Justin Taylor yesterday at The Gospel Coalition offered some comments about the issue of “angry Calvinists.” It may be due to the fact that I am not plugged in with any particular inner circle of blogs or online ministries or what have you but quite frankly I was not aware that there exists an issue of angry Calvinists. Either that or the term “angry” may be less than accurate, such that the issue is more about Calvinists who are aggressive or insensitive in their passion for the doctrines of grace—in which case the stereotype as such is an inaccurate caricature. And I think that Taylor could probably agree that it is more about being aggressive or insensitive than it is about being angry, for he invokes terms like “mocking, rude, sarcastic, and nasty,” which is not necessarily from anger but is certainly aggressive and insensitive.

Now, he suggests that one will see this sort of attitude from people of varying traditions in the posts and comments area of blogs that discuss issues of theological significance or “ultimate things”—and we have certainly witnessed that here—but he almost seems to imply that this is a tempting excuse, a feeble tu quoque fallacy, and spends the rest of the article offering suggestions for how Calvinists can not only own up to this problem but also how to be self-conscious about it and correct it. I am particularly drawn to the thoughts shared by Joe Thorn in his interview with Ed Stetzer on that point.

And I am certainly not denying that this perception exists out there, nor even the reality that the inaccurate caricature draws upon. Just last week several of us from church met at the beach for fellowship late Sunday afternoon and joining us were some people from another local Baptist church, including their new pastor. Someone pointed to the book that I had with me—James White, The Sovereign Grace of God—and asked that pastor what he thought of the author. (A strange question when removed from its original context but it was relevant to preexisting conversation.) He said that although he really appreciates the doctrines that White firmly believes and defends he did not really care for the aggressive and combative personality White has. And that is something I have heard more than once so I cannot deny that this perception exists.

But I have to go back to Taylor’s implication that this problem is not at all unique to Calvinists—as anyone who is a Calvinist can invariably attest! There are so many examples I could draw upon to make this point, but what better example could I use than my own self? When I was converted to Christianity it was upon hearing for the first time the gospel of Christ presented to me by a gentleman whose anti-Calvinism would later rub off on me. Through our doctrinal studies he had me convinced that Calvinism was practically blasphemous, and for years I had that attitude. And in those rare occasions when I would confront a Calvinist I was very harsh about the teaching. Aggressive, insensitive, nasty; these words were applicable. That is how I treated Calvinists and their doctrines for many years. So I can well attest that this problem is by no means unique to Calvinists. And even now, holding to Reformed theology as I do, I get confronted by people who have the same attitude I once did, getting called all sorts of rather unpleasant things (to put it lightly).

I do agree that Calvinists need to own up to their failings and strive to be self-conscious about them and work to correct them—but it is not just Calvinists, as those people who are rigorously anti-Calvinist routinely demonstrate, just as I once did too. This is a problem that anyone who is part of the family of God needs to address in their own lives, if and where applicable. I think Thorn’s final remarks bear repeating, and with a note that it should apply to all Christians:

Anger is sometimes very appropriate. We see that in the prophets and Apostles, and even in Jesus. But when dealing with brothers and sisters in Christ it’s important to do more than “set the record straight,” or prove one wrong and point to the truth. We need to do that, but we need to do it in a way that bears fruit, and biblically that means doing such work carefully. Sometimes it does mean we need to drop bombs, but more often it means we need to sit down with a brother (literally or figuratively) and reason with him. … [There are people who] need some counsel on being more gracious, humble, and gentle. We all do. At the very least, we all need to learn to be better teachers and physicians of the soul when it comes to correcting each other.

———-

• Justin Taylor, “The problem of ‘angry Calvinists,” The Gospel Coalition (2011, September 16).
  http://thegospelcoalition.org
• Ed Stetzer, “Joe Thorn and angry (fake) Calvinists,” The LifeWay Research Blog (2011, September 14).
  http://www.edstetzer.com
• John Piper, “Why are Calvinists so negative?” DesiringGod (2008, May 21).
  http://www.desiringgod.org

The heart of this post, I hope, can be summarily found in a statement by James Emery White. “What decisively marks a Christian mind is that it is informed by revelation … and then proceeds to think in light of that revelation.” – White, J.E., Serious Times, (Inter Varsity Press, 2004), p.104

With that said I just want to make it clear that my main goal in this post is to demonstrate the natural consequences of biblical compromise. So while I do make many statements against an evolutionary worldview, my intention is simply to highlight the compromise position of the piece for Christian readers – being that it is allegedly written from a Christian’s perspective – and not to engage in great detail on the finite details of the evolutionary worldview. Therefore I do not intend to allow (or argue against) conclusions drawn by non-Christians, who do not accept such authority in the first place and have their own a priori materialistic paradigms and philosophies that will not, by definition, permit some of the conclusions I have made.^[1] Those discussions belong in a separate area.

