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Category: Theology Page 14 of 67


James White Versus Jack Moorman – Should We Exclusively Use The King James Bible?

Sentimental Christianity: “God won’t give you more than you can handle”

We always hear the nice, sentimental, comfy, American, coffee-mug-Christianity phrase, “God won’t give you more than you can handle.” But isn’t “God giving you more than you can handle” the very definition of a trial, in order that you rest on His provision and not your own? And isn’t the trial designed for this? “…we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” – Romans 5:3-5 … In the words of How Firm a Foundation, “Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.”

Defending Christianity … Against Pat Robertson

Trying to gently and constructively answer claims of patriarchy by the secular left against the religious right, claims of the suppression of minorities, war against women, etc, are not helped by absurd comments like this … in fact, it’s because of some of his outrageous comments that some of the apologetics I’ve engaged in at a personal level at work and elsewhere has even had to be engaged at all (defending true, authentic, unmuddled, Biblical Christianity against the likes of Pat Robertson). It’s my estimation that this man alone has conveyed so much confusion about what Christians believe to the unbelieving world that he actually represents a threat to the faith: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoHdO2rwGwE#

Discussion Between James White and Brian McLaren

This episode of the radio program in the UK called Unbelievable with Justin Brierley is a discussion between James White and Brian McLaren on the Emerging Church and postmodernism. It aired in 2011 and I just now got around to listening to it. Good stuff. They both outline their positions very clearly and respectfully. Worth the listen:

http://media.premier.org.uk/unbelievable/7684e862-dcf2-4bd2-a1f3-aceb16f2f17c.mp3 (MP3)

What’s Obvious to One Group May Not Be So Obvious to Another – Humbly Explain Yourself

“To some extent, cohesive social forces are at work in any culture or subculture with shared worldview and shared doctrines. In itself this counts neither for nor against the truth of the worldview or the doctrines. But it does mean that things that seem ‘obvious’ or ‘plain’ or ‘commonsensical’ to members of a social group need not be at all obvious to those outside.” – Vern Poythress, Understanding Dispensationalists.

As a side note, this book was explained to me by a DTS graduate as a book in which they learned more about dispensationalism than their whole student career in attendance at DTS, ironically enough.

God is Sovereign Over Blindness That His Glory Might Be Displayed

“And his disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.”
(John 9:2-3 ESV) … in other words, “he was born blind” “that the works of God might be displayed in him.” Let that sink in. Jesus said this. God gave him life, with blindness, for an overarching purpose: His own glory, namely that Jesus might be shown and evidenced to be the Son of God, to the glory of the Father.

Turns Out “A Statement of Traditional Southern Baptist Understanding of God’s Plan of Salvation” Isn’t so Traditional After All

A recent formal doctrinal statement on the nature of salvation (or in technical theological terms, soteriology, or the study of salvation) signed on to by none other than Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (as one example), amongst others, like Emir Caner, is making quite the stir, even amongst classical Arminians (click to read). The statement was meant to counter what they view as the “threat” of Calvinism spreading in the SBC. At best, it is theological and historical sloppiness. At worst, it is theological and historical revisionism and an open slide toward heresy as it relates to the nature of man’s will as a result of the transmission of the sin of Adam to mankind.

The authors and signers claim they are speaking for the traditional view of the SBC on the issue of salvation. However, as Tom Ascol from Founders Ministries points out, this is hardly the case. Hopefully this will bring to light some issues that have been brewing for quite some time. They have drawn a line in the sand and either need to repent or split in my opinion. Yes, it’s that serious. These issues go beyond Calvinism versus Arminianism into the issues of Original Sin and the nature of the will, pre/post-fall, no less. In addition, I’ve included Tom Ascol’s response. Read on:

First of all, here’s the original doctrinal statement in question

Part 1 – Tom Ascol (Beginning of Response)

Part 2 – Tom Ascol

Part 3 – Tom Ascol

Could W.A. Criswell have signed this statement? – Tom Ascol

Part 4 – Tom Ascol

Part 5 – Tom Ascol

Part 6 – Tom Ascol

Part 7 – Tom Ascol

Part 8 – Tom Ascol

Part 9 – Tom Ascol

Part 10 – Tom Ascol

Part 11 – Tom Ascol

Part 12 – Tom Ascol

Part 13 – Tom Ascol

Semi-Pelagian/Pelagian Point in Question: The Recent SBC Statement on Salvation: A Point of Concern – John Aloisi

The Traditional Southern Baptist View of Salvation? – James White (MP3)

And finally, for a historical, theological background on what the early church concluded pertaining to not only Pelagianism but Semi-Pelagianism, you just have to read the Canons of Orange from 529 AD.

