Andrew and Jenny, July 24, 2010

I’m not quite ready to resume blogging, but here’s a photo from my son and daughter-in-law’s wedding reception, which was a casual barbecue (a proper Yukon summer reception, really) at a very lovely cabin on a lake 45 minutes from town. Here, the bride and groom prepare to cut their cake, which was made for them by the bride’s aunt. The venue was generously provided by the bride’s grandparents.

Entertaining the Children

I should have photos from the ceremony later. I know you want to see the bride in her dress.

See you then!

The writer of Hebrews has completed his list of faithful people of old, and he finishes this chapter with a summary statement.

And these all were commended for their faith, yet they did not receive what was promised. For God had provided something better for us, so that they would be made perfect together with us. (Hebrews 11:39,40; NET)

Everyone on this list, he says, was commended for their faith. The chapter starts by telling us  that the people of old received God’s commendation by faith, and now it concludes in the same way.

All the listed faithful ancients were commended for their faith, and as a result they received many blessings and had many promises fulfilled; yet, the writer tells us, there was something held back from them. There was something promised to them that they did not receive, and that they could not receive it without us. This final blessing, the ultimate fulfillment of God’s promise, our being made perfect, comes to all saints together.

What is this better thing that God has provided for us? The next step in the fulfillment of God’s promises  and the centerpiece of the book of Hebrews is the saving work of Christ. The people of old anticipated it and we look back on it. Our perfection, in one sense, has already been worked through what Christ has done.

But still we wait, like they waited, for the final fulfillment of God’s promises in Christ’s return and the fullness of the kingdom. We continue to live by faith like those who’ve gone before us. We can grow tired in the difficulties of this life, just as they must have, but we have their testimonies as examples to to encourage us to stand firm in our faith. They hadn’t seen, yet they trusted; and they spur us on to keep trusting in what we’ve not seen. We can pattern our lives after them.

Today’s collection of links consists of one. I’ve been busy, you see.

Name that Eponym
“Getting a building or a street named after you is a real honor, but what about a word used every day? Only a lucky few can point to their eponym. An eponym is a word derived from a person’s name, either real or fictional. In this quiz, we’ll give you a clue for the person and the definition of the word. Can you fill in the eponym?” (mental_floss Blog)

I got 50%. How’d you do?

I’m thankful for the mama mallard with young’ns in the pond behind the house. I’m thankful for the window in the living room with a view of the bush and the mountains behind and beyond. I’m thankful for quiet mornings after busy evenings.

I’m thankful for a little rain so I can take a break from the watering of garden and yard.

I’m thankful for non-drowsy antihistamines.

I’m thankful that youngest son can finally walk without much pain so he can take over the dog-walking job as things get busier leading up to the big wedding next weekend. (He did a number on his feet walking for miles and miles around Vancouver wearing flip-flops.)

I’m thankful my future daughter-in-law, who is a very lovely young woman.

I’m thankful for the providence of God in all these things.

On Thursdays throughout this year, I plan to post a few thoughts of thanksgiving along with Kim at the Upward Call and others. Why don’t you participate by posting your thanksgiving each week, too? It’ll be an encouragement to you and to others, I promise.

transcendental argument for the existence of God
The argument which attempts to prove God’s existence by arguing that logic, morals, and science ultimately presuppose the Christian worldview, and that God’s absolute nature is the source of logic and morals.1

• Scripture that grounds a transcendental argument for the existence of God:

  And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Colossians 1:17 ESV)

• An example of a trancendental argument:

  When we go to look at the different world views that atheists and theists have, I suggest we can prove the existence of God from the impossibility of the contrary. The transcendental proof for God’s existence is that without Him it is impossible to prove anything. The atheist world view is irrational and cannot consistently provide the preconditions of intelligible experience, science, logic, or morality. The atheist world view cannot allow for laws of logic, the uniformity of nature, the ability for the mind to        understand the world, and moral absolutes. In that sense the atheist world view cannot account for our debate tonight. (A bit of Greg Bahnsen’s argument from Does God Exist? Greg Bahnsen vs. Gordon Stein)

• From Trancendental Arguments by John Frame:

  What, then, does transcendental argument add to the apologist’s arsenal, beyond the traditional arguments? First, it presents a goal for apologetics. The goal of the apologist is not only to show that God exists, but also who he is: that he is the source of all meaning and intelligibility in the universe.

