in order to create what we now see as Evangelicalism. The only rejection of liberalism was that evangelicals did not apply this idea originally to the fundamentals. They just applied it to all other doctrines. 

During this time, what was left behind, was any sort of robust biblical thinking about orthopraxis. This has its roots in the fact that the original disagreement between liberalism and fundamentalism was not over morality, which each largely agreed upon. Over time, however, because of the corrosion of an orthodox Christian worldview within liberalism, its morality also began to change and be conformed to a moral system more consistent with Enlightenment principles of egalitarianism and inclusivism. 

With the advent of Margaret Sanger reversing the Comstock laws and convincing women to take upon more egalitarian roles, liberalism's inability to provide a worldview that stood against these ideas soon simply gave way to them. Quite a few years before Sanger's campaigns, the social gospel was making inroads into the church with its adoption of the universal fatherhood and brotherhood of man, arguing that Christians needed to think about a new view of orthodoxy simply because the old one was in the way of this new Spirit-led social movement.

Fundamentalism had largely adopted a social gospel because it had often had a similar morality to its own, even though its assumptions were largely that of the Enlightenment. It had been against prostitution, contraception, drunkenness, etc. so that fundamentalists felt they could join hands with those who had similar goals of orienting society toward moral purity. 

What this ultimately led to is that even though fundamentalists countered liberalism in its doctrines, it did not largely counter it in its morality until it was too late. This is largely because its morality looked the same for awhile. But its worldview was clearly a foundation that would later give rise to a completely contrary morality to that of historic, Christian orthopraxis. This would soon be understood by fundamentalists to a degree but it would largely be too late. 

This is important to understand because Evangelicalism adopted no view of orthopraxis due to their parents giving to them no idea that there even was one. Orthopraxis was the culture's orthopraxis. Hence, to this very day, evangelicals argue over whether a homosexual can be a Christian because Christianity to an evangelical is defined by the doctrinal essentials and not any ethical essentials that would stem from a necessarily definitional biblical worldview.

What happened as a result of teaching that Christianity could be reduced to these particular doctrinal "essentials" is that evangelicals were left with a vacuum where they needed a worldview in order to make life decisions. In absence of a Christian worldview, of course, the worldview of the Enlightenment, which is the primary religion of our culture, filled that vacuum.

The sexual ethics of evangelicalism became secondary to one's identification as a Christian. As such, people calling themselves Christians could simply disagree about these things. Homosexuality, transgenderism, birth control, and even abortion were all considered in-house debates. In fact, when asked whether abortion should be included as a part of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority agenda, Falwell replied, "Isn't that a Roman Catholic issue?" Most evangelicals rejoiced a the decision of Roe vs. Wade, as they were as convinced of the social good of abortion as liberalism's social gospel was simply because evangelicalism was void of an orthopraxis when it came to sexuality. Eventually, evangelicals were swayed by an article by John Warwick Montgomery in Christianity Today that argued that abortion was murder and came to adopt, for the most part, that abortion was wrong. Due to the promiscuity created by this void of a Christian worldview in evangelicalism and liberalism, the sexual revolution found its pinnacle in the promiscuity of the 60's and 70's so much so that evangelicals began a counter-campaign of purity culture that attempted to argue that people should wait until marriage. Even with this, however, no robust worldview was offered as to why one should wait. 

Hence, the rebellion of our teenagers, the promiscuity of our culture, and the overall confusion over sexual ethics and the lack of any distinguishable behavior between evangelicalism and the pagans in our culture is directly a result of the thinking that Christianity can be reduced down in its essentials to some core doctrines absent of a fuller biblical worldview that includes both historic orthodoxy and orthopraxis. And as Jesus warned us, bad fruit comes from bad trees, not good ones. You will know the false prophets by their fruit. 

