Theology Central
Theology Central exists as a place of conversation and information for faculty and friends of Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Posts include seminary news, information, and opinion pieces about ministry, theology, and scholarship.Religious Agendas for President Trump
A bunch of religious leaders want to help shape President Trump’s agenda for religion. Religion Clause offers a listing.
A Battle with Traffic Cameras
Adam McCleod is a law professor. After being ticketed (wrongly) by a traffic camera, he fought the accusation, eventually securing vindication in court–and spending more than the cost of the ticket. Here he offers his views on the constitutionality of the criminal-civil proceeding initiated by a machine operated by a distant contractor in the absence of witnesses.
Incidentally, for everything that’s wrong with Minnesota, this is one thing that the state does right: traffic cameras are illegal.
Rising Stars of “Progressive Christianity”
“Progressive” is a close synonym for “liberal.” Here Chelsen Vicari lists three names that are becoming prominent in (politically and socially) progressive Christianity. She promises more names to come.
[Link Repaired]
Do You Want to BE Someone or DO Something?
Brett and Kate McKay offer reflections from the life of Air Force Colonel John Boyd. This is not a Christian document, but it offers advice that ministers of Christ might well apply to their own situations.
Research has shown time and time again that kids of our modern age aspire for what’s perceived as a more glamorous life than one of service and lasting legacy. In fact, the top three career aspirations of today’s 5- to 11-year-olds are sports star, music star, and actor. Just 25 years ago, that same survey turned up teacher, doctor, and banker. Young people want to be recognized, to be famous, and very early on pick up the fact that the path to celebrity (not to mention government service) largely involves telling people what they want to hear — packaging up what’s already popular and selling it back. For it’s not just the military that prizes the status quo; while society is supposedly more tolerant than ever, any nail that pops up from the mainstream very quickly gets hammered down. In our digital age, the righteous online mob can quickly mobilize and silence any opinion considered aberrant. The result is a chilling effect where people have to watch every word they say lest it be publicly trounced upon.
A. J. Conyers on Judging and Not Judging
Touchstone Magazine republishes “An Address to Seminary Students on the Forsaken Art of Christian Judgment.”
We have a similar problem here. The passage only says to “never make judgments” if we abruptly stop reading before the passage has finished the thought. What the passage does say is that there is an irrevocable connection between judging others and the judgment we ourselves receive. The order of judging oneself before judging others is important. First take the log out of your own eye, in order that you might remove the speck that is in your neighbor’s eye. Reading the whole passage, we see that it does not forbid us from judging, or making judgments, but instead counsels us not to judge if we are not willing to stand under judgment, based upon the same standards by which we judge. Far from forbidding moral judgment, it tells us the conditions under which judgment might take place.
Archbishop of Canterbury to Express Remorse
During the English Reformation Catholics burned Anglicans and Anglicans burned Catholics. Now the Archbishop of Canterbury has decided it’s time to express remorse. Apparently, plenty of people in the UK find this gesture pretty ridiculous.
Perhaps it’s time for Baptists to express regret for all the heretics that they whipped, jailed, and burned during the times their churches controlled the state. Oh, wait–there weren’t any. Never mind.
Trump Aide Withdraws after Plagiarism Accusation
Wow. We’ve had a spate of these over the last few years. Now it’s Monica Crowley who is being accused of plagiarizing parts of a book and her doctoral dissertation. See the story at the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Biblical Archaeology: Top Ten Discoveries for 2016
According to Gordon Govier at Christianity Today. Number 1 is the unsealing of Jesus’ (supposed) tomb.
Criminalization Without Representation?
According to Jim Copland and Rafael A. Mangual, 98 percent of the crimes on the books in America are the result of bureaucratic regulation rather than direct legislation.