Where Does Jesus Claim to be God?

OT background text: “God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ And he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel, “I AM has sent me to you.”‘” (Exodus 3:14 ESV) … and then, “Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.’ So [the Jewish people listening] picked up stones to throw at him…” (John 8:58-59 ESV).

Why are Creeds and Confessions Necessary, and How Have They Been Produced? – A.A. Hodge

1. Why are Creeds and Confessions necessary, and how have they been produced?

The Scriptures of the Old and New Testament having been given by inspiration of God, are for man in his present state the only and the all–sufficient rule of faith and practice. This divine word, therefore, is the only standard of doctrine which has any intrinsic authority binding the consciences of men. All other standards are of value or authority only as they teach what the Scriptures teach.

But it is the inalienable duty and necessity of men to arrive at the meaning of the Scriptures in the use of their natural faculties, and by the ordinary instruments of interpretation. Since all truth is self–consistent in all its parts, and since the human reason always instinctively strives to reduce all the elements of knowledge with which it grapples to logical unity and consistency, it follows that men must more or less formally construct a system of faith out of the materials presented in the Scriptures. Every student of the Bible necessarily does this in the very process of understanding and digesting its teaching, and all such students make it manifest that they have found, in one way or another, a system of faith as complete as for him has been possible, by the very language he uses in prayer, praise, and ordinary religious discourse. If men refuse the assistance afforded by the statements of doctrine slowly elaborated and defined by the church, they must severally make out their own creed by their own unaided wisdom. The real question between the church and the impugners of human creeds, is not, as the latter often pretend, between the word of God and the creed of man, but between the tried and proved faith of the collective body of God’s people, and the private judgment and the unassisted wisdom of the individual objector. As it would have been anticipated, it is a matter of fact that the church has advanced very gradually in this work of accurately interpreting Scripture, and defining the great doctrines which compose the system of truths it reveals. The attention of the church has been especially directed to the study of one doctrine in one age, and of another doctrine in a subsequent age. And as she has gradually advanced in the clear discrimination of gospel truth, she has at different periods set down an accurate statement of the results of her new attainments in a creed, or Confession of Faith, for the purpose of preservation and of popular instruction, of discriminating and defending the truth from the perversion of heretics and the attacks of infidels, and of affording a common bond of faith and rule of teaching and discipline.

The ancient creeds of the universal Church were formed by the first four ecumenical or general councils, except the so–called Apostle’s Creed, gradually formed from the baptismal confessions in use in the different churches of the West, and the so–called Athanasian Creed, which is of private and unknown authorship. The great authoritative Confession of the Papal Church was produced by the ecumenical council held at Trent, 1545. The mass of the principal Protestant Confessions were the production of single individuals or of small circles of individuals, e.g., the Augsburg Confession and Apology, the 2nd Helvetic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Old Scotch Confession, the Thirty–nine Articles of the Church of England etc. Two, however, of the most valuable and generally received Protestant Confessions were produced by large and venerable Assemblies of learned divines, namely: the Canons of the international Synod of Dort, and the Confession and Catechisms [larger – shorter] of the national Assembly of Westminster.

Excerpt from Outlines of Theology, A.A. Hodge (PDF)

King James Only-ism Alive and Kicking

It’s amazing how the internet can provide both a wealth of information and a wealth of disinformation. It’s also amazing that in our modern age, with our technology, historical knowledge, empirical and factual evidence (i.e. without a question) that King James Only-ism is so persistently propagated about. King James Only-ism is the idea that the King James version (KJV, Sola KJV :)) is the only pure, authorized, sanctified standard in the English language, given to us by God. All other standards are not only sub-par, but tainted by a work of the devil in their corruption.

Dr. Sam Gipp, a leading extreme proponent of this view, has released a new video defending the purity and sanctity of the King James version against all other English versions. Dr. James White has responded. I’m posting in them in order here. You decide which is the better, more faithful argument.

Dr. Sam Gipp video:

Dr. James White refutation:

(Part 1)

(Part 2)

(Part 3)

(Part 4)

(Part 5)

Page 14 of 67

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