Defending Obama by Smearing Your Dad

Frank Schaeffer seems hell bent on not only cutting all ties to conservative evangelicals but seems determined to stab the them in the heart, being not the least bit ashamed to stomp on his father's grave to do so.

Frank writes a blog for the Huffington Post, the same site that Fox News tried to confront over comments rejoicing over things like the cancer of Tony Snow. Frank recently defended Barack Obama over the firestorm of his association with Pastor Jeremiah Wright. He has every right to support Obama if he wishes, but the gist of his defense is rather incendiary.

Obama is in trouble for a 20-year association with a pastor whose theology identifies the gospel with liberation from white supremacy. Reverend Jeremiah Wright has been associated with the theology of James Cone, a theology that includes notions such as "Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill gods who do not belong to the black community.

Somebody Who Understands Schaeffer

Few people I speak to have read significantly from Francis Schaeffer. Many who have mistakenly critique him as a clone of his mentor Cornelius Van Til, or a populist who got too involved with conservative politics. In light of his son's disturbing attacks on him in his novels and most recent book, which I refuse to even name, I found the following article by Christopher Tinker and Melvin Tinker very refreshing. These guys actually understand what Schaeffer was trying to do and why it remains significant and relevant.

Fifty Years On: The Legacy of Francis Schaeffer - An Apologetic for Post-Moderns not only summarizes Schaeffer well, it points out why the collective provocations of Tony Jones, Brian McLaren and Doug Pagitt are so distressing.

They state regarding Schaeffer's most basic point about modernism "‘Rationality and faith are totally out of contact with each other.’ This is where modern man was left, in a state of despair. He could understand nature (lower storey) as a closed system rationalistically, but meaning (upper storey), in terms of purpose and significance, were unattainable and continued to elude him. The only way in which meaning could be found was to look to the upper storey where all rationality must be abandoned."

In other words, modernism was left saying that we could have objective knowledge about the material world, but the spiritual world was beyond science and reason. So anything related to the spirit, such as meaning, purpose, love, significance, had to be completely separated from the category called "knowledge". God may exist, but we can know nothing of him. For all practical purposes, all spiritual truth is unattainable if it exists at all.

The Three Faces of Anglicanism - The Revisionists

I have been trying my darndest to figure out what best describes the essentials of Anglicanism. I fear, from time to time, that what defines Anglicanism is the notion of "peace at all costs". Unity at the expense of truth. As a result there appear to me to be three almost entirely incompatable belief systems in the Church of England and its daughter organizations that somehow coexist organically, but present a confusing picture to the world.

I have written before about the "revisionist" wing of the Anglican Communion. I won't rehearse it all here, instead, just a few notes on the historical development, with a bit more focus on the 39 Articles.

JI Packer speaks of the 39 Articles in these terms. They come to the Anglican church:

"... as prior judgements, time-honoured judgements, on specific issues relating to the faith of Christ, as set forth in the Scriptures. They come to us as corporate decisions first made by the Church centuries ago, and now confirmed and commended to us by the corroborative testimony of all later generations that have accepted them, down to our time.... It is a prime obligation for Anglicans to take full account of the expository formulations to which our Church has bound itself; and to ignore them, as if we were certain that the Spirit of God had no hand in them, is no more warrantable than to treat them as divinely inspired and infallible."

This is the balance that ought to be applied to all doctrinal statements - not infallible, but not malleable. But in our pluralistic culture, where modernism and postmodernism have both managed to undercut all confidence in the existence of fixed truths and of a language that can communicate such truths, the Articles of Religion, like most other statements of religious belief, become quite flexible.

Just Another Thought on Piper

My reaction to John Piper's recent article was strong. That was because his words were extremely troubling. I felt personally wounded by the idea that Arminianism is a "threat to the atonement", because I value the atonement highly. Two further thoughts.