By taking crime creation almost entirely out of the political process, the government has stripped the governed of the opportunity to consent to, or not, the thousands upon thousands of outmoded, obscure, and often overreaching rules that litter the Federal Register — and threaten the unsuspecting citizen with criminal prosecution. The isolation of criminal lawmaking from the political process has also stripped citizens of the ability to hold anyone accountable for the creation of a given criminal offense.
A Sad Day Indeed!
Historic Washington D.C. Baptist church calls lesbian couple as co-pastors.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jan/9/lesbian-couple-hired-co-pastor-dc-church/
Michael Bird on Teaching Biblical Languages
When I saw the headline of Australian theologian Michael Bird’s blog post, “Why We Need to Teach Biblical Languages,” I thought he’d offer a reasoned response to the dumbing down of education by some seminaries.
Nope.
Conservatives Are Better Looking
So says a study in the Journal of Public Economics.
Alexander’s Counsel for the Lord’s Day
Consider the Lord’s day an honour and delight. Let your heart be elevated in holy joy, and your lips be employed in the high praises of God. This day more resembles heaven, than any other portion of our time; and we should endeavour to imitate the worship of heaven, according to that petition of the Lord’s prayer—“Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Archibald Alexander, A Brief Compend of Bible Truth, 191.
A Critique of Scientism . . .
. . . By a scientist. Austin L. Hughes challenges the myth that science explains everything. Download the PDF from The New Atlantis.
Civics Report from National Association of Scholars
The National Association of Scholars has released a 525 page report on the teaching of civics within American universities. The report argues that traditional civics has been replaced by 60s-style liberal activism, and it views this trend with alarm. You can download the report here.
An Important but Alarming List
http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2017/january/top-50-countries-christian-persecution-world-watch-list.html
Alexander on Sanctification and Ascetic Disciplines
Two things are commonly intended by the word sanctification. The first is, the mortification of sin, the last, the increase of the vigour and constancy of the exercises of piety. But, although these may be distinguished, yet there is no need to treat of them separately, because the advancement of the one cannot but be accompanied with progress in the other. Like the two scales of a balance, when one is depressed the other rises. Just so in the divine life in the soul, if pride is humbled, humility is of necessity increased; if the undue love of the creature is mortified, the love of God will be strengthened; and so of every other grace. Indeed, when we examine the subject accurately, we shall find, that all real mortification of sin is by the exercise of faith, and those holy affections which flow from it. By legal striving, however earnest, or by ascetic discipline, however rigid, very little headway is made against the stream of inherent corruption.
Archibald Alexander, A Brief Compend of Bible Truth, 134.
Kemosh
As usual, the ASOR does not take a high view of Scripture or of biblical history. Nevertheless, Collin Cornell’s article includes interesting information on the Moabite god Kemosh. View it here.
Kimball on Free Speech and the Academy
Introducing The New Criterion’s discussion of academic intolerance in an essay entitled “Free Speech and the Academy,” Roger Kimball uses George Orwell’s 1984 as a point of comparison.
Orwell intended Nineteen Eighty-four as a warning, an admonition. Our academic social justice warriors, supposing they are even aware of Orwell’s work, would seem to regard it as a plan of action. It was to shine some light into those tenebrous caverns of orthodoxy that we convened this symposium on free speech and the academy.
Intolerant Schools
The New Criterion is devoting an entire issue to the new intolerance on university campuses. Herbert Marcuse opens the discussion with an essay on “Why the Left Hates Tolerance.” Here’s his conclusion:
The classical liberal (who is also the contemporary conservative) championed tolerance because it helped maintain a space for civilized disagreement. Many readers will recall hearing sentences like this: “I disagree with you but support your right to voice your opinion.” How quaint that now sounds! The modern social justice warrior abominates disagreement as a form of heresy. Accordingly, he rejects tolerance in favor of enforced, indeed totalitarian, conformity. It is the antithesis of what a liberal-arts education was all about, which is why its installation at the center of our erstwhile liberal-arts institutions makes for such a sad irony.
APPLICATION & AID