I track all mentions of “Bob Jones University” via Google Alerts. Many articles are critical or dismissive. Many are not. Some criticisms are deserved—we’re sinners! Some are not. Check out the opening of this AP article, carried in SC’s TheState:
Gay rights group visits Columbia, SC, campus
By KATRINA A. GOGGINS – Associated Press Writer
COLUMBIA, S.C. –
More than a dozen students and faculty at a private, Christian university crossed police tape Monday to meet with gay rights activists protesting the school’s policy against openly gay students on campus.
Sitting inside a school-designated protest area with bibles opened, gay rights activists and students at Columbia International University debated scripture and the college’s policy.
It was a stark contrast to a similar demonstration at Bob Jones University in Greenville last year when three gay activists of the group Soulforce were arrested and bible toting, anti-gay protesters held signs and preached through bullhorns.
I was there when SoulForce came to BJU, and please allow me to point out that no BJU student or staff member had a bullhorn. Those were uninvited protesters—no more allowed on campus than the SoulForce group—who tarnished Christ’s name by their rudeness and self-righteousness. Some months later, I met for several hours with one of those sandwich-board-clad fundamentalist protesters. He is a young man who wants to serve Christ faithfully. But his pride led him to do something which I think hurt Christ’s cause.
I would happily have met with a SoulForce protester, but I very much respect Stephen Jones’ decision to keep them off campus. I was skeptical at first: why give up an opportunity to talk to lost people? But Dr. Jones persuaded me that the administration has a responsibility to parents to protect their children. Not all of the students are ready to speak to a group that abuses the Bible with such sophistication. And they were not out for dialogue but for scoring political points, as the spin on their website proved later.
I have sorrow in my heart over those men and women on the SoulForce Equality Ride. I have looked over their profiles every year, and my heart is heavy for them.
Update:A friend reminded me to point out that the SoulForce protesters asked to be arrested. I’m not going to call that a ploy: if their cause were truly just then their request for arrest would be a noble gesture. They, of course, believe that their cause is just.
The following pictures were made publicly available on the Greenville News website after the protest.
The New York Times‘ Deborah Solomon just interviewed a very wealthy Jewish man, Edgar M. Bronfman, Sr., whose new book Hope Not Fear bills itself as A Path to Jewish Renaissance.
Listen in on the conversation:
Solomon: In your book, you seek to define Judaism as something besides religious belief.
Bronfman: I don’t believe in the God of the Old Testament, but I am happy with my Judaism, without that.
If you take the spiritual element out of Judaism, what is left?Some would say the rest is just archaeology, bones in the desert.
That’s their problem; that’s not my problem. What we have left is our ethics, our morals. It was our people who developed the Ten Commandments, and civilizations all over the world are based on the Ten Commandments. Whoever wrote that—and we assume it was Moses—had a great deal of wisdom.
Now apply Christian apologetics to the statements Bronfman made. Let’s ignore his atheism for the moment and focus on his claim that God isn’t necessary for the existence of morality.
Of course I think first of Lewis’ opening chapters in Mere Christianity. What a writer! Don’t miss that book!
But let me stand on more solid theological ground by borrowing (most immediately) from John Frame: Bronfman has denied the personal absolute necessary for ethical pronouncements. Moses was a person, but he wasn’t absolute. Why should his ethical norms be privileged over anyone else’s? By what standard can it be said that he was wise? Maybe that what he says works? Then what goal shall we all work toward in order to be named “wise”?
Without God, a personal absolute, you cannot get to an “ought.” (You can’t even get to an “is,” but that’s another discussion!)
I’ve already linked to this site before, but I have to mention it again because I’ve gotten some very good use out of it in just a few weeks. It’s a real go-to.
You get free information from several solid commentary recommendation books (Carson, Derek Thomas, Glynn, Longman, Rosscup). These are the sources you should be checking—and mostly trusting!—anyway. And the information is collected in a very convenient and attractive format. You can browse by series and by Bible book. You can look up prices. Very nice.
14 Is anyone among you sick (ἀσθενεῖ)? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick (κάμνοντα), and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.
All the major English translations (24 that I checked, anyway) agree, translating ἀσθενεῖ and κάμνοντα with “sick” or “ill” (Tyndale’s “defeated” in v. 14 probably means “sick”).
Mazak’s View
Today in BJU’s chapel service, popular teacher Dr. GregMazak preached a searching and exegetically rigorous message on prayer in which he challenged this view.
