More Theses against godless and impious arminianism.

1. God does not save righteous men. He saves sinful men. It follows that arminian theology forfeits God's salvation insomuch as it boasts of its righteousness as soon as it has discovered conversion. But God did not fashion Christian men so that they could boast before Him. Precisely the opposite.

2. To what shall I liken arminian theology? It is like the people of Israel who, having witnessed the power of God's salvation, proceeded to erect a bovine stump with which to honor his deliverance. So we spit in the face of God when we thrust all of our good deeds in his face and try to sugar them with His Name.

3. Again, to what shall I liken arminian theology? It is as if a bartender tasted antifreeze and concluded that it is good for drink on account of its sweetness. And then everyone died.

4. The Christian is not the righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins. That is the rest of the world. The Christian alone is the wicked man on earth who never does what is right and always sins. Thus he prays," Depart from me Lord Jesus! I am a wicked man!"

5. The scriptures clearly teach that in the LORD ALONE are righteousness and strength (Isaiah 24). The arminian says," In the Lord and me and you are righteousness and strength. For that which God has given is truly mine." But any gift given which contradicts the Word of God is no gift at all. We should be mindful when our hearts and minds are full of righteousness, lest this be a sign of God's wrath. He will not contend with us and allow us to set ourselves up alongside of Him.

6. The better a deed a Christian commits, the more he must pray for forgiveness. He has sinned grievously against the Lord and denied the gospel publicly.

7. For a deed will only be conceived of as right before the LORD if it is done in full love for Him; in fullness of body, soul, mind and heart and strength. This is the Law of God which demands total fulfillment.

8. Partial fulfillment of any commandment of God is not acceptable. For "as dead flies give perfume a bad smell, so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor" (Ecc. 10:1). A hint of sin is good enough to corrupt the whole of the work, since God exacts from us a spotless sacrifice.

9. Furthermore, those Christians who prop the gospel up over all of their righteous deeds demonstrate none of the righteousness of which they boast. They speak loudly about all of the great things that a Christian must accomplish, but show us no more than venom and smoke.

10. To what shall I liken being in the presence of an arminian? It is as if an unknowing person stepped onto a patch of lawn to admire its immaculate presentation, only to sink his feet into the liquifying decay of an open grave.

Martin Luther's Commentary on Obadiah.

People wrongly think that I overdo my praise of the genius of Luther (that's right you snobby kierkegaardians, I said genius) but today I will prove them all wrong. In the library at school I decided to pick up Martin Luther's lecture on the book of Obadiah. It was awful. Simply awful. He devotes about four pages to this vastly important book, the second half of which is full of really bad allegorizing. Indeed from verses 17-21 (which very specifically address a re-distribution of territories among Israelites, a restored and expanded dominion uniting both the Northern and Southern kingdoms under the one kingship of the LORD, and an Israelite occupation of Edom and Philistia). Luther brings three shaky assumptions to the scripture which cause him to digress into allegory-

1. The Northern Kingdom of Israel is forever destroyed, so it is incomprehensible that the prophet speak of their literal return.
2. It is impossible that territories be re-distributed because the LORD allotted them irrevocably and immutably through Joshua.
3. History never makes mention of Philistia or Edom being governed and possessed by Jews.

Where does he get these assumptions? I have no clue. The other prophets abound in oracles about the return of Israel (cf. Ezek 37:15-28; 48; Jer 3:11-18 etc...). And an immutable territory allotment would presuppose the impossibility of Israel or Judah being exiled in the first place! Moreover, 1 Maccabees clearly states that Philistia and Edom were subdued under the reign of Judas the hammer (5:3, 65-68).

Luther was right to see the kingdom of Christ proclaimed in these final verses, only he shouldn't have spiritualized them. Christ indeed has a concrete task to complete with regards to the promises given to Israel, and we must ever be watchful for the fulfillment of the same in Obadiah.

Arminianism.

All of my quaint little theological revelations have already been made more profoundly by others, but the purpose of writing a blog is to capture them nonetheless. Which blogger, after all, blogs things that haven't been recycled and regurgitated by thousands of others before him?