The article (written a few years ago now) by Peter Sellick is titled “Intelligent Design – Damaging Good Science and Good Theology” – Friday, 9 September 2005. But it does represent a growing view among some evangelical Christians. For example, the recent book by Denis Alexander, Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose? 

I have not dealt with every comment in Sellick’s article because it’s just too long. But I think I have captured and responded to the main points.

According to the On Line Opinion webpage, Peter Sellick is currently an Anglican deacon working in Perth (Western Australia) with a background in the biological sciences. This, I am sure, makes him far more qualified than I to speak on theology or science, but I humbly offer this criticism as one who cares about the truth of Scripture.

The idea of intelligent design is that the universe, particularly the life contained therein, is too complex to have happened by chance as the theory of evolution would have it.

A more complete representation of Intelligent Design (ID) would also mention the observation of what appears to be irreducibly complex systems and specified information with those systems.

Therefore its sole basis lies in a negative:

Keep in mind that this claim is right at the beginning of Sellick’s article and he immediately poisons the well. To the contrary, as many in the ID movement have pointed out, it is not some fall-back position that people cling to because they’re blinded to the wisdom of an evolutionary worldview. It is based on a positive: an innate ability to discern design in our world. It is supported by a historical knowledge of cause and effect, acknowledging that it is most reasonable to think that the source of information and complexity contained in living systems is due to the actions of an intelligent agent. This is a completely reasonable premise upon which ID can stand. It certainly does not lie ‘in a negative’.

On the other hand, evolution by natural selection (which Sellick seems to support) is a dysteleological process seen to act on systems already possessing the information and complexity that it is claimed to have produced, and therefore provides no reasonable basis to explain the origin of these systems in the first place.

the failure to imagine how natural selection could arrive at the complexity of life we see all around us.

Imagination isn’t the problem. Rationality is. Put simply, many people think it is more reasonable that complex information-bearing systems are the product of intelligence rather than the result of random mindless forces. If observation counts for anything in science, natural selection is extremely limited in what it can achieve. (See for example Michael Behe’s The Edge of Evolution). It simply acts on pre-existing complex systems. It cannot create them or add information to them. In fact, it is the contention of ID-ists like Phillip Johnson that natural selection has no demonstrable creative power at all.

“Darwinian theory insists that natural selection is a creative force of immense power … We have already seen that the hypothesis of creative natural selection lacks experimental support” [chapters 2 and 3] “and that it is disconfirmed by the fossil record. The molecular evidence adds further doubt … The hypothesis that natural selection has the degree of creative power required by Darwinist theory remains unsupported by empirical evidence … [But] Darwinist know that the mutation-selection mechanism can produce wings, eyes, and brains not because the mechanism can be observed to do anything of the kind, but because their guiding philosophy assures them that no other power is available to do the job. The absence from the cosmos of any Creator is therefore the essential starting point for Darwinism.” – Johnson, P.E., Darwin On Trial, (Inter Varsity Press 1993, 2nd edition), p. 95, 98, 117.

Read the rest of this entry

No, I am not speaking of the modern ecumenical movement. A movement that caused the very division it tried to eliminate, exchanging the necessary unity in Christ for a mere unity of values and ignoring the importance of sound doctrine. Nor am I speaking of the inter-faith movement that the Roman Catholic Church seem so keen on promoting, where people of different “faiths” unite under one umbrella, setting aside major differences – like the deity of Christ – in exchange for warm fuzzies.

No. The context of this quote is an interview on the Stand to Reason radio show by Jim Wallace, with James Emery White, about his new book ‘Christ Among the Dragons: Finding Our Way Through Cultural Challenges’. The discussion was as much about ecumenism as it was about ecclesiology (and more), so I don’t want to lose that context. But the kind of ecumenism James has in mind is one where Christ remains at the centre. We unite around Him, rather than around commonly shared values. In any case, there were some things that he said that stayed with me afterwards. So I wanted to share it here for you to ponder also.