He argued that ἀσθενεῖ and κάμνοντα refer not to physical sickness but to what Lloyd-Jones might call “spiritual depression.” He told the more academic in the audience he’d happily share his sources with them. His view, he said, was not novel.
I asked him if I could post those sources on my blog. Here they are:
My friend Brian Collins and I think this view makes better sense of the last phrase of v. 15: “And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.” If someone is “raised up” from spiritual defeat then certainly he is being forgiven of sins. If he is being raised up from sickness, it’s not immediately apparent how forgiveness of sins is a corollary. This is worth further perusal.
I was reading in Zechariah last night in my single-column Books of the Bible, and I was struck by this statement from God about Jerusalem:
This is what the Lord Almighty says: “Now hear these words, ‘Let your hands be strong so that the temple may be built.’ This is also what the prophets said who were present when the foundation was laid for the house of the Lord Almighty. Before that time there were no wages for people or animals. People could not go about their business safely because of conflicts, since I had turned them all against each other. But now I will not deal with the remnant of this people as I did in the past,” declares the Lord Almighty.
It seems to me that the long-standing deadlock in Congress, more obvious now only because the financial crisis has made it so economically dangerous, is a result of God’s turning our hearts against one another as Americans. Let me clarify that I think Zechariah is talking about something a bit different. The conflicts he mentions are probably more physically violent. I cite this text only to show that God can and does turn people against each other as a method of judgment. That seems to be what he has done in this country.
As I wrote in the latest What in the World!, citing Joseph Bottum in First Things, the basically Protestant consensus that used to hold America together has withered away. In 1965, The mainline Protestant denominations counted more than half of all Americans among their members. But now those denominations (according to Bottum—and I agree) have completely capitulated to the world around them, guilty of “routine genuflections toward the latest political causes, the feminizing of the clergy, . . . the substitution of leftist social action for Christian evangelizing, and the disappearance of biblical theology.”
In fact, says Bottum, “All the Mainline churches have become essentially the same church: their histories, their theologies, and even much of their practice lost to a uniform vision of social progress.”
Let’s not imagine that the Republicans are the righteous stalwarts standing against the mainline liberal antichrists. By God’s common grace, the Republican platform is, I think, closer to biblical views than the Democratic. But the party is still far from God. And the Democratic party is closer to God than the Republican in some of its emphases. My point in quoting Bottum is simply that whatever moral—and therefore political—consensus we had as a nation is now disintegrating. We’re turned against one another, and I have to see that as the providence of God.
I’ve got to hand it to Logos. This is pretty cool. Search the Bible, read the Bible in paragraph format, check a lot of major versions. I’m awarding it some much-coveted space in my Firefox Bookmarks Toolbar!
It’s very fast, though, making me think that Logos is not really behind this effort. It could be a front for BibleWorks.
I tried to track down the following classic quote from Spurgeon, and the best I could do was a reference deep in the recesses of the Internet to his sermon “Woe and Weal” on Micah 7:9.
It would be a very sharp and trying experience to me to think that I have an affliction which God never sent me, that the bitter cup was never filled by his hand, that my briars were never measured out by him, nor sent to me by his arrangement of their weight and quality. Oh, that were bitterness indeed! But, on the contrary, the prophet here sees the hand of God in all his trials, and I pray that you and I may do the same. May we see that our heavenly Father fills the cup with loving tenderness, and holds it out, and says, “Drink, my child; bitter as it is, it is a love-potion which is meant to do thee permanent good.” The discerning of the hand of God is a sweet lesson in the school of experience.
I can’t pretend to have had many bitter cups to drink in my life. God has mixed for me a very pleasant draught! But I am trying to prepare myself and my family with good theology for when trouble comes.
My father-in-law recently asked for some recommendations for online courses to pass on to a friend. I replied recommending Dr. Ken Casillas’s Old Testament Theology course at BJ Seminary. It’s available via correspondence. I was in that class, and it was fantastic.
I told him that there are also many classes available in iTunes from places like Covenant Seminary and Reformed Theological Seminary. Here’s what I wrote him:
I did some searching just now, and here are a few courses I recommend:
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: John Frame on Christian Apologetics. (I’m reading Frame’s Lordship trilogy right now and it’s been very helpful. This is a lot of the same material.)
Here’s one on Christian education that looks good. Working at the Press has convinced me that there’s a lot more to Christian education than I thought while going through it.