It has occurred to me how intertwined humanism/liberalism and arminianism are. Both of them assume that human freedom as the capacity to decide between God and perdition is a good thing. Both of them assume that the provision of 'freedom' or 'neutrality' by God to man has now really become something that man has over and against God his creator. In other words, there is an important sector in the region of universal man's being that needs no act of God in order for it to truly and righteously come to God. Arminians actually believe that man can come TO GOD. I've thought it before and I'll say it now: the greatest confirmation of man's TOTAL depravity is this arminian doctrine of man's neutrality apart from God and in himself. You need no calvinist teacher to learn this, just expose yourself to the way arminians talk about God and man. It is absolute, repugnant blasphemy. It is consequently absolute stupidity.

Church attendance in the 2nd century.

'Let no one be misled: if anyone is not within the sanctuary, he lacks the bread of God....Therefore whoever does not meet with the congregation thereby demonstrates his arrogance and has separated himself, for it is written: "God opposes the arrogant."' -Igantius of Antioch (To the Ephesians, v.5)

Evidently their bishop euchrestos was achrestos in keeping the young ones interested.

Emerson Fast on being a doofus.

We need a moratorium on "....on being" blog posts. Karl Barth on being in the church, Lindbeck on the post-capitalist apocalyptic, Sartre on the creation of the world as coneptual narrative, Augustine on women, T.S. Eliot on the pre-cognitive church...... what a bunch of silliness. Who wants to read hogwash with a title like that?

Moreover, it stinks of the real spirit of theo-blogging: the worship of men as opposed to the worship of God. We worship these men because they worshipped God so well! How ironic! Isn't it just such a fantastic thing that Barth stressed obedience to the first commandment? I'm going to devote my days to hallowing this and I'm going to fill up my blog with endless adoration of his righteousness.

Mere men. And posting a passage from them with a few gushing glosses of your own at the bottom does not constitute a "theo-blog", nor a biblioblog (since true exegesis of scriptures would never consitute such flagrant man-worship). It is anthropocentrism and natural theology. That's it.

Do the Jews have their own way of Salvation?

"Moses was faithful as a servant in all God's house, testifying to what would be said in the future. But Christ is faithful as a son over God's house." -Heb. 3:5

When the Israelites rejected the words of Moses, God held them to account as if they had not rejected Moses, but the LORD Himself. This occurred at Taberah, Kibroth Hattavah, Kadesh etc... where God confirmed the prophetic authority by slaying his own people by means of venemous snakes, fire, plagues or endless wandering. You reject Moses, you reject God. The same was said of Joshua, the judges of the LORD, Samuel, the anointed and faithful kings, and the later prophets.

Does it not logically follow that the Jews, who for 2,000 years have rejected and denied the gospel of Jesus Christ, who is greater than any prophet or king (much greater than Moses himself) should not have their own way of salvation....since they have turned away from God incarnate? This is the testimony of Hebrews as per ch.10:226-31. May God make us faithful to Him!

On Atheism.

There is no such thing as an atheism that a theologian can love, because there is absolutely nothing lovely or attractive about saying "No God" (ps.14:1). I'll let the same psalm speak for how a theologian should regard atheism: "corrupt, abominable workes...there is none that doeth good." (KJV, 1611).

It baffles me that modern day sophists (who set themselves up as theologians) can praise the tenets of a system which, when it isn't blaspheming God, is making up false idols with which it can further direct its blasphemy. Good theology does not take up blasphemy into consideration, accept possibly when dealing with the article of eternal judgment.

The Founding of the Mennonite Brethren.

Throughout the years leading up to 1860 in the Molotschna Colony of Mennonites (Then Russia, now belonging to Ukraine), many zealous Christians began to scoff at what they saw as a ubiquitous spiritual laxity that had overtaken their fellow Anabaptists. On January 6th of the above-mentioned year, a tight-knit group met together in a homestead to draft a document of secession from the church. Their grievances and reasons were manifold, and they exceed the descriptions set forth in this relatively brief document, to the point where:

"for God's and conscience's sake, [they could] no longer continue therein; for [they feared] the inevitable judgment of God, since the openly godless living and wickedness [cried out] to God in heaven."