So what I would propose instead of this disastrous experiment that has claimed the souls of so many of our families and bound God's people in so many vices is that we adopt the motto, "In historic Christian orthodoxy and orthopraxis, unity. In historic disagreement within Christianity, patience and tolerance (which deals with the divisiveness issue biblically rather than as Enlightenment inclusivism would). In all things, working toward a biblical worldview with charity." 

The Bible, as adopted by historic Christianity, has given us our essentials (Acts 15:28-29) and they include both doctrines pertaining to worshiping the right God with the right means and practice pertaining to sexuality.

For it seemed best to the Holy Spirit and to us not to place any greater burden on you than these essentials: that you abstain from meat that has been sacrificed to idols, from blood, from what has been strangled and from sexual immorality.

These two components set an essential foundation of orthodoxy and orthopraxis for the substructure of a robust Christian worldview upon which a Christian can build a life of godliness as he understands more and more of God's Word. We must not return to the black hole of evangelicalism simply because it creates an immediate, yet artificial, unity. We must strive toward the slower and more difficultly achieved unity of the faith by speaking truth to one another in love until we are all built up in the truth and love of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The worldview of the Enlightenment is a tree that bears the fruit thereof. It cannot bear the fruit of Christianity even when a few doctrines are thrown on top of it. As the sign says, however, if we fail to know our history, we will in fact be doomed to repeat it.

Earliest Church Fathers on the Neighbor

The reason why the earliest fathers are important, even more important than the later fathers who wrote during and after the fourth century, is because, for most Christian communities, everyone for the most part was considered a professed Christian. This is especially true after the decree of Theodosius in 380 that outlawed all other religion except Christianity but can be said of even the earlier time after Constantine's decree that made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. This remains true pretty much for Western culture up until the Enlightenment (i.e., until after the Reformation). This means that everyone who professed to be a Christian and a part of the church rightly would be considered a neighbor. It is only the earliest period and the period following the Enlightenment that helps us see what Christians have believed concerning the idea of the neighbor and why they have believed it.

Clement: ^“Therefore let our whole body be saved in Christ Jesus, and let each of us be subject to his neighbor, _⌊according to the gift given to him”^[1]

“However, then, we have fallen away and whatever we have done through any insidious plots _⌊of the opponent_⌋,  let us ask that we be forgiven. And those also who became leaders of the rebellion and dissension [i.e., of the church schism] ought to pay careful attention to the common hope. For those who lead their lives with fear and love, they themselves prefer to experience mistreatments rather than their neighbors, and to endure condemnation themselves rather than the harmony being handed down to us rightly and justly.”^[2]

In other words, Clement is saying that the church leaders wronged by the schism would rather be mistreated than to mistreat fellow Christians.

Ignatius: “Therefore you all, having received a divine agreement in your convictions,  have respect for one another, and let no one consider his neighbor according to the flesh, but _⌊always_⌋  love one another in Jesus Christ.”^[3]

“These people, while seeming trustworthy, mingle Jesus Christ with themselves like those who produce a deadly drug with honeyed wine,  which the ignorant one gladly takes hold of in evil pleasure, to his death.  Therefore be on guard against such as these. And so it will be for you, not being puffed up and being inseparable from God,  from Jesus Christ and from the bishop and from the injunctions of the apostles. ² The one who is inside of the sanctuary  is pure, but the one who is outside of the sanctuary is not pure. That is, whoever does anything without the bishop and the council of elders and the deacons, this one _⌊does not have a clear conscience_⌋.  Since I do not know of anything of such a kind among you, but I am protecting you, being my beloved, anticipating the snares of the devil.  Therefore you, adopting gentleness,  regain your strength  in faith which is the flesh of the Lord and in love which is the blood of Jesus Christ. ² Let none of you hold a grudge against his neighbor.”^[4]

Ignatius is talking about being slandered by other Christians and warning the congregation not to hold a grudge against their fellow Christians as these others have.