Covenant Seminary also has good materials, though I couldn’t link to them for some reason. I’d recommend the Biblical Theology course. Search for “Covenant Worldwide” in iTunes.
I think the question “Why should I do right?” (or perhaps “What is the best motivation to to right?”) is one of the most important questions we can ask in our process of sanctification. The opening verses of 1 Cor 13 should be enough to convince us of that. And I’m convinced that most Christians haven’t come to a rigorously scriptural answer. Why should I do right? “Because God says so” is not enough—at least God doesn’t think so. He offers reasons.
I haven’t read this book, but from what I know of Edwards on this topic (and from the blurbs the author got), it promises to be helpful.
I’ve included my entire filing system for valuable articles—minus about 99% of the files. It’s your job, should you choose to accept it, to file valuable things you read for future reference.
Here is a description of some of the key files I left for you inside the topic folders:
WardMarkKeyToUBS4.pdf – In Greek Info folder. Helpful, I hope.
WardMarkGrkPrepositionsAndUses.xls – In Greek Info folder. Make an accessible link to it.
WardMarkHebrewRulesAndCharts.doc – In the Hebrew Info folder. Helpful, I hope.
Rom 06 Breakdown.doc – A little model of what you could do for exegesis.
AmosParagraphDivisions.doc – Another model, this time with an OT genre.
These are all outside the Topic Folders folder, in the “root directory” of the zip file:
WardMarkSuggestedStarterGoogleReaderSubscriptions – You can import this into GoogleReader. Try it! These are what I might call “starter feeds.” I read a few more, but these are more than enough to get you going. Many of them don’t post frequently, so it shouldn’t be too overwhelming if you try to get through them daily.
01 Illustrations.txt – Every topic folder contains a file like this. This is a model of how I fill it.
I encourage you to spend a few minutes going through the folders and seeing what goodies I left for you (you could do it quickly by searching the main folder and all subfolders for every file over the size of 1 KB). This will be worth more to you if you invest time in it. And, obviously, can’t endorse everything I left you. But I tried to leave you some interesting and helpful stuff.
May the Lord bring fruit from your work for His glory.
It gets trickier, however. If you installed my keyboard layout (which is a slightly-tweaked version of Tyndale House’s), here are the characters which might not be so obvious:
j (or v) = ς (I added “j” to match the BibleWorks Greek font; I’m just so used to it after six years.)
f = φ
h = η
q = θ
x = ξ
c = χ
y = ψ
Now for the Really Tricky Stuff
But how do you use accents? I admit it; sometimes I give up and just use the Character Viewer in OS X if I can’t remember the right key combination for acute + rough breather, for example. But there are ways, and I hope to master them myself soon. Here they are:
=a = ᾶ
+i = ῗ
/a = ὰ
|i = ῒ (that’s a pipe symbol: shift+backward slash)
‘a = ἀ
“a = ἁ
/a = ά
?i = ΐ
There’s really no way to learn but by doing—and by doing with reference to this excellent page on Tyndale House’s site. Note only that I have changed the ϡ to a ς to match BibleWorks’ layout.
For Hebrew in Unicode, I think I’m going to have to add one more part to this series. Stay tuned.
Picked this up from the New York Times, an AP story.
Bishop Duncan, who led the Pittsburgh diocese for 11 years, is a leader in a national network of theological conservatives who are breaking away from the liberal denomination in a dispute over Scripture.
They got it right! I’m impressed! The battle is over Scripture, not homosexuality. The latter is distinctly secondary to the former. At least that’s how it should be! I’m afraid not all participants in the debate have this clear.
For those who were just in my Logos lecture in BJU’s Ministry and Media course (and you readers out in TV Land), here are the links to Logos blogs which I promised. These are links to feeds, not to blogs. They should go right into Google Reader.
I’m looking forward to the release of the ESV Study Bible.
I’m wondering only why a study Bible needs articles on the following issues:
Roman Catholicism (Gregg R. Allison)
Eastern Orthodoxy (Robert Letham)
Liberal Protestantism (Bruce A. Ware)
Evangelical Protestantism (Bruce A. Ware)
Evangelical Protestantism and Global Christianity (Harold A. Netland)
The Bible and Contemporary Judaism (Marvin R. Wilson)
The Bible and Other World Religions (Harold A. Netland)
The Bible and Islam (Timothy C. Tennent)
The Bible and Religious Cults (Ron Rhodes)
I’d be interested in hearing the rationale for including these. I imagine there will be some very good material, but shouldn’t a study Bible should focus on interpreting the text? Just a quibble. Here‘s the complete list of articles.
