Practice Your Division

A father recently visited his daughter's second-grade class at school, and saw something that troubled him deeply. The teacher was quizzing the students on their addition facts. When the teacher asked the class, "What is two plus two?" Some of the students responded "four," others "three," and still others had no idea.

The father was incensed! But . . .

He wasn't angry that many in the class didn't know the correct answer. He was angry - furious - that the teacher would present material that divided the class. How dare that teacher create a divisive spirit among those innocent children!

He spoke to the school administrators, addressed the PTA, started petitions and awareness campaigns, and finally gained the attention of the DOE, where he found an attentive audience. Through his hard work and passion, the father succeeded in having math class banned from schools.

Now . . . remove the word "math" from my clumsy little parable, and substitute "doctrine".

People are incensed at the presentation of doctrine. Pastors are shamed into silence or at best ambiguity. Why? Because doctrine divides.

Yes, doctrine divides. But . . . it is supposed to (e.g., Titus 1:9). It is supposed to divide the true from the false. And that is not a Pauline novelty -- that is a core of Jesus' teaching in the Gospels. In fact, the ultimate division is coming (think: wheat from tares, sheep from goats).

While we need to take great pains that our delivery is not off-putting, insofar as we can, we must nevertheless pursue the highest possible standards of quality, veracity, and effectiveness in our preaching of doctrine. We must "speak the truth in love," but we must never forget that we must speak the truth.

Science bids farewell to Fred Flintstone

Just read this transcript from Today's Creation Moment. One of the most pernicious evolutionary infiltrates in the church would have to be the notion of "prehistoric people". When we read the Old Testament we tend to picture primeval caravans of near-savages (Christopher Hitchens certainly clings to this sort of prejudice!) But science tells a far different story:

"Cavemen. The very word conjures images of bear skin clothing, wooden clubs and perhaps some simple stone tools. We think of the cavemen themselves as part ape and certainly less than modern humans. All of these images help make human evolution look more plausible.

However, in China there are some 20 million people living in caves. The caves there are easily carved in the silty soil of the Western regions of the Yellow River. The caves are generally 10 to 13 feet wide and can extend as far as 25 feet back into the hillside. Sometimes the caves are connected to one another, creating a larger place to live. Many of the people who live in these caves would not think of moving out of them. Caves are warm in the winter, cool in the summer, and they are fireproof. These caves include flues for venting the exhaust from cooking fires. But these caves are not primitive dwellings by any stretch of the imagination. They feature plumbing, electrical wiring and even cable television! Except for windows, some of these cave homes are as modern as anything you’ll see in the rest of the developing world.

Throughout the ages, people have taken shelter in caves and even set up housekeeping in them. The fact that they lived in caves does not make them primitive at all."

Another Evidence for God

Reading through Calvin's Institutes this year, and came across this:

"The miserable ruin, into which the rebellion of the first man cast us, especially compels us to look upward. Thus, not only will we, in fasting and hungering, seek thence what we lack; but, in being aroused by fear, we shall learn humility. or, as a veritable world of miseries is to be found in mankind, and we are thereby despoiled of divine raiment, our shameful nakedness exposes a teeming horde of infamies. Each of us must, then, be so stung by the consciousness of his own unhappiness as to attain at least some knowledge of God. "Thus, from the feeling of our own ignorance, vanity, poverty, infirmity, and-what is more-depravity and corruption, we recognize that the true light of wisdom, sound virtue, full abundance of every good, and purity of righteousness rest in the Lord alone."

Whenever lost man recognizes in himself some lack, some defect, is this not evidence of their innate knowledge of God -- of Romans 1 in action! Against whom (Whom!) are they making the comparison when they recognize the lack?

Trustworthy.

"After a survey of the alleged errors and discrepancies, including not only the typical ones just mentioned, but also many others, we assert, without fear of successful contradiction, that no one of these is real. As Christians we call this book the "Holy Bible." But if it were only a relatively good book, setting forth many valuable moral and spiritual truths, but also containing many things which are not true, we would then have no right to apply to it the adjective "holy." It would then be on a level with other books, and would differ from them not in kind but only in degree.