  Further, it suggests apologetic strategies somewhat neglected in the tradition. Traditional apologists have often argued that causality (for example) implies God. A transcendental argument makes a stronger claim: that causality presupposes God. The difference between “implies” and “presupposes,” according to Peter Strawson and Bas Van Fraasen, is that in the latter case God’s existence is implied either by the assertion or the denial of causality. That is, not only does the existence of causality imply the existence of God, but even to deny (intelligibly, if it were possible) the existence of causality would be to invoke a framework of meaning that presupposes God’s existence. Don Collett argues that the Strawson-Van Fraasen kind of presupposition is identical with Van Til’s. So if creation presupposes God, even the denial of creation presupposes him, and the atheist is like the little girl slapping her father while sitting on his lap.

  The Bible does make this kind of radical claim, that creation not only implies, but presupposes God. For God is the creator of all, and therefore the source of all meaning, order, and intelligibility. It is in Christ that all things hold together (Col. 1:17). So without him everything falls apart; nothing makes sense. Thus Scripture teaches that unbelief is foolish (Psm. 14:1, 1 Cor. 1:20). There are many arguments to be made on the way to that conclusion. Not every individual apologetic argument needs to go that far.  But the apologist’s work is not done until he reaches that conclusion, until he persuades the objector that God is everything the Bible says he is. That is to say that a complete argument for Christian theism, however many sub-arguments it contains, will be transcendental in character.

Learn more:

1. GotQuestions.org: What is the trancendental argument for the existence of God?
2. RealApologetics.org Blog: A Concise Outline for the Trancendental Argument for God’s Existence
3. Doug Wilson: The Transcendental Argument for God’s Existence (The opening statement of a debate with Theodore Drange)
4. Greg Bahnsen: Transcript of Does God Exist? Greg Bahnsen vs. Gordon Stein

Related terms:

• presuppositional apologetics
• cosmological argument
• moral argument
• ontological argument
• teleological argument

1What is the transcendental argument for the existence of God? at GotQuestions.org

Do you have a a theological term you’d like to see featured here as a Theological Term of the Week? If you email it to me, I’ll seriously consider using it.

I’m also interested in any suggestions you have for tweaking my definitions or for additional (or better) articles or sermons/lectures for linking. I’ll give you credit and a link back to your blog if I use your suggestion.

Clicking on the Theological Term graphic at the top of this post will take you to a list of all the previous theological terms organized in alphabetical order or by topic.

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Ht: Brandon

What it says is that in formulating my theology I shall not consciously deny, disregard, or arbitrarily relativize anything that I find Bible writers teaching, nor cut the knot of any problem of Bible harmony, factual or theological, by assuming that the writers were not consistent with themselves or with each other. Instead, I shall labor to harmonize and integrate all that is taught (without remainder), to take is as from God (however little I may like it), and to seek actively to live by it (whatever change of my present beliefs and behavior-patterns it may require).

Read more.

Not Just for Calvinists
Any adequate response to the problem of evil requires that God have two wills. 

You need to have some sense in which God wants to evil to happen if God in any sense knowingly allows it…. But you better not say that God wants it to happen in every sense. God certainly disapproves of the evil, and wouldn’t desire it if it weren’t for whatever issue led God to allow the evil.

Read the whole post at Parableman.

I read them on schedule—honest—but I couldn’t find time to post on what I read until now. What’s more, I wasn’t sure what I should be putting up in response to each week’s reading. Simply summarizing chapters in a biography seemed pointless. So here’s my plan: Each week I’ll choose something I think is interesting from that  week’s reading, quote it for you, and make a few comments.

These first two chapters tell us about Charles Spurgeon’s childhood and his conversion. Spurgeon, we’re told, experienced many years of “long and bitter conviction of sin” before he was converted at age 15.

[T]hroughout several boyhood years, he was constantly conscious of the universal requirements of God’s law. “Wherever I went,” he says, “it had a demand upon my thoughts, upon my words, upon my rising, upon my resting.” And amidst his struggles to overcome that dreadful realization he came face to face with its kindred truth, the spirituality of the law. Although he had never committed the sins of the flesh he felt themselves guilty of them in the spirit, and he cried out, “What hope had I of eluding, such a law as this, which every way surrounded me with an atmosphere from which I could not possibly escape.”

Frequently, upon awakening after a troubled night, he took up such books as Alliene’s Admonition to Unconverted Sinners and Baxter’s Call to the Unconverted. But the works that had been so helpful to others only enforced what he already knew—that he was lost and needed to be saved. They left him with a bitter longing to know how the great salvation was to be received, and he remained seeking and suffering.

These years of terrible conviction—almost to the point of despair—prepared him to be truly converted when he finally heard a simple sermon that proclaimed the gospel.

