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Month: April 2010 Page 1 of 2


The Legacy of Charles Finney

I still have yet to understand why so many leading evangelical pastors (Billy Graham and the late Jerry Falwell to name two) and others in the movement uphold this man as someone who championed the faith once for all delivered to the saints. If there is one person that can be blamed for so many of the current theological and ecclesiological problems we find in the evangelical movement (though there are many causes to be sure), it is Charles Finney. These articles deal with the content of what Finney taught and how it was anything but evangelical, in the historical, Gospel sense of the word.

After reading these, you will see a little bit clearer how much of his influence is still felt in the church today and how much damage it continues to cause. Even much of the pragmatic, mega, seeker movement in the church owes its pragmatic thought process about how to “get people in the door” to the teaching of Finney, which he himself rooted in the error of Pelgius, the fifth century heretic. Very insightful.

Meticulous Sovereignty in the First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians

As this makes clear, Clement’s view of God’s involvement in His creation is not the one the Deists have set forth (the view many of our Founding Fathers in America held including Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin), that God is a watchmaker who created the universe, sat back and let things take their course. No, rather, God is intimately involved in all that takes place. Clement’s main point here is the peace and harmony with which God created and sustains His universe, not so much a discussion about God’s control over the negative things that take place. That’s for another discussion. What is clear here is Clement’s assumption of God’s meticulous, providential involvement in creation, from the largest thing to the smallest, including and especially with people, and even more importantly, His own people.

Debt Contagion Picking Up Steam

And so the contagion spreads … first, Latvia’s economy (and government) collapses not that long ago, then Greece and Portugal’s ratings were cut by S&P yesterday, and now today, Spain was cut. And the question is, how much longer before we realize we’re a lot closer than we think to the same situation? Even more importantly is when will we realize that all the trillions in bailouts and stimulus bringing us to our knees in debt currently has done nothing to actually stimulate the economy (73% of economists agree to this effect, CNN Money)? And how much longer before politicians start feeling the effects of their poor decisions in the polls, as if the Scott Brown victory wasn’t enough of an indication? I wonder what this summer’s Town Hall’s are going to look like. To follow developments pertaining to this from a respected global economist, read Ambrose Evans-Pritchard at the Telegraph. History is in the making here.

1.5 TB Western Digital Caviar Green: Don’t Get One (Update 4: Turning the Corner?)

Update 4 (1/16/2011): Actually, they have now shipped the original drive they said they were going to send and it’s in Dallas currently. Not sure what that RMA email was about with the other drive type.

Update 3 (1/15/2011): Apparently the drive type has changed unexpectedly during the RMA process to the WD2002FYPS. I looked up the drive on Tom’s Hardware and came up with an interesting review. At this point in the process, you tell me what you would think after reading this: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/2tb-hdd-energy,2371-5.html.

“Although a RAID Edition drive like the new RE4 sounds like it should spin at 7,200 RPM and serve up high performance, the new WD2002FYPS is not a new hard drive. Instead, WD modified and re-validated the existing 2 TB Caviar Green WD20EADS to suit the demands of 24/7 applications in business and data center environments.”

Have emailed my contact at WD twice with no response at this point.

Update 2 (1/14/2011): Well … Western Digital called today and I won’t say who I spoke with to keep people anonymous in the process. The sales guy I spoke with was very kind and apologetic. I must say, at this point, they are working to make up for this, as they are sending me this drive: Caviar Black WD2002FAEX 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s. Okay that’ll do. But we’ll have to wait and see how it performs, short and long-term. I’ll keep you posted. 🙂

Update 1 (1/12/2011): the story only gets worse. I sent the drive back to Western Digital a couple of months ago before the warranty ran out, at my own expense, and was sent back a used, scratched up, junky drive … that ALSO DIDN’T WORK WORTH A … (you know), in either of the computers I tried it in! I had initially asked on the site when requesting the replacement that I be sent a Caviar Black instead of the Caviar Green and that I was willing to pay the extra amount for the drive, and received no response whatsoever, but instead received an absolute piece of junk that didn’t work at all.

This is unbelievable to me, the level of non-support, the lack of quality in the product, the process from top to bottom, from the humans to the machines. I will never, ever buy Western Digital again. I’ve only had trouble. I have no idea in my mind why in the world Western Digital is still in the market at all. MAJOR FAIL on the part of Western Digital on this one!

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So for Christmas, my Dad bought me a Western Digital 1.5 TB (terabyte) hard drive from TigerDirect.com. No issues with TigerDirect to be clear. No issues with what my Dad got me since I told him the hard drive to order. And initially no issues with the hard drive either.

However, the past month or two, the computer would just freeze up with no warning or signs that a problem was imminent. At first I thought no big deal. Then it kept happening, and then the freezes became more frequent. Then they became everyday recently. Finally the other day, I rebooted the machine and it couldn’t even see the drive until I switched SATA (Serial ATA) controllers on the motherboard.

C.S. Lewis: Introduction to On the Incarnation by Athanasius

Excerpted from On the Incarnation by Athanasius on Spurgeon.org

There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium. He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about “isms” and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said. The error is rather an amiable one, for it springs from humility. The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism. It has always therefore been one of my main endeavours as a teacher to persuade the young that firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than secondhand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.