The Epistle of Barnabas: “You shall share in all things with your neighbor and you shall not say it is your own. For if you are sharers in the incorruptible, how much more in the corruptible?”^[5]

The Martyrdom of Polycarp: “For he waited to be betrayed as also the Lord, in order that we also might be imitators of him not only looking out for _⌊our own concerns_⌋  but also _⌊the concerns of our neighbors_⌋.  ⁵ For true and steadfast love is not only to desire oneself to be delivered, but all the brothers as well.”^[6]

Tertullian: “Recognise also in Him the Judge, and one, too, who expresses Himself on the safety of His followers with the same tenderness as that which the Creator long ago exhibited: “He that toucheth you toucheth the apple of my eye.” Such identity of care proceeds from one and the same Being. A trespassing brother He will have rebuked.⁸ If one failed in this duty of reproof, he in fact sinned, either because out of hatred he wished his brother to continue in sin, or else spared him from mistaken friendship, although possessing the injunction in Leviticus: “Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart; thy neighbor thou shalt seriously rebuke, and on his account shalt not contract sin.”¹⁰ Nor is it to be wondered at, if He thus teaches who forbids your refusing to bring back even your brother’s cattle, if you find them astray in the road; much more should you bring back your erring brother to himself. He commands you to forgive your brother, should he trespass against you even “seven times.”^[7]

“He brings no accusation against men’s bodies, of which he even writes as follows: “Putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor: for we are members one of another. Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: neither give place to the devil. Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands (the thing which is good), that he may have to give to him that needeth. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good for the edification of faith, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil-speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: but be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ hath forgiven you.”^8[8]

J

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^[1] Brannan, R. (Trans.). (2012). The Apostolic Fathers in English. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

^[2] Brannan, R. (Trans.). (2012). The Apostolic Fathers in English. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

^[3] Brannan, R. (Trans.). (2012). The Apostolic Fathers in English. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

^[4] Brannan, R. (Trans.). (2012). The Apostolic Fathers in English. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

^[5] Brannan, R. (Trans.). (2012). The Apostolic Fathers in English. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

^[6] Brannan, R. (Trans.). (2012). The Apostolic Fathers in English. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

^[7] Tertullian. (1885). The Five Books against Marcion. In A. Roberts, J. Donaldson, & A. C. Coxe (Eds.), P. Holmes (Trans.), Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian (Vol. 3, p. 407). Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company.

^[8] Tertullian. (1885). On the Resurrection of the Flesh. In A. Roberts, J. Donaldson, & A. C. Coxe (Eds.), P. Holmes (Trans.), Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian (Vol. 3, p. 578). Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company.

Love Your Enemy: The Relationship between Bad Hermeneutics and Apostasy

The Lord once said that if the eye is dark the rest of the body will be dark as well. What I think He meant by this in the context of Matthew is that if one loved something that was not the source of light and life, God Himself, then their whole lives would be captive to deception, and in judgment, they will be inclined to misinterpret reality.

The more I hear about what happened to the faith of many of my former Moody Bible Institute classmates, the more I realize that Moody failed to equip them properly to address the claims of liberal hermeneutics. If I hear one more person who supposedly learned the Bible claim that the Bible is a compilation of contradictory theological perspectives I'm going to blow a gasket. 

After numerous conversations and countless books and blogs making this claim, I think I've narrowed it down to a single caricature of Jesus created from misinterpreting Jesus' teaching to love your enemies. If Jesus taught that godly people, holy people, good people who follow God, must love their enemies in the sense that they are to love everyone, including those who are under judicial judgments and would murder their children, then He is saying that the Old Testament teaching to hate and kill those types of enemies is morally wrong. This means that the Old Testament that presents God as teaching this is wrong. This means that the Old Testament is wrong about God. If it can be wrong about God in this area, maybe it is wrong about God in other areas. From this premise, then, the person begins to look at liberal arguments concerning child sacrifice, polytheism, ethnocentricism, etc. and forms what he or she thinks is a robust understanding that the Bible is just filled with contradictory theological and ethical ideas. Hence, one is left to decide for him or herself which ideas are of the love Jesus taught and which ideas are contrary to the love that Jesus taught.