Since reading this account, I’ve been thinking of children and conviction of sin. I know that I experienced  a rather deep conviction before I responded to the gospel call when I was a little girl. Not for years, like Charles Spurgeon; after all, I was only five years old. But I knew that I was in big trouble with God and there was nothing I could do to make things better. And it wasn’t just a passing thought, but something I stewed over enough that I remember it. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was a necessary step to finding the Saviour.

When my own children were very young, I think I did a good job of presenting God as loving father to them, but that I was too cautious in presenting him as judge. My natural inclination was to protect them from the difficult time I’d experienced as a little girl, fretting over my sin and my “God problem.” It was foolish of me to think this way, especially since I also knew from my own past the importance of conviction of sin as a necessary step toward knowing God as saviour. God loves you isn’t the whole story, and even young kids need to know the whole story.

Unfortunately, Charles Spurgeon was troubled for far too long before someone told him that he would be saved if he trusted Christ. He’d been missing part of the story, too, and he’d suffered for it. Still, he says, “it was, no doubt, all wisely ordered….” And Dallimore tells us that

the sufferering through which he had passed … had a lasting effect upon him. A recognition of the awful evil of sin was deeply ingraned upon his mind and made him loathe iniquity and love all that was holy. The failure of preachers he had heard to present the gospel, and to do so in a plain, direct manner, caused him throughout his whole ministry to tell sinners in every sermon and in a most forthright and understandable way how to be saved.

So yes, it was difficult for him—and for much of it, he was just a young boy—but at the same time it was all wisely ordered to produce good fruit.

What do Christians mean when they say the Bible is inerrant? The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy tells us what leading inerrantist mean by inerrancy. I’ll be posting a section of this statement each week until I’ve posted the whole thing.

After a preface and a short statement, the Chicago Statement contains the Articles of Affirmation and Denial. (You can read previously posted sections of this statement in by clicking here.) The last section is the Exposition, which “gives an account of the outline of doctrine from which our summary statement and articles are drawn.” Below is the first section of this summary statement.

Exposition

Our understanding of the doctrine of inerrancy must be set in the context of the broader teachings of the Scripture concerning itself. This exposition gives an account of the outline of doctrine from which our summary statement and articles are drawn.

Creation, Revelation and Inspiration

The Triune God, who formed all things by his creative utterances and governs all things by His Word of decree, made mankind in His own image for a life of communion with Himself, on the model of the eternal fellowship of loving communication within the Godhead. As God’s image-bearer, man was to hear God’s Word addressed to him and to respond in the joy of adoring obedience. Over and above God’s self-disclosure in the created order and the sequence of events within it, human beings from Adam on have received verbal messages from Him, either directly, as stated in Scripture, or indirectly in the form of part or all of Scripture itself.

When Adam fell, the Creator did not abandon mankind to final judgment but promised salvation and began to reveal Himself as Redeemer in a sequence of historical events centering on Abraham’s family and culminating in the life, death, resurrection, present heavenly ministry, and promised return of Jesus Christ. Within this frame God has from time to time spoken specific words of judgment and mercy, promise and command, to sinful human beings so drawing them into a covenant relation of mutual commitment between Him and them in which He blesses them with gifts of grace and they bless Him in responsive adoration. Moses, whom God used as mediator to carry His words to His people at the time of the Exodus, stands at the head of a long line of prophets in whose mouths and writings God put His words for delivery to Israel. God’s purpose in this succession of messages was to maintain His covenant by causing His people to know His Name—that is, His nature—and His will both of precept and purpose in the present and for the future. This line of prophetic spokesmen from God came to completion in Jesus Christ, God’s incarnate Word, who was Himself a prophet—more than a prophet, but not less—and in the apostles and prophets of the first Christian generation. When God’s final and climactic message, His word to the world concerning Jesus Christ, had been spoken and elucidated by those in the apostolic circle, the sequence of revealed messages ceased. Henceforth the Church was to live and know God by what He had already said, and said for all time.

At Sinai God wrote the terms of His covenant on tables of stone, as His enduring witness and for lasting accessibility, and throughout the period of prophetic and apostolic revelation He prompted men to write the messages given to and through them, along with celebratory records of His dealings with His people, plus moral reflections on covenant life and forms of praise and prayer for covenant mercy. The theological reality of inspiration in the producing of Biblical documents corresponds to that of spoken prophecies: although the human writers’ personalities were expressed in what they wrote, the words were divinely constituted. Thus, what Scripture says, God says; its authority is His authority, for He is its ultimate Author, having given it through the minds and words of chosen and prepared men who in freedom and faithfulness “spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (1 Pet. 1:21). Holy Scripture must be acknowledged as the Word of God by virtue of its divine origin.