Shortly before this pivotal meeting, the elder at the church in Gnadenfeld had refused this group the right to partake in communion on their own. This effected the split, not to mention that the Secession document was very negatively received by the wider Mennonite body.

Take a look at the document (www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/contents/
document_of_secession_mennonite_brethren_church_1860). It is persuasively written and quite sincere.

Of particular interest is the article that calls for a re-emphasis on the symbolic nature of baptism, as opposed to it being any sort of justifying work in itself.

1st day back at College.

This has sparked a number of important questions that I should like to explore this semester:

1. Is it possible to be an arminian and actually produce something noteworthy in theology?
2. Do open theists base their theology on the failures of meteorology to predict anything about the weather?
3. If an open theist got hit by a bus, would God have realized it before or after the ambulance arrived on the scene?
4. Have atheists ever tried my mom's coffee, and if they have, why are they still atheists?
5. What if God changed his mind about being ignorant of the future?
6. If the future doesn't exist to be known, why does Greg Boyd allow that sometimes God knows things that occur in the future? Does God positionally create little pockets of future so that He can say that He knows them?
7. If Classical theists were wrong for supposedly basing their theologies on pagan thinking, why are open theists not wrong for jumping into bed with Charles Hartshorne and Alfred North Whitehead?

Free will is an abomination.

That is to say, so long as it considers something other than God to be a legitimate option. There is no freedom outside of freedom-for-God. If the will is not continually bound to Him it deserves no other title than depraved.

Random stranger gets acid thrown in her face by demon-woman

http://www.kgw.com/news/neighborhood-news/vancouver/Acidic-liquid-thrown-on-Vancouver-womans-face-101887273.html.

When I heard this story I was absolutely enraged. The testimony of the victim is both moving and beautiful, as she discloses her faith in Jesus Christ and her desire to forgive this woman (even though her own face may be permanently ruined). Forgiveness is an art that few can consistently practice, and this girl has demonstrated to the world something of the amazing love of Jesus. I hope they find the pernicious soul who did this and throw her behind bars for the rest of her life.

Time for Canada and the States to smarten up.

So long as we rip open pregnant women to destroy the infants within,
So long as the state institutionalizes sexual profligacy, knowing full well God's righteous decree that those who do these things deserve death,
So long as the church hides under the banner of "religious pluralism" to tolerate idolatry rather than expose it with the gospel of Jesus' redeeming grace,
So long as college's and schools refuse the presence of God but spread their legs wide open for secularism and New Age philosophy,
So long as Bible school's train students in the science of blasphemy, unbelief and heresy rather than faith, hope and love,
So long as our politicians and judge's refuse to fear God who appointed them,
and our church's despise the gospel and turn Jesus into the greatest taskmaster of all,
So long as we continue in all of these sorceries, we cannot expect God to look with pleasure on this land and give it His sign of approval.

The hermeneutic of Open Theism.

That the scripture passages that speak of God being "ignorant" of certain future events, or of God "changing his mind" are revelatory in themselves. They are not mere anthropomorphisms that should be taken figuratively. They speak to who God actually is apart from all human perception.

Open theism is taken very seriously in America (which, according to my humble Canadian opinion, has a theological texture that is about as far-reaching and successful as their manifest destiny). Ironically, open theism is often times taken seriously by those who also believe that we ought never to speak of God in the masculine gender. Fine sounding! I imagine they would say that all of the plenitude of scriptures which do this very thing are anthropomorphisms rather than revelations. But why, might I ask, are we compelled to dole out revelational quality to the few and far between scriptures that present God as being nescient or willing to change his mind, and simultaneously forbidden to do this for all of the references to God's masculinity?

What could this be, other than a clear example of hermeneutical hypocrisy? On exegetical grounds, you cannot be an Open theist and dare to speak only of "Godself, It," or other neutered forms of the divine being....you cannot do this and be consistent with your own system.