One: Definitions matter. Arminian theology is not Pelagian, nor is it open theism. Arminians believe God is sovereign. The only real question is how. Arminians believe God's foreknowledge is not dependent on an eternal decree. Regarding the gospel, Arminians believe human beings are completely and utterly fallen, unable to in any way affect their own salvation. Arminians believe salvation is a gift that is completely and totally unmerited. In this regard, Arminians are in lock step with Calvinists.

Where the divergence comes is at the point where the atonement becomes limited (a notion nowhere explicitly taught in scripture) and particularly the point where God might be accused of causing the very evil Christ came to remedy.

John Piper Calls Arminianism a "Threat to the Atonement"

I generally have liked John Piper, in spite of his strongly Calvinist views. I've been a two-point Calvinist (Arminian) most of my life. I have blogged about the subject extensively. So I have to admit a bit of disappointment that Piper has essentially concluded that Arminians are enemies of the gospel. Or more accurately, a "threat to the atonement". He writes in the outline to a message "How I Distinguish Between the Gospel and False Gospels":

"There are many today, as in every day, who bring to the Bible the presupposition that sinful man must have the power of self-determination in order to be held accountable by God. This is not a biblical presupposition. It threatens to undermine the gospel because it pushes people away from believing that God can plan and bring to pass the sins that are essential to the death of his Son.

"We don’t usually think about Arminianism as a threat to the atonement. It usually comes in at the point of the accomplishment of the gospel and the offer of the gospel, not the point of the plan of the events of the gospel. But here we see that there is an intrinsic incompatibility between the basic Arminian presupposition and the gospel as including a set of planned sins against the Son of God. That presupposition is that for humans to be morally accountable agents they must have the ultimate power of self-determination at all those points where they are found blameworthy or praiseworthy.

Evangelicalism The New Mainline (Liberalism Part 2)

Bob Burney has an excellent article on the future of the Evangelcal movement on Townhall.

Key passages:

"A few decades ago liberal theologians gained control of the (mainline) seminaries. Instead of teaching their pastoral and theological students to love, trust and revere the Bible as God’s inspired, inerrant revelation to mankind, they were taught to question, doubt and debate the claims of Scripture. To question truth became the ultimate objective rather than discovering truth. The “search” was not a part of the journey, it was the destination.

The Three Faces of Anglicanism - The Anglo-Catholics

I was raised Catholic. I spent most of my life in free-church congregational churches. Two years ago I cautiously waded into Anglican waters. It made sense to find a "middle ground", one that respected the history of the church and the history of Biblical interpretation for all of 20 centuries. It did not make sense to me to cross the Tiber to Rome, or to embrace the eastern church, simply because the Great Tradition seemed to me to add external things to the Biblical testimony and seemed to force interpretations on the text that could not be supported except through appeal to some mystical inside knowledge and unique revelatory authority granted to the church hierarchy.

As a layman, one who was seeking connection with the early church and who after months of thinking, praying and research into doctrine, I settled on the 39 Articles as a worthy balance between Biblical, Evangelical faith and historic worship and polity. I was fully aware of the liberal slant of the Episcopal church, but was also heartened to find a few Anglican groups who claimed to combine history, biblical authority and the power of the spirit into one Biblical and Evangelical movement. Anglo-Catholicism was not part of my research, but I assumed that the 39 Articles held sway even in those circles. So I must admit a certain degree of shock upon reading the following from the Anglican Missal

"I confess to God Almighty, to Blessed Mary Ever-Virgin, to blessed Michael the Archangel, to blessed John the Baptist, to the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, to all the Saints, and to thee, Father, that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word and deed, by my fault, by my own fault, by my own most grievous fault. Wherefore I beg blessed Mary Ever-Virgin, blessed Michael the Archangel, blessed John the Baptist, the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, all the Saints, and thee, father, to pray for me to the Lord our God."

How did a prayer to Michael the Archangel, Mary and apostolic saints appear in a worship liturgy if the 39 Articles specifically proscribed prayers to saints?