My friend Josh Young, a fellow Mount Calvary member and BJ Seminary student, recently sent me a set of helps for learning the vocabulary list required here in our Hebrew program. I was never a flash-card guy myself, but you may be. If you are, he’s done some great work for you! Here are his descriptions of what is included in the zip file which you can get by clicking Hebrew Helps 2.2.zip:
A 44-page PDF document that can be printed on cardstock at Bellis for just a little over 8 dollars. It contains all the Hebrew words from 1st and 2nd year Hebrew with the Hebrew handbook definitions on the back. The frequency field on the card is the only quirk. It has nothing to do with frequency; it’s actually the Hebrew handbook number. For about 5 extra bucks they can cut most of the cards out for you, but due to the limitations of the cutter you will still have to make the last 132 cuts yourself. This may still be preferred over the 792 cuts it will take to do by hand.
An excel based review program for these words. (Note macros will need to be enabled for it to work correctly.)
An aleph-beth-cally ordered Hebrew glossary with the 1st and 2nd year Hebrew vocab.
For clarity’s sake, most printing instructions are part of the embarrassingly long file names.
Printing a test sheet would be recommended. The card should have English on one side and Hebrew on the other, but they need to be flipped vertically (at the top/bottom) and not horizontally or the definitions will be wrong.
Two More Hebrew Links
Josh also recommended a small Hebrew site set up by one of the most brilliant fellow students I’ve ever had. In fact, this student was in first-year Hebrew with me years ago.
And one more thing! Make sure to check out what my friend and co-worker Bryan Smith produced (along with his friend, Phil Brown), Zondervan’s “A Reader’s Hebrew Bible.”
If you want to use Unicode in your dissertation, let’s say, but you don’t want to have to go back through the whole thing yourself to change all the Greek or Hebrew over, check out this list of Unicode converters.
Abortion has gone from an unfortunate necessity to a positive (eugenic, I suppose) good for the Left:
So while I respect Palin’s decision to raise Trig, that’s all the respect she will get from me. I don’t see eye-to-eye with her on anything else: energy, guns, sex education and of course a woman’s right to choose. Her supporters say that Trig signals that she practices what she preaches. Her decision to make her own choice but not grant it to others is a sign of her hypocrisy.
And on a related note, catch this, from Charlie Gibson’s big ABC interview (transcript excerpts here) with Sarah Palin:
GIBSON: You said recently, in your old church, “Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God.” Are we fighting a holy war?
PALIN: You know, I don’t know if that was my exact quote.
GIBSON: Exact words.
Well, they were and they weren’t. GetReligion notes that Gibson left out a key “introductory clause that completely changed the meaning of the statement.”
Here are the exact words. Palin asked the congregation to
“pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God. That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan.”
TheWashington Post has a sad article about the depths to which evangelical pastors will go to be whatever relevant happens to mean at the moment. Throughout the summer the pastor of thisAG church watched the top-grossing movie of the previous week and then preached his sermon based on that movie. He even dressed up like the characters, including Robert Downey Jr.’s blackface character in “Tropic Thunder” and Heath Ledger’s Joker in “Dark Knight.” He prayed for insight to get a biblical message out of each movie.
I admit I couldn’t help but laugh at congregant Nikkisha Walker’s comment; so apropos:
“Some of the movies, I’ve been like, ‘How is he going to preach on this, because it has nothing to do with God?’ ” said Nikkisha Walker, 17. “But he always manages to find something.”
To be a good blogger I tried to check this pastor out so I wasn’t misrepresenting him. I watched more clips online at his site; I read his comments carefully (and I note that he urged his people not to see “Tropic Thunder”). I stand by what my criticism, but even if I’m wrong I find it interesting that the Post picked up the same narrative I did, except where they say “nontraditional” I say “worldly.”
Researchers say more and more churches are trying nontraditional ways of attracting congregants, with some holding services in bars, on hiking trails or online. Creative services can provide an edge in a tight “religious marketplace,” said David Roozen, director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research in Connecticut.
“There’s a lot of experimentation going on in worship these days,” Roozen said.
It’s about seeming relevant and standing out in the crowd.
“How are we different from the church down the street? Well, you have to bring your 3-D glasses when you come to our church,” Roozen said.
