April 29
To Harrison Perkins and his blogpost that reviews a book by Bryan Estelle called The Primary Mission Of The Church: Engaging Or Transforming The Culture. According to Perkins, Estelle states that the Church is there to preach the Gospel and avoid taking sides with movements, ideologies, or political groups. However, according to Perkins, Estelle acknowledges that the Church must speak out on moral issues without proposing policies or taking political sides. This appeared in the Heidelblog.
Like it or not, when we call ourselves Christians, people can associate anything we do or don't do, say or don't with the Gospel. And that truth should frighten all of us Christians because we have failed all too often to keep negative associations from being paired with the Gospel.
So the title of the article can be misleading regarding the Church because one of our jobs as Christians is to protect the reputation of the Gospel. That means that included with preaching the Gospel, we also have to speak out on issues or do works not directly involved with sharing the Gospel in order to enhance the reputation of the Gospel.
But if Perkins is correct in his assessment of Estelle's book, then Estelle's intention of keeping the Church from being aligned with any particular political party, ideology, or cause while speaking prophetically to the moral issues of the day amounts to balancing the multiple issues involved with both preaching the Gospel, doing what is right, and protecting the reputation of the Gospel.
Now one can hope that Estelle's book encourages the Church as an institution to speak out against social injustices that include wars, elective abortion, racism, economic exploitation, and the oppression of people of different faiths or the LGBT community, while also warning us about the poisoning of the environment and climate change. That the Church as an institution must speak prophetically in pointing out the injustices being done in the world without proposing policies or aligning itself with any ideologies, movements, or political groups. That is because Church must speak prophetically not just to individuals and nations, but to all ideologies and movements for the injustices they might, however inadvertently, be causing. The question is whether Estelle's Two Kingdom Theology will encourage the Church to do that.
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To R. Scott Clark and Rosaria Butterfield for Clark's blog article pointing to an interview of Butterfield and her example in conquering homosexual desires as model for Christians in contrast to Greg Johnson's struggles. This appeared in Heidelblog.
Butterfield's interview can be found at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvOuBdsFmU8
It seems that Rosaria Butterfield provides a mirror image of Greg Johnson. Johnson is accused of saying that no one can be healed of having homosexual desires because of his experience. Butterfield seems to be saying that every Christian can be healed of homosexual desires because she was. And which person one wants to side with, they are still embracing the logic of the person they disagree with because both Butterfield and Johnson employ the same logic.
There is something else to be stated here. The tax collector, from the parable of the 2 men praying, calls himself a sinner. He identifies as a sinner. And the question becomes then, do we Christians pray tax collector's prayer only once? We should also note that we Christians never repent of all of our sins. This was. a point made by Martin Luther and one reason why he said that was because we are not aware of all of our sins. Frederick Dale Bruner points out an even greater problem with the belief that we can rid ourselves of all known sins. That problem is the damage that does to a Christian's assurance when that Christian is honest with their own sinfulness.
Also, my reading and interactions with others say that Side B Christians are not a monolithic group. It certainly is wrong when some Side B Christians rationalize homosexual desires and that is often done because of their struggles with homosexual desires. At the same time, us religiously conservative straight Christians must admit that we really don't understand all of the dynamics that come into play in SSA. And one reason for that is that there are multiple reasons why some are SSA.
Finally, none of what is said in the interview addresses the issue of whether Christians should support full equality for the LGBT community.
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April 30
To R. Scott Clark and Carl Trueman for Clark's blogpost on Trueman's 2 latest books that blame some well known past intellectuals, technology, and 'radical individual freedom' for many of the problems that are often associated with the sexual orientation. This appeared in Heidelblog.
Does any religiously conservative Christian ever consider that a major driving force for the Sexual Revolution was the place that women had in society back then. To give a picture of their place, one only needs to consider the relationship that was portrayed in the movie Fifty Shades of Grey and remove sexual content. Women, married or not, were, generally speaking, made financially dependent on men. Also, women faced significant job discrimination and disparity in pay. Even though they had the right to vote, they were treated as second class citizens and many used their Christian religion to defend treating women that way. So women wanted equality in all areas of life including their sex lives. And because initial efforts to undo long-standing social injustices often employ all-or-nothing thinking, which reduces one's ability to make distinctions, many practices and things that were coincidentally associated with women being treated as second class citizens were found guilty by association and were targeted for reversal. Pregnancy and motherhood were found guilty by association and thus were targeted for change by the Sexual Revolution. The same goes with sex being confined to monogamous, heterosexual marriages and freeing sex from procreation.