"But how different is our attitude toward it when we approach it as the very word of God, an inspired, infallible rule of faith and practice! How readily we accept its statements of fact and bow before its enunciations of duty! How instinctively we tremble before its threatenings, and rest upon its promises! As we proclaim the word of life from the pulpit, or in the classroom; as we attempt to give comfort at some bed of sickness, or in a bereaved home; or as we see our fellow men struggling against temptation or weighed down with care, and would give them encouragement and hope for this world and the next, how thankful we then are for a fully trustworthy Bible! In such cases we want to know that we have not merely something that is probable or plausible, but something that is sure."

- Lorraine Boettner, The Inspiration of Scripture

Where Have You Gone, B.B. Warfield?

In light of a recent program on the PBS series Nova, purporting to reveal "The Bible's Buried Secrets" (giggle), I have now postulated a new theory of Brownian motion (DAN Brown, that is). My theory goes like this:

Debunked theories have a tendency to move

from obscure to cutting-edge

in direct proportion to the desperation of the antitheist.

About 8 minutes into the program "scholarship" (which apparently speaks with one unified voice now--take that, Hegel!) presented the "new" (are you serious?!?) approach called the documentary theory. More on the fallacies of the JEDP theory later; but for now, I am just amazed at the sloppy, one-sided, intellectually dishonest propaganda that is being foisted on the public, on the taxpayer's dime. Of course, since they are interested in serving the public trust, I am sure that they would be more than willing to give equal time to, say, James White, Norman Geisler, or Dan Wallace.

Yeah, right. And Whoopi Goldberg will host it.

Begging the Question

Okay, time to squeeze in a post:


As I mentioned earlier, every argument has to stand on two legs: it must be true and it must be valid. The Gospel is already a foolishness in the eyes of the unsaved (as foolish as, say, spending 120 years building a landlocked boat?); we don't ever want our inept handling of It to be an excuse for the lost to reject it.


One prominent example of really bad reasoning -- in fact, a prevalent one -- is the fallacy of begging the question. This happens when we assume our conclusion in our premises. I'm going to give an example that I encountered recently, but as I do so please remember the difference between TRUE and VALID. I am pointing out that the argument is INVALID, that the author is begging the question. I am not saying his argument is untrue--that is a separate issue entirely.


Here is the substance of the argument: the modern translations of the Bible are to be rejected because they (or, in some forms of the argument, their underlying texts) contain deletions or changes from the correct text.


Do you see how this is begging the question? How do we know the King James Version (or its underlying texts) is "the" Word of God for English-speaking people today? Because it does not contain deletions or changes. How do we know that the more-modern translations do contain deletions or changes? Because they do not contain words found in the King James, or they contain different words. It's begging the question; it's arguing in a circle. The fact is, modern translations contain differences. Whether or not they are deletions is a factual question that cannot be answered by arbitrary declarations.


Slipshod arguments such as these do nothing but swell one's ranks with the gullible. And it is unfortunate, since this opens a grand masterpiece of the translators' art to ridicule when it is not the King James Version that is ridiculous -- it is the sloppy thinking of a (thankfully) few.

Back to Back to Basics

Picking up where I left off earlier, one of the most needed areas in Christianity is a tune-up in our thinking skills. This became apparent once again as I read several Christian non-fiction books recently.

A thorough introduction (is that an oxymoron?) to principles of logic would help preachers avoid some of the interpretive fallacies into which they are oft prone to fall. It would strengthen the apologetics skills of the men and women who go into the frontlines of the secular workplace every day. And it would put a much-needed end to some of the wacky non-issues that burn up so much pulpit time. A great little primer on the subject is Norman Geisler's Come Let Us Reason.

I think a good place to start is by recognizing that every argument must stand on two legs: it must be both true and valid. Absent one of those two legs it does not stand. Let's start with a standard argument (syllogism) as an illustration:

If it is raining, the street outside is wet. (major premise)
It is raining. (minor premise)
Therefore, the street outside is wet. (conclusion)

It must be true. That is, the premises must conform to reality. For example, if I claim that it is raining outside and it is not, in fact, raining outside, then the argument fails.
It must also be valid. That is, the premises must be free of fallacies, of errors in the way we have reasoned. For example, let's re-cast the illustration this way:

If it is raining, the street outside is wet.
The street outside is wet.
Therefore, it is raining.

This argument doesn't stand. Why not? Isn't it saying the same thing as the first illustration? No -- there are a lot of reasons that the street could be wet. Perhaps someone's sprinklers are running; perhaps I've just chased my sons around with my Super Soaker. This is a fallacy called "affirming the consequent". We've switched the "if" and the "then" and twisted the argument out of shape. And once again the argument fails.