This mistaken preference for the modern books and this shyness of the old ones is nowhere more rampant than in theology. Wherever you find a little study circle of Christian laity you can be almost certain that they are studying not St. Luke or St. Paul or St. Augustine or Thomas Aquinas or Hooker or Butler, but M. Berdyaev or M. Maritain or M. Niebuhr or Miss Sayers or even myself.

The Liberal Trajectory Toward an Adjusted Gospel

Excerpt from Albert Mohler’s talk at T4G, entitled, How Does it Happen? Trajectories Toward an Adjusted Gospel (Audio) (Video)

“You might want to notice that in the most recent issue of Christianity Today, the April issue that arrived to me just days ago, in the cover story, Scot McKnight says, ‘I can count on one hand the number of historical Jesus scholars who hold orthodox beliefs.’ A fascinating statement. But the moment you begin to entertain the notion that there’s a distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith, you have already bankrupted the faith.

“Adolph von Harnack, another one of the most important figures in modern liberal theology, made an argument that I have actually heard some evangelicals paraphrase without understanding the toxic source and the disastrous meaning. Harnack said Christianity is like a seed or a kernel that is surrounded by a husk, kind of like a coconut. And he said that the kernel is authentic meaning, but the husk is this … he called it the acute Hellenization of doctrine, it’s this elaborated doctrine, it’s creeds and confessions and propositional statements and Scriptural claims concerning Jesus Christ, Gospel, salvation, fall, eschatology. Long before Bultmann, Harnack said what we must do to rescue Christianity is to pay attention to salvaging the seed and let the husk go. Do you buy into that? You’ve already given it all away.”

Astronomy Picture of the Day – The Holiness of God

What a picture! This is a snapshot from a guy who climbed a mountain overlooking the eruption in Iceland that is wreaking havoc on all kinds of travel plans and logistical shipments of goods. The impact has been worse than the chaos of 9/11 even, one news report said. I have some friends who are going overseas to be missionaries who are currently stuck in Europe, waiting to travel on.

But aside from all of that, I couldn’t help but think this image looked similar to the depictions of God’s glory and His visibly-manifested presence in Exodus 19:16-20; Ezekiel 1:4-28; Isaiah 6:1-7; and several places in Revelation.

On a related note, I find it interesting how all of these descriptions parallel that of the description given of Christ in His risen, ascended, interceding glory in Revelation 1:12-20. In all of these instances where God makes Himself known in power, either through visible expressions or by the Person of Christ Himself, the people being spoken to fall on their faces in terror at His holiness.

Thesitic Evolution and the Implications for Evangelicalism

The attacks upon the evangelical faith, from within, just keep rolling. There is no relenting it seems on which fronts are being compromised, slowly as well as quickly. The issue of theistic evolution (evolution designed and created by God) has been simmering for some time, gaining strength, until finally it has boiled over and become very public, so public that ABC News even did a story on it (see below). And all this is happening within the Reformed scholarly community in particular.

Dr. Bruce Waltke, a highly distinguished Old Testament professor at Reformed Theological Seminary resigned (from his perspective was forced to resign because of the theology police) due to his issues with “traditional” understandings of Genesis and his acceptance of evolution as a legitimate understanding that fits.

As Rick Phillips points out in this article on the Reformation21 blog, much more is at stake in this debate than issues of science. The very issue of hermeneutics is at stake, that is, our method of interpreting Scripture itself (hence the title of the article Theistic Evolution: A Hermeneutical Trojan Horse). In addition, the issue of the authority of Scripture is also at stake. And the logic is that if it can be argued that Adam and Eve weren’t literal, historical people who God created in the garden but rather products of evolution, there is no stopping how far “reinterpretations” or new interpretations will soon take hold of other doctrines.

T4G 2010 Audio and Video

Session 1 – Mark Dever – “The Church is the Gospel Made Visible”

MP3 Audio

Louis Berkhof on Justification

Excerpt from Summary of Christian Doctrine by Louis Berkhof

1. The Nature and Elements of Justification. Justification may be defined as that legal act of God by which He declares the sinner righteous on the basis of the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. It is not an act or process of renewal, such as regeneration, conversion, or sanctification, and does not affect the condition but the-state of the sinner. It differs from sanctification in several particulars. Justification takes place outside of the sinner in the tribunal of God, removes the guilt of sin, and is an act which is complete at once and for all time; while sanctification takes place in man, removes the pollution of sin, and is a continuous and lifelong process. We distinguish two elements in justification, namely: (a) The forgiveness of sins on the basis of the righteousness of Jesus Christ. The pardon granted applies to all sins, past, present, and future, and therefore does not admit of repetition, Ps. 103: 12; Isa. 44:22; Rom. 5:21; 8:1, 32-34; Heb. 10:14. This does not mean that we need no more pray for forgiveness, for the consciousness of guilt remains, creates a feeling of separation, and makes it necessary to seek repeatedly the comforting assurance of forgiveness, Ps. 25:7; 32:5; 51:1; Matt. 6:12; Jas. 5:15; I John 1:9. (b) The adoption as children of God. In justification God adopts believers as His children, that is, places them in the position of children and gives them all the rights of children, including the right to an eternal inheritance, Rom. 8:17; I Pet. 1:4. This legal sonship of believers should be distinguished from their moral sonship through regeneration and sanctification. Both are indicated in the following passages: John 1:12, 13; Rom. 8:15, 16; Gal. 4:5, 6.

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