When talking about the LGBT community, does Trueman mention the centuries of persecution that homosexuals faced by Christians and the Christendom determined status quo? Does Trueman mention how some Native American tribes recognized up to 5 genders when talking about gender identity? Or is Trueman too focused on blaming traditional whipping boys for today's changes that Trueman finds to be so offensive?
It's not that Trueman has no valid points to make for some of the problems that are associated with the Sexual Revolution which we see today. But we are like Pilate, when he washed his hands after finding Jesus guilty, when we blame only others and do not include the groups or ideologies we favor for the problems we see today.
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To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost that opposes an overture by a PCA presbytery that calls for the denomination to make a doctrinal statement against political violence. This appeared in Heidelblog.
Besides mislabeling what was happening in Seattle, Portland, and Minneapolis as the Antifa-BLM riots, the issues of those riots and the subject of the January 6 riot and insurrection are worlds apart. While the former started as protests against racially-based state violence, the latter was a Constitutionally unlawful attempt to overturn a legitimate election by force. We should note that distinguishing the causes for violence between the two sets of events implies nothing that justifies the violence in those events.
Has Christ authorized the Church to speak on His behalf regarding those riots? Going to the example and admonitions given to Apostolic Church or the Reformed Confessions themselves might not provide a sure answer to that question simply because of the contextual differences between now and then. And the need to address the issue becomes further complicated by the possible participation in those events by members of Reformed churches. Also, if participation in those events is immoral for anyone to engage in or violates what the Scriptures say to us, then doesn't that play a role in determining an answer to the question?
Unfortunately, Reformed traditionalists share the same flaw that all traditionalists and many older people have: they rely too much on the past to interpret and respond to the present. While Reformed traditionalists rightfully believe that the giving of special revelation is over with, the flaw that Reformed Traditionalists have has a parallel to the ending of special revelation. That parallel is that because they rely too heavily on the past to interpret and respond to the future, they have employed a priori logic to conclude that today's Church has nothing to teach those who wrote the confessions and catechisms. Thus, the time for writing standards for the Church is over despite the disparity in political-social and historical contexts in which the Church has existed between then and now.
The flaw of the Reformed traditionalists can be summarized by the following adaptation of a Martin Luther King Jr. description of the West in its relation to the rest of the world during the Vietnam War. That the Reformed traditionalists believe that Church during the times of the writing of the Confessions and Catechisms have everything to teach today's Church while having nothing to learn from today's Church. And not only that, if we can't apply the scriptures differently than what our confessions and catechisms have prescribed, then we have made our confessions and catechisms into a canon above the canon of the Scriptures. And thus we have elevated our confessions above the Scriptures and we have made the writers of our confessions and catechisms at least equivalent to the Apostles.
Clark's test for consistency by noting that there was no institutional church response by the reformed churches in the more recent past carries not weight here. For if it was wrong for Church to be silent on the episodes of political violence he mentioned then, it is possibly wrong for the Church to be silent on today's episodes of political violence.
Finally, in citing the threefold vocation of the Church from the Belgic Confession, Clark forgets one of the concerns that the Apostles had during their time. That concern was with the reputation of the Gospel. Is the reputation of the Gospel well served by Church silence on this issue of political violence? The answer to that question might make some overly eager to have the Church speak out on civil affairs and political issues. But do we use that zealousness to prohibit the Church from speaking out on any civil affairs or political issues? Great caution must be exercised and we can't let the Church be hijacked by those with their ideological and political agendas. At the same time, just as the Church speaks out against sins of the individual, it must also speak out against corporate sins and social injustices. The Church must speak out then not just to help the victims of corporate sins and social injustices, but to call to repentance those participating in those sins and injustices.
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