“… if a typical non-Christian were to get on the internet and read through the blogs of half a dozen Christians who disagree with each other on a peripheral issue – the rancour and the hatred and the demonization that is going on; I think that if an average non-Christian read half a dozen Christian blogs like that – they would decide at the end that they would not ever want to be become a Christian. It is awful. It is horrific. The lack of love, the lack of charity, the lack of grace, the lack of civility, that exists between Christians who disagree – and often … on very peripheral issues that have divided Christianity for  2000 years. … It is ruining our witness and it is making it extremely difficult for there to be any kind of unity where we as Christians can address the larger issues with a single voice. … As important as truth is, for truth to usurp love would be the most horrific and hellish of ironies.”

Regardless what James White thinks these peripheral issues are – indeed, regardless what you think they are – I think the point is well made as far as it goes. There are things worth dividing over and there are things that are not. But when we disagree in public forums such as this one, the way we treat each other – the way we love one another – is on display for all to see.

Now, I certainly do not hasten to take White up on his challenge to locate such examples among Christian blogs for the benefit of our readers, thereby increasing our footprint of shame all the more. But personally, I am ashamed to say that there have been times that I think I have been on the giving end of this equation. And when on the receiving end, I have found it gives rise to feelings not too dissimilar to the kind evoked by the claptrap presented by PZ Meyers and his “godless horde”. Is that how we would like to be perceived?

This is not a plea for unity through agreement, of course. That certainly does not seem to be White’s implication. But it is a plea that in our treatment of each other on areas where we disagree, we remember that we are brothers and sisters united in Christ and ambassadors for Christ. I should think that counts for something during those moments?

”As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” – Eph 4:3

The story of the Acts 17 Apologetics team, Nabeel Qureshi and David Wood (including Negeen and Paul Rezkalla), being arrested at the 2010 Arab Festival this weekend in Dearborn, Michigan, is exploding not only across the blogosphere but is also getting picked up by other media sources, such as news programs and radio talk shows. With that sort of exposure you just know it is going to elicit responses from their critics. It is for this reason that everyone, Nabeel and David especially, can appreciate the value of their having filmed the experience.

For example, someone named Nick—over at Tom Gilson’s Thinking Christian—thought that the opinion of “Spiffy the Basset” had some credibility. Spiffy let loose with some very strong words attacking the character of Nabeel and David, calling them liars and claiming that they were “showboating” and “trying to cause a scene,” suggesting that they were “trying to get arrested” (which is not only fallacious but Gilson had already obviated this sort of response within his article itself). So herein lies the value of video footage: the scathing opinion of Spiffy can be compared against starkly unbiased video evidence, averting the tedium of this person’s word against that person’s. (Provided that the footage on their cameras is not coincidentally damaged or deleted while in possession of the Dearborn Police Department.) Just as the footage of their experience last year proved the lies and physical assaults of the security guards, so too will video evidence prove more reliable than the vituperative attacks of their critics this year. Clearly that is one of the very reasons they brought video cameras with them and had them rolling the entire time. So go ahead and toss in your lot with the unscrupulous and illegitimately personal attacks of Spiffy, Nick. The more reserved and responsible of us will toss in our lot with the unbiased view of the camera, and the testimony of Nabeel and David who make their statements knowing very well what the footage on the cameras will expose.

On a related note and something I found quite remarkable? There was supposed to be a second formal debate between Dr. James White, from Alpha & Omega Ministries, and Sheikh Ahmed Mohammed Awal, from the Zaitun Dawah Institute, this evening at the Center for Religious Debate in Romulus, MI (info)—but it got cancelled, and I doubt you could ever guess why. Evidently the mosque that was hosting Sheikh Awal demanded that he pull out of that debate because of David Wood’s arrest Friday evening! If you’re struggling to grasp the connection between these two things, you are not alone. It is difficult to say what the connection could be, other than they are both apologists and participants in The Great Debate Series over last weekend. But even if we assumed that David Wood did something highly illegal, what has that to do with Dr. White? Why is that mosque equating the two men? As Dr. White noted,

I pointed out to Sheikh Awal that Sheikh Zakir Naik has been banned from the UK for saying that all Muslims need to be terrorists. So, should I hold him accountable for everything Zakir Naik says or does? If not, why not?

With consideration to how often American Muslims object to “being lumped together with others unfairly,” it was a very curious choice that mosque made, predicated on such a dubious connection.

For the sake of those who might be surprised to find out, you actually can present what the gospel says in bold and clear terms on atheist message boards. (And in my opinion, only by presenting it boldly and clearly.) The following is a brief exchange between me and an atheist (who we’ll call Anthony) which ensued after I had described one thing that makes Christianity unique or sets it apart in the marketplace of religions. I hope the following can be instructive, in some small way, for those who find themselves with an opportunity to present what the gospel is to unbelievers.

RYFT (Christian):

Christianity is the only religion in the entire world whose afterlife is based on grace; that is, every single other religion on the planet teaches an afterlife that is reached by some kind of balance of good works. Christianity is singularly unique in that salvation (afterlife) is not based on any human good works at all, period. It is based on the good works of Jesus Christ, in whom alone the believer is saved. This is because “a balance of good works” is precisely that: a balance, meaning that in addition there are bad works, violations of God’s holy law. In human courts, a person found guilty of breaking several criminal laws is never told by the judge, “Well, aside from these laws you have broken you’re an otherwise pretty decent fellow. You may go. No sentence for you.” It would be unjust to not punish guilty criminals. He may be a decent fellow, but he is nevertheless guilty of having broken several criminal laws, and justice demands crime be punished. On what grounds, then, would a person think God would leave sins unpunished? That would be unjust.

ANTHONY (Atheist):

You came to the conclusion that the correct religion in the world consists of a God with a one-size-fits-all plan for salvation? One that simply judges a book by its cover?

RYFT:

Since that is a crude caricature that fails to reflect what I had said, there is nothing for me to respond to. I have zero interest in answering for beliefs I don’t have.

ANTHONY:

But you said Christianity is based on belief and grace, rather than actions in life. I was addressing that. The only characteristic that God would consider is your belief in him, which is a human act. Would that be a fair assessment?

RYFT:

I had said nothing about what Christianity is based on. I said salvation is based on God’s grace, not human works.

Moreover, that is not a fair assessment, but a wildly inaccurate one that completely ignores what I had actually said. Belief in God does not save anyone. A person is not saved because he believes, but because of what Christ did.

It’s not as if man exists in some state of spiritual neutrality from which either ‘belief’ or ‘non-belief’ finally determines his standing before God, whether justified or condemned. Under biblical Christianity, all mankind exists in a state of condemnation already on account of sin. We all come from the same pool of death and darkness, of sin and moral ruin—and through unbelief (itself a sin) man remains there. We exist under judgment for death; only in Christ is there judgment for life. We exist under God’s wrath; only in Christ is that wrath removed. We exist under condemnation; only in Christ are we justified. Salvation is through Christ, not belief, who died for the sins of all who repent and believe.

"The doctrines of grace are the biblical teachings that define the ends and means of God’s perfect work of redemption. They tell us that God is the one who saves, for his own glory, and freely. And they tell us that he does so only through Christ, only on the basis of his grace, only with the perfection that marks everything the Father, Son, and Spirit do. The doctrines of grace separate the Christian faith from the works-based religions of men. They direct us away from ourselves and solely to God’s grace and mercy. They destroy pride, instil humility, and exalt God." (James R. White)

ANTHONY:

You’re not making any sense. First you say, “Belief in God does not save anyone.” But then you say, “Salvation is through Christ, not belief, who died for the sins of all who repent and believe.” So in order for me to be saved, I need to believe that Christ is my personal Savior (an entity that is also considered God). Or am I getting this wrong?

(And that quote from White? Niiiice!)

RYFT:

You are getting this wrong. Let me construct a chain we can follow.

(1) Salvation is through Christ alone—by who he is (sinless substitute) and what he did (atoning sacrifice). (2) His death paid for the sins of all who repent and believe. (3) So in order to be saved, you need to be one of those who repent and believe because that’s whose sins Christ’s death paid for. (4) If you do not repent and believe, your sins are not covered by his sacrifice, leaving you to pay for your sins on your own.

So then it is not your repentance and belief that saves you. It is Christ’s life and death that saves you, a salvation you enter into through repentance and belief.

If there are any lingering questions, go ahead and ask. I hope I’ve made it clear, but only you can tell me.

ANTHONY:

It’s a bit confusing? You say it’s not your belief that saves you, but then you would not be able to be saved without that particular belief.

RYFT:

Well, not quite: “you would not be able to be saved without” Christ paying for your sins. Salvation is through having sins paid for. Belief does not pay for sins. (1) Christ paid for the sins of all those who repent and believe. (2) All those who repent and believe therefore have their sins paid for.

ANTHONY:

Got it.