Pete's Blog

This will not be a common practice on this blog, so as to not steal Meredith's blogging style.

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While scripting in my head a possible blog post, I used the word "intimate" (using the less commonly known definition of it: To make known subtly and indirectly). I wondered whether people would think that I was showing off since it's a word that's not in common use, which could easily be replaced by "imply" or another synonym that's more widely familiar. A friend once used a big word and he was criticized for it.

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I want to admit that I don't know anything about the pill. I said in an earlier post that I might share my thoughts about the birth-control pill. I don't have any. There, I've shared my thoughts. I think that I was trying to so more knowledgeable than I am. I apologize.

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Probably the biggest contention between Catholics and Protestants is the use of Scripture. Catholics would say that there are two infallible rules of faith, tradition and the written Scriptures. One of the tenets that Martin Luther fought for in the reformation was Sola Scriptura. It "teaches that the Scriptures are the sole infallible rule of faith for the Church" (taken from James White). Anyway, since the Catholics (claim) to rely on tradition, they introduce doctrines like the eternal virginity of Mary, purgatory or the infallibility of the Bishop in Rome (eventually dubbed the Pope), to name a few.

The one in particular I want to talk about is the dogmatic statement of Ark of the Covenant (Ex. 25:10-16; Hw. 9:4) as a type of Mary. (Read here about types.) Usually what a protestant would do upon hearing the rationale for thinking there's a biblical defense of the type (i. that both the Ark and Mary bore the Word of God; ii. in Ex. 40:34-38 and Lk. 1:15 God overshadows Mary and the Tabernacle, in which is the Ark), he criticizes how poor the biblical defense is. I think that this is dangerous. If (and I recognize that this is a very big "if") the Ark of the Covenant were a type of Mary, inspired by the Spirit, then the use of these biblical passages in this way is legitimate. What needs to be done first is show that the Roman Catholic Church has no innate authority, that it only has authority in the Word. Then show that the Scriptures don't suggest that the Ark is a type of Mary, so we don't need to look for verses to support it.

The reason I point this out is that if we fail to state that the Roman Church doesn't have the authority to dogmatize unbiblical types, jumping into pointing to the poor exegesis of Rome, then we suggest that's how Matthew's writings should be dealt with.

Matthew 2:15 says, "This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, 'Out of Egypt I called my son,'" quoting Hosea 11:1. When you read the Hosea passage in context, the "son" being spoken of was clearly Israel. So, Matthew, under the inspiration of the Spirit, pointed out that Israel was a type of Christ. If it had been that God didn't inspire Matthew, then we should say that he's either a fool or a liar for misusing the OT like that. But God is essentially saying through Matthew, "I called Israel out of Egypt to make to make it look like history parallels my Son's life."

Rome could do that too if they actually had the authority to interpret the Church's history, but they don't.

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One of the reasons I hadn't posted in a while is because I'm still debating what the purpose my blog is. As I said, I have no intention in indulging in the feast of having your attention over my personal life, so this won't be a blog where I post diary entries. But, I still want my blog to be unique, offering you something that you can't get elsewhere, otherwise it would be wasting your time. So, while I've had a few ideas for posts, I didn't think I could offer something that hadn't been done before. I'm still thinking through this.

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Yes!

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Over Reading Week '05, I was studying 1 Corinthians. I came to the eighth chapter, verse 6. Part of it reads, "for us there is one God, the Father." That whole year I struggled with whether I agreed that the Bible supported the doctrine of Christ's divinity. When I came to this verse, it almost tipped me over the edge to heresy. Until last week I'd been uncomfortable with what I thought the implications of that verse were. If only the Father is God, how can Christ be God?

The other day, though, I heard James White explain that if you use the same logic on another part of the same verse, "for us there is ...
one Lord, Jesus Christ," then it implies that the Father is somehow God without being Lord, which is absurd. The verse actually implies the divinity of Christ!

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I also heard James White talk about how a Muslim recently argued that Jesus couldn't be God since He ran from His creatures when He was born. I think it's hilarious.

Labels: Bible, Blogs, Characters, Friends, Humour, Long, Resources

(This post is a response to a post on Lydia's blog about women serving in the church. The response is too long, in my mind, to justifiably be placed as a comment on her blog. Though the entry seems like a long one for my blog, follow the headings if you only want to read the essentials.)

Suppose that you have an isolated group of Christians, one well trained woman and some men who are unready for ministry. What is she to do knowing that God has ordained a separate role for women within the church than the men?

Maybe all that needs to be said is to listen to this talk given by Randy Stinson. The whole of the talk is him explaining what a husband and father's leadership in the family looks like. It should be very similar for an elder in a church. The talk is helpful for this discussion because in listening to what the man should be doing (i.e., leading), you get an idea of where a woman can justifiably step in (i.e., leading does not equate with doing everything so she can help when the leaders ask for that help, as long as it's within the bounds of Scripture [e.g., the leaders can't ask for her help to rob the bank when the church treasury is in the red]).

(The following paragraph is an encouragement to prepare for the long haul that does not contribute to the main thought of answering the question.)

Before saying anything, I think that it would take a lot of time to build a healthy church out of this. Church planting is tough. A woman, by herself, raising up unskilled men to plant a church: tougher. Furthermore, she might not even be getting them to plant a church. She might be going against their old paradigms, such as, possibly, Someone else will do it. When MacArthur went to shepherd Grace Community they had female elders there. It took quite some time to bring a biblical vision of church administration and leadership to his church. Dever, who also went to shepherd a church in need of a private reformation (when I use "reformation" in the context of a single local church, I mean one, where if you walked in, it might seem like they're playing church, they don't have a biblical structure for church leