December 5
The following comment is included as a blocked comment because the comments section for the blog fails to function correctly.
To Thomas Kidd and his blogpost describing the Masterpiece Cakeshop case being heard in the Supreme Court. That case revolves around the owner of the cake shop as having the right to deny providing services for a same-sex wedding because he views his cakes as a work of art and thus his decision to deny services to a same-sex wedding to be protected by the First Amendment. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website.
The problem I see with Phillips's argument is that it is an attempt to redefine one's place as a vendor in the marketplace. That would allow anyone to excuse themselves from the social contract that is applicable on all vendors by claiming to be something different than a vendor. And what follows excuse can eventually become a Jim Crow type of discrimination that bars whatever group is being targeted from participating in the marketplace as a consumer.
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Dec 12
To R. Scott Clark and his 2 part blogpost that describes where the Church is going. It consists of criticisms solely of those beliefs that lie outside of the one promoted by Reformed Theology. This appeared in Heidelblog.
I wanted to wait to respond to Part One (see https://heidelblog.net/2017/11/where-is-the-church-heading-part-1/) of this 2-part series til the second part was posted.
What I see in the article is this, there is an implicit view of infallibity of those who stay true to Reformed doctrines. Why say that? It is because in both articles, all of the negative attributes of today's Church can be attributed to those outside of the Reformed Faith whether they involve non-reformed Protestants, Roman Catholics, or heretics. This is unfortunate because of one of the directions in which the Church is going is because of what its conservative elements that exist in Roman Church, in the truly Reformed Church, or the non-reformed Church are setting it to. That direction being referred to is not so much the fault of what is considered to be important tenets of the faith. The direction I am speaking of is the association that the conservative Church in America is making with conservative politics and Americanism.
We should note that once we call ourselves Christians, everything we do or say or fail to do or say becomes associated with the Gospel. So if Christians support today's Republican party platform, then everything in that platform which we support becomes associated with the Gospel to those both inside and outside the faith. That is why many, regardless of whether they are Christian or unbelievers, see hypocrisy in the Church's pro-life stand and its support for those items in the Republican Party's platform that threaten life (see https://johnpavlovitz.com/2016/10/12/fellow-white-christian-friends-i-wish-you-really-were-pro-life/ ). That hypocrisy when given time gives birth to dissonance and that dissonance when given time yields stumbling blocks for unbelievers who hear us preach the Gospel or for believers who are then tempted to stray from the faith.
We need to look at all that we, who hold to doctrinal expressions that we believe are the most biblical expressions, associate with the Gospel through our belonging to other groups including political and economic ideologies. For, from what I see, much of today's scorn by society for the Church has more to do with the associations we make than with the key doctrines we preach to the world.
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To Mark David Hall and his blogpost on how the ACLU’s view of separation of Church & State is wrong. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative Blog.
Besides the false contention that America's founders were not deists--some were and some weren't--comes the failure to see that the main issue before us is not what the founders planned for our nation, but what the NT either says or does not say about how we should share society with others. Hints at how we are to do this exist in the Scriptures that deal with Church discipline (see Matthew 18:15-19 and I Corinthians 5). In neither of those passages are we told to bind those outside the Church with what the Church teaches about personal sin. At the same time, we have Jesus's explicit command not to 'lord it over' others as the Gentiles do (see Matthew 20:25-27).
The combination of what was said and not said in those scriptures suggest how we are not to share society with others. We are not to dominate or force our views on others. We are not to subjugate those outside the Church to our views. And yet, because we religiously conservative Christians are given to authoritarianism, we often do not know how to turn off the authority switch when dealing with others. Thus we find ourselves treating others in society in ways not supported in the NT. And that is really the main issue that the above article deals with. This appeal to the faith of the founding fathers for forcing our faith on others is an authoritarian move.
As for the statement about the nonexistence of deism in America's founders, we should note that believing in general providence, as Franklin did, does not disqualify someone from being a deist. And removing all references to the supernatural, as Jefferson did in his version of the Bible, certainly removes one from the Christian faith. Finally, the dismissive statement about the use of an inadequate number of statements made by Jefferson and Madison to promote separation of Church & State and the time those statements were made fails to account for how those statements were used in other legal documents.
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