Leaving aside Romans 12:1-2 for now, let me mention instead Titus 2:7. A pastor’s teaching should show dignity.
“I think it clearly and abundantly evident that true religion lies very much in the affections,” wrote Jonathan Edwards in his classicThe Religious Affections (or see a solid modernization here).I’m going to post his ten supporting points for that assertion in three installments. I put the scriptural supporting points in a smaller, lighter font.
8. Heaven: “The religion of heaven consists very much in affection.” 42? “According to the Scripture representation of the heavenly state, the religion of heaven consists chiefly in holy and mighty love and joy, and the expression of these in most fervent and exalted praises.” PN: Indeed, if praise is the overflow of enjoyment, the fact that heaven is full of praise is a sure indication that heaven is full of joy. Praise without joy is not glorifying to God. It wouldn’t make sense, Edwards says, to argue that because the saints in heaven have no bodies they have no affections. The chief affections are love and joy, and both embodied souls and unembodied souls can feel them. Saved people on earth know that they have the same kind—though not degree—of love and joy that the saints in heaven feel.
a. “It is unreasonable therefore to suppose, that the love and joy of the saints in heaven differ not only in degree and circumstances, from the holy love and joy of the saints on earth, but also in nature, so that they are no affections; and merely because they have no blood and animal spirits to be set in motion by them. The motion of the blood and animal spirits is not of the essence of these affections, in men on the earth, but the effect of them; although by their reaction they may make some circumstantial difference in the sensation of the mind. There is a sensation of the mind which loves and rejoices, antecedent to any effects on the fluids of the body; and therefore, does not depend on these motions in the body, and so may be in the soul without the body.” 40 [LOGOS]
b. Is anyone willing to argue that the saints are not at all affected by the glory of God?
c. “The way to learn the true nature of anything is to go where that thing is to be found in its purity and perfection. If we would know the nature of true gold we must view it, not in the ore, but when it is refined.” 43
9. “This appears from the nature and design of the ordinances and duties which God hath appointed, as means and expressions of true religion.” 43
a. Prayer should certainly cause affections to rise which match the requests.
b. The duty of singing praises wouldn’t make sense except that music stirs our affections.
c. The sacraments are “sensible representations” to affect us.
d. Preaching is more affecting than a doctrinal book. The very purpose of God’s giving preachers was, according to Eph 4:11, 12, 16, to edify the body in love.
e. 1 Tim 1:3-5 says that love is the great purpose of a preacher’s preaching.
f. 2 Cor 1:24 calls a minister a “helper of your joy.”
10. “It is an evidence that true religion, or holiness of heart, lies very much in the affection of the heart, that the Scriptures place the sin of the heart very much in the hardness of heart.” 45
a. Mk 3:5, Jesus was angry and grieved at the hard hearts of the Jews.
b. Rom 2:5 says that “after thy hardness and impenitent heart” the wicked treasure up wrath.
c. Ezk 3:7 says Israel did not obey God because they were hardhearted.
d. Ps 95:7-10 says that the sin of the wilderness wanderers was that of hardheartedness.
e. Hardheartedness prevented Zedekiah’s coming to the lord.
f. It is the reason men do not fear God and turn fro his ways: Isa 63:17.
g. It is the reason many reject Christ. Acts 19:9
h. God’s judgment is often to harden hearts; Rom 9:18; Jn 12:40; Heb 3:8, 12, 13.
i. God’s great work of conversion is described as “taking away the heart of stone and giving a heart of flesh” Ex 11:19; 36:26.
j. The very image of a hard heart is of a stone, “insensible, stupid, unmoved, and hard to be impressed.” 46 “What is a tender heart but a heart which is easily impressed with what ought to affect it?” 46 Cf. Josiah in 2 Kgs 22:19. “We should have our hearts tender, and easily affected // and moved in spiritual and divine things, as little children have in other things.” 47
k. To have a hard heart is to be “void of affection” that should be there: Job 39:16; Prov 28:14.
l. “Divines are generally agreed that sin radically and fundamentally consists in what is negative, or privative, having its root and foundation in a privation or want of holiness. And therefore undoubtedly, if it be so that sin does very much consist in hardness of heart, and so in the want of pious affections of heart, holiness does consist very much in those pious affections.”
All this is not to say that any powerful affection makes you tenderhearted. Hard hearts can be full of “hatred, anger, vainglory, and other selfish and self-exalting affections.” 47