This isn't hair-splitting. This is a fallacy that popped up a number of times in the arguments of several Christian books I recently read. And when you are witnessing or defending the faith in the workplace or preaching a sermon, that is the WORST time for the sloppy thinking that too often discredits the Truth by presenting it as an irrational thing.

Tighten up your thinking, Ambassador.

Back to Basics

Wow! It has been a while since my last post! Oh, well. Such is the hectic life of the bi-vocational pastor.

One of the areas that has occupied my time lately has been studying the arguments, from both sides of the aisle, pertaining to a particular issue in the area of bibliology. It is troubling that so much pulpit time and study time is wasted on an issue that is little more than what Augustine called "stirring up billows in a ladle".

Now, I'm going to take the high road here: I'm not going to discuss -- or even identify -- the particular issue. I think it would be far more useful to hone our basic thinking skills instead, for if more people would apply principles of sound reasoning (or, if you prefer, discernment) this sort of issue would never see the light of day.

The first objection that inevitably arises is, "Well, I have the Bible [or the Holy Spirit], I don't need man's logic or reason." And that sort of thinking is the root of the problem: logic and sound reasoning is not incompatible with the Bible, nor is it in competition with the Bible or the Holy Spirit. On the contrary, even the most vitriolic opponent of "human reasoning" employs that same reasoning in telling us why we don't need human reasoning.

The laws of logic (more on these later) are a part of the fabric of God's created order. You cannot deny their existence any more than you can deny the existence of gravity, thermodynamics, magnetism, et al. Indeed they are more fundamental even than these, for it is conceivable that God could have chosen to create a universe without gravity; but it is inconceivable that He could have chosen to create a universe without the laws of logic (for example, how would He create a universe in which the law of noncontradiction did not exist?).

The conflict in issues such as the one I was forced to address recently is not essentially one of those who employ logic and reason vs. those who do not; it is a conflict between those who employ logic and reason well and those who apply it badly.

Words Matter as a Matter of Fact

Greg Koukl is one of my very most favoritest apologists. In this clip he makes an important point about the word faith. This is more than just semantic hair-splitting: if you watched the recent debate between the theist Dinesh D'Souza and atheist Christopher Hitchens you saw the normally brilliant D'Souza acquit himself magnificently UNTIL he sold the farm - for no good reason - on the meaning of faith. Watch this clip from Greg Koukl:

The Bible vs. the Qur'an

Came across an article by Dr. James White comparing the textual arguments for the reliability of the Bible vs. that of the Qur'an. This issue hits close to home, as the arguments for the Book of Mormon are closely parallel to those advanced for the Qur'an. Here's the précis of Dr. White's article:

"As Christians encounter Islamic apologetics the topic quickly turns to ultimate sources of authority. Muslims are taught that the Bible is untrustworthy, and many believe that its text has been altered. In reality it is the Qur’an that suffers in comparison with the Bible on the issue of textual study and purity. Christians believe that the more the Bible’s history is studied, the more certain its text becomes. Christians encourage textual study and discovery of new manuscripts, while Muslims show little interest in researching the history of their own scriptures, preferring the traditional belief that the Qur’an is perfect in its current state. Often believers are stymied by attacks on the text of the Bible because of their misunderstanding of the history of the transmission of the text of Scripture. Christians need to be able to defend the integrity of the biblical text and to use the sharp contrast between the scriptures of the two faiths as a means of presenting the truth about Jesus Christ."

The entire article is available from the Christian Research Journal, at this link. Here's to thoughtful Christianity!

Against the Watered-Down Gospel

An excellent sermon! Give this one a listen!

Spurgeon on Expository Preaching

"A judicious critic would probably complain that many sermons are deficient in solid instruction, Biblical exposition, and Scriptural argument; they are flashy, rather than fleshy; clever, rather than solid; entertaining, rather than impressive. He would point to rhetorical discourses in which doctrine is barely discernible, and brilliant harangues from which no food for the soul could ever be extracted. Having done this, he would probably propose that homilies should flow out of texts, and should consist of a clear explanation and an earnest enforcement of the truths which the texts distinctly teach. Expository preaching he would advocate as the great need of the day, its best protection against rising errors, and its surest means of spiritual edification."
- Commenting and Commentaries, p. v