Liberalism basically stays there and is far enough for any orthodox Christian to consider apostasy but, of course, those who have more logical minds go further and argue that if Jesus claimed the Old Testament was the Word of God that cannot be broken up (Matt 15:6; John 10:35) in the way that liberals want to then Jesus is wrong too. If Jesus is wrong about that then maybe He is wrong about other things, and thus, the rejection of all of the Bible, both OT and NT, is brought to as much of a rejection of the Bible as having authority as any theological or ethical idea presented to the reader of Harry Potter. 

The problem, of course, is that Jesus was never contradicting the Old Testament. Jesus was never against what was commanded in the Old Testament, as though He considered any of it to be the immoral trappings of imperial domination. In fact, His entire message was about the imperial domination of God's Empire/Kingdom where only those who followed Him would remain and the rest would be utterly destroyed and removed from the face of the earth to a place of chaos He referred to as the Gehenna of Fire. 

Jesus wasn't an "enemy-loving" hippie as many try and make Him out to be. Instead, He was the conquering King who came to save His people, and only His people, from the wrath of God to which both the Old Testament and Jesus Himself attest. His command to love your enemies, in context, had nothing to do with people under judicial punishments that government needed to execute or destroyers out to murder your children. Instead, it had to do with Christians loving fellow Christians with whom they were at odds, Christians loving those within the covenant community who had slandered them, done evil toward them, etc. Instead of hating these who persecuted them within the community, they were to return good for evil, blessing for cursing, love for hatred. Jesus was never contradicting the morals and theology taught by the Old Testament, as He stated (Matt 5:17-19).

Once this is understood, and one looks closer at the liberal argument, it begins to fall apart. Jesus cannot be used as the springboard for rejecting Old Testament theology and ethics since He affirms it throughout His teaching and never rejects it. All that is left, then, is a host of assertions made by liberals that the Bible teaches polytheism, child sacrifice, ethnocentricism, etc. in some places and then monotheism, anti-child sacrifice, and anti-ethnocentricism in others. The problem with this claim is that liberals have to remove all of these texts from their actual biblical contexts and to appeal to what they may have meant or referred to before they were placed within their biblical contexts, thus creating a completely different Bible in order to argue for these contradictions. Child sacrifice, in biblical context, actually becomes child dedication and redemption through the sacrifice of animals or giving of money or the dedication of the levitical priesthood itself. Polytheism loses its implicature in a context of monotheism which makes it a rhetorical way of communicating God's transcendence over all false gods without claiming that other genuine deities on par with God actually exist. The ethnocentricism in context soon becomes religious exclusivism, not ethnic exclusivism. In other words, the very fact that liberals have to remove these from their biblical contexts in order to get a contradiction is an implicit admission that the Bible, as it stands, does not contradict itself and these elements mentioned are consistently taught throughout the Bible. 

This seems to be something that Moody should have taught but it, along with the rest of evangelicalism, was too busy supporting the misinterpretation of Jesus' words that would one day go on to destroy the faith of many.

But when all is said and done, it may be that these apostates simply want to believe this regardless of my pointing out to them the bad scholarship involved in supporting these positions. If one loves Marx more than Christ then he or she will not be able to shake the feeling of imperialism in both the Old Testament and the New. If one loves Sanger more than Jesus then he or she will not be able to get past the condemnation of anticreational sexual ethics found in abortion and the sexual revolution that currently has its fruition in the adoption of homosexuality and the like as morally acceptable behaviors.  If you love yourself more than God you will give yourself the moral high ground and judge everything in the Bible through that grid and then justify doing so because the Bible is "theologically contradictory" anyway. And that may be the real reason in the end that dumb arguments are adopted and made by even prominent scholars . . . because people love the darkness rather than the light.