Pastoral Musings

Too bad Joseph is a total stud and Potiphar’s wife has a thing for him.

Byas, Jared; Enns, Peter (2012-04-09). Genesis for Normal People: A Guide to the Most Controversial, Misunderstood, and Abused Book of the Bible (Kindle Locations 1529-1530). Patheos Press. Kindle Edition.

This flippant attitude toward Scripture is one that seems to be prevalent among modern day “Evangelicals”. I must honestly say that I have a great disdain for it.

1. Nowhere do we read that Joseph is a stud. That is exaggeration and eisegesis.

2. It is a careless handling of Scripture that wants to bring modern profane viewpoints to bear on this ancient, holy book.

Along with his very bad theology, this is the reason that I refuse to recommend Enns’ work.

Liberal says that those who don’t admit that are not well informed of historical theology.

I am sorry for the fate of anyone who tries to argue with a fundamentalist on the basis of authority. The Bible and the corpus theologicum of the Church is on the Fundamentalist side.

via Hip and Thigh: Fundamentals and the Bible.

Let us not totally dismiss the liberals. We can learn from them. Nate Busenitz gives us several ways in which we can learn from liberals. Number seven is especially worth noting.

Higher criticism, in particular, is built on the notion that the wisdom of man trumps the revealed wisdom of God. This is the height of arrogance. But it is not surprising, since Paul himself noted that the wisdom of God seems like foolishness to the world (1 Cor. 1:18). We must guard ourselves against the temptation to covet worldly praise and academic accolade. To be faithful to the gospel, we will necessarily be thought out-of-vogue with many of today’s leading philosophical thinkers. While we must avoid anti-intellectualism on the one hand, we must also guard ourselves against the allure of whatever is popular in the secular academic community.

via Learning from Liberals | The Cripplegate.

I highly recommend reading the whole of the post from which this is an excerpt.

Raymond Ortlund Jr. has tried to imagine the church without the gospel. “What might our evangelicalism, without the evangel, look like?” he asks. “We would have to replace the centrality of the gospel with something else, naturally. So what might take place of the gospel in our sermons and books…and Sunday school classes and home Bible studies and, above all, in our hearts?”[1] Ortlund lists a number of possibilities:

“a passionate devotion to the pro-life cause”

“a confident manipulation of modern managerial techniques”

“a drive toward church growth”

“a deep concern for the institution of the family”

“a clever appeal to consumerism by offering a sort of cost-free Christianity Lite”

“a sympathetic, empathetic, thickly-honeyed cultivation of personal relationships”

“a determination to take America back to its Christian roots through political power”

“a warm affirmation of self-esteem”

In other words, the church without the gospel would look very much the way the evangelical church looks at this very moment.

via A DIFFERENT CHRIST CALLED “JESUS”. « kevinfiske.com.

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HT:Joel

When I was in Standard Three (equivalent to third grade in the U.S.), we were studying the biblical story of Cain and Abel. According to the lesson, Cain went to a land called Nod after he killed his brother. He got married and had a son called Enoch. Trying to understand the story better, I asked my C.R.E teacher whether Cain married his sister, because I assumed they were the only family on earth at that time. Instead of an explanation, my teacher caned my bottom and accused me of being an agent of the devil. “Who did you think you are to question biblical facts?” she yelled between thrashes. Reflecting back now, this is probably where I began questioning the veracity of Biblical literalism.

…

Our next-door neighbor, who was a “commercial sex worker,” contracted AIDS while fending for her family. She was a single mother of five. Her friends took her to a hospital where she was put under anti-retroviral treatment. While she was convalescing at her house, my family used to help her and her children. A local pastor started coming to her house to pray for her. He convinced her that her faith would heal her if she truly believed. After a while, she stopped taking her medication. As a result, her health deteriorated and she died shortly afterwards. Her death opened my eyes to the dangers of Christian fundamentalism.

…

Via The Bait of Christian Fundamentalism in Africa.

Here is the problem that many people have with fundamentalism. One simply cannot ask questions. This is sadly the state of affairs in many Evangelical churches, too.

“Sincere seekers not welcome” should be the sign over the doors of many churches and religious institutions. We simply don’t want to fight with the hard questions. We take every question as an attack instead of seeking to give answers.

I know a person who is a brilliant guy. He is a professing Christian, but he is not in any form what I could consider a Fundamentalist. In fact, our conversations have led me to believe that he leans toward the more liberal end of the Evangelical side of things. He is also angry toward the church in which he was raised, and hardly goes to any church at all.  Why is he there? Because his questions were not answered. In fact, he was treated as a heretic and an idiot for asking questions.

Some of us have inquisitive minds. Some of us are hungry to learn. Some of us desire to find the answers to our questions.

Get this, and let it sink deeply, all who are Fundamentalists or Evangelicals: answer our questions with respect. If you don’t, we’ll go where there are answers; but we may get answers that are not right. In fact, many will simply walk away from Fundamentalism, Evangelicalism, and even Christianity.

If that happens, you will be greatly to blame.

