Some idiotic sayings from the Gospel of Thomas.

Jesus said, "Lucky is the lion that the human will eat, so that the lion becomes human. And foul is the human that the lion will eat, and the lion still will become human." (7)

The disciples said to Jesus, "We know that you are going to leave us. Who will be our leader?"
Jesus said to them, "No matter where you are you are to go to James the Just, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being." (12)

Jesus said, "The Father's kingdom is like a person who wanted to kill someone powerful. While still at home he drew his sword and thrust it into the wall to find out whether his hand would go in. Then he killed the powerful one." (98)

Alas for the day when it is a mark of good critical thinking to accept this ridiculous document and reject the canonical ones!

Preachers do not need to shout.

"The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded than the shouts of a ruler of fools." (Ecc. 9:17)

It is an odd delusion; here being the presupposition that good preaching requires loudness, manifest zeal, moving about, shaking, charisma etc... The congregation so quickly assumes that a preacher is speaking loudly because the Holy Spirit has come upon him.

But where does it say that the fruit of the Holy Spirit is a loud voice? Is it not rather gentleness and self-control?

It was said of Jonathan Edwards that he read his sermons from a paper and scarcely looked up to observe the audience. Hold up....this guy was a strategic figure in one of the Great Awakenings right? Where were the gesticulations in his homiletical presentations? Or what about meek and mild Lloyd-Jones? Do you believe he was frothing at the mouth and sounding out every word as if it were a pep rally?

Why I am suspicious of Menno Simons

"The Lutherans teach and believe, that we are saved by faith alone, without any regard to works. They maintain this doctrine as firmly as though works were not at all necessary; yea, that faith is of such a nature that no work can be suffered or allowed beside it."

The rest of Menno Simons' treatise is well worth reading (http://www.mennosimons.net/ft024-lutheranbelief.html).

It would appear that the reverand Menno is not overly keen on properly understanding Lutheran doctrine. Had he spent a few more pious and devoted hours in the Apology for Augsburg, Smalcald Articles.... perhaps Luther's treatise on Christian Liberty, he would have ommitted the false accusation that the Lutherans have no time for good works. But as this quotation seems to imply, Menno would have it that the Lutherans add good works to their doctrine of justification. And not only is such an addition a severe categorical error, it is also heresy. Rightly then did the Augsburg confession denounce the Anabaptists as pious frauds.

I am a Mennonite myself, born of pure blood Mennonite parents into a Mennonite Brethren community. But all of this is absolute rubbish compared to the ineffable gospel of God's powerful and rich grace. I am convinced that Luther and Melanchton grasped this gospel in ways that precious few have, and so if anyone has an issue with these two fellas, they have an issue with me.

An Important Question.

Is it possible to do good "Barthian" theology without all of the Barth-esque language? I've been reading over my own posts (which can only be classified as a failed attempt at theology) and have to admit that I'm rather disgusted at the type of words I use and the way I formulate sentences. Barthian sentences make me want to vomit. And they are everywhere! Just throw in the word witness for every blog post you write, for every wretched theological essay you draft and your in on the Barthianism. Here are some good blog titles that should release the bile in your liver:

"Apocalyptic Christology: the New Testament as witness in a post-fundamentalist world."

"Christ as authentic man: the pedagogy of the apostolic witness."

"Creation as Act: Re-mythologising the factum in the Old Testament witness."

Puke puke puke!!!!

Just when I think I've vomited enough as I read this glowing garbage, I find more vomit to spew out. This is nonsense! It needs to stop!

Thank you Hillsong.

At that time Jesus said," I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure." - Mt 11:25

I didn't select this precious little scripture passage in order to demean the Hillsong Worship artists. Not at all. Yesterday as my mother flipped on their worship music as we drove out for a bite to eat, it struck me almost immediately how profound and beautiful their music is. I was practically caught up into the heavens as I listened to the intimate prayers and declarations of the gospel woven into these simple songs. These people love Jesus. These people have beheld his beauty and his glory in the sanctuary. I was so inspired and encouraged by their intimate love and reverance for the Lord Most High that I could not help but feel refreshed in my faith. And yet if I were to interview any one of these artists, they probably wouldn't be able to tell me squat about Chalcedonian theology or the modicum of epistemology in the revelation of God.

Old Testament Theology- Methodology?

I've been working my way through the prolegomena of an Old Testament theology from an evangelical scholar. He devotes about twenty pages to surveying the various methods that have been proposed in the past two hundred years on the aforementioned subject. While reading this I realized that precious few scholars (and evangelicals are not excluded here) have taken seriously the analogia fidei as the principle rule for all Old Testament exegesis. In other words, there are few who believe that the Old Testament records serve as a legitimate witness to Jesus of Nazareth and the gospel of his kingdom...at least in a manner that can be treated in scholarship.

How pitiful!

Attempting to go beyond Jesus the Son of God in order to establish a doctrine of God (yes, even Israel's God) is not just a methodological error...it's blasphemy. Paul (speaking by the very Spirit) says that the eternal God has given a commandment: that the prophetic writings reveal and make known the mystery of Jesus Christ (Romans 16:25-26). We go to the Old Testament because it reveals and makes known our Lord Jesus....no other god.

Theses on the subject of sacred scripture.

1. It must be maintained, contrary to all modern sophists who pose as theologians of the Word, that the chief article pertaining to sacred scripture is its authorship by the Holy Spirit; proceeding from the Father and the Son.

2. That man has had a part to play in this authorship is accidental and, in the face of the Majesty of the Eternal One, of infinitely less importance.

3. It follows that questions of the author's (in this case most always accredited to sinful man) intent, purpose, interpretation, motive, Sitz im Leben, historical context and so on do not constitute the substance of exegesis, but normatively hinder its manifestation.

4. They strive against God who maintain that the prophetic oracles received in the church as sacred scripture came about as a result of man's interpretation.

5. Yet those who seek to convey an empirically verifiable origin of scripture in the divine will confuse a fastly dating epistemology with the knowledge of the truth as God sees it.

6. Rightly then did Karl Barth insist that the doctrine of scripture as the Word of God be apprehended and proclaimed by faith alone, in which alone the gospel is apprehended and man is able to please and find God.

7. Yet the substance of scripture cannot be understood as a being-in-becoming only, as if the Word of God (in any form) is enslaved to the temporal sphere for its existence as such.

8. The apostolic witness only recognizes the eternality of God's Word according to 1 Peter 1:23-25.

9. The sacred scriptures are not bound by high-sounding rules of context, which the sophists (without the apostolic example) arrogantly appeal to when exegeting a verse.

10. Their appeals limit the verse to the phenomenologies of other works of literature in the history of man, and the Word is never limited.

11. Yet neither can a verse be declared without context in the same wanton manner, as if the mind's willy-nilly selection of a decree from the Eternal God is a sure way to end an argument.

12. All exegesis and scholarship is conducted by men who are dead in their transgressions and sins, completely void of any knowledge of the truth and liable to judgment and destruction. Rightly then does the scripture in Ecclesiastes attribute vanity to the pursuit of wisdom.

13. If every word of the scripture is not first and foremost understood as a witness to Jesus Christ, it must be asked whether the scriptures have even been remotely understood at all.