Related articles

• Chris Hedges: Fundamentalism Kills (pastoralmusings.com)
• Fundamentalist/fundamentalist will no longer do. What will? (pastoralmusings.com)
• Fundamentalism or fundamentalism? (pastoralmusings.com)
• The Norway Bomber is a Christian Fundamentalist? (pastoralmusings.com)

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It is obvious that the term “Fundamentalist” will never recover its proper usage.

Neither can we distinguish between a theological Fundamentalist and an idealogical fundamentalist by calling one a Fundamentalist and the other a fundamentalist, thus distinguishing them by the “F/f.”

On Joel’s blog I said,

I once naively thought that the term “Fundamentalist” could be recovered.
No longer do I think so.
There needs to be a new term.
Evangelical does not fit, as they don’t even agree on what an Evangelical is.
The Fundamentals provide a good picture of what a Fundamentalist is, and it is nothing like the insanity which is attributed to them.
The big “F” and little “f” won’t do to distinguish.
Oh well…

Why do I think this way?  Because the fact is that the well is so poisoned by the misappropriation of the term such as “Islamic fundamentalists” and “Fundamentalist Mormons” that only the few who truly understand what the Fundamentalist/Modernist controversy was about know what a Fundamentalist is.

Most people think of Muslims as fundamentalists.  Others think of Fred Phelps and his family as fundamentalists.  Others think of the KJVO crowd as fundamentalists.

Too few think of Fundamentalism as a theological movement that sought to get back to the Bible.

I believe that this does a great disservice to men such as B.B. Warfield, R.A. Torrey, Thomas Spurgeon, and even J.I. Packer.  These men are great examples of true Fundamentalists.

Now, we simply need a term that adequately describes one who holds to the Fundamentals of the faith…

Related articles

• Historic Fundamentalism part 1 (pastoralmusings.com)
• The Norway Bomber is a Christian Fundamentalist: Anders Behring Breivik (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)
• If You Wish to Speak Against Fundamentalists, Read Fundamentalists (pastoralmusings.com)

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Historic Fundamentalism as a movement can be traced to the late nineteenth century, though it came into full bloom in the early twentieth century.

About the time of the War Between The States evangelical Christianity was the dominant religious force in the United States.  Protestant Evangelicals were greatly influenced by revivalism.  At the same time, however, there was a climate that was a fairly rigorously intellectual one.  Many, if not most, colleges had Christians as presidents, according to George Marsden.  Many of the major colleges were still Christian in name, teaching, and practice as well.

Evangelicalism began to find itself being gradually undermined however, during this time.  There was the rise of Darwinism, and the desire to accomodate the Bible to Darwinism.  There was also the Biblical criticism that was the product of German scholars; a criticism that questioned the historic validity of the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life.

There was, during this time, a desire to separate theology and science into totally separate fields with neither influencing the other.

All of these things form a setting in which Evangelical Christians would begin to fight for their faith and theology.  Believing that the Bible was the Word of God, and as such is authoritative, Christians began to fight against the attacks upon their faith.

This, however, is simply preparatory ground for Historic Fundamentalism.  In the later years of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, Fundamentalism would blossom, not into simply a reaction here and there, but into a movement that would bring with it immense changes to the Christian scene in the United States.

The index for these articles can be found on RE:Fundamentals.

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• If You Wish to Speak Against Fundamentalists, Read Fundamentalists (pastoralmusings.com)
• Fundamentalism and Hate (pastoralmusings.com)

I can only add a hearty, “AMEN!”

That Jesus–one in whom God is at work, one who rules the world, can never be the academy’s Jesus. The Jesus who is worth studying can never be the object of academic affirmation as such.For all my celebration of the ways that academic study of the Bible has made us better readers of scripture and shed light on the text that reading and responding in faith on its own could never do, it is in fact the reading and responding in faith that makes one a faithful reader of the texts that we actually have.

via Blogsphere Confessional: I Don’t Worship the Academy’s Jesus | Storied Theology.

Within evangelical circles, the decline of expository preaching in favor of topical speeches laced with person anecdotes, insights, and examples drawn from cultural authorities communicates to God’s people where we think the power and relevance of our speech really lies.

Michael Horton: The Christian Faith

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Scholars have long resisted using the term “forgery” to characterize Biblical writings made under false authorship, on the grounds that such concepts as forgery, plagiarism and intellectual property are modern legal constructs and don’t apply to the ancients. But UNC-Chapel Hill religion professor Bart Ehrman – a nemesis of conservative Evangelical Christianity who repudiated his faith in his 20s – makes the forgery accusation without reservation in a new book of that name.

The forgers who wrote a half-dozen epistles and the Book of Acts, along with scores of other documents that never made it into the New Testament, acted with deliberate forethought, knowing exactly what they were doing, Ehrman contends. That makes the Bible a very dishonest book in Ehrman’s estimation – rife not only with mistakes and untruths, but with deceptions and lies.

“The authors intended to deceive their readers, and their readers were all too easily deceived,” Ehrman writes.

via Bible writers intended to deceive, Ehrman says – Books – NewsObserver.com.

The problem is that Ehrman’s scholarship on this issue is so poor that someone such as I can see through it.

His point is simply not verifiable.

ht JW

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• If Ehrman Really Thinks that, He’s the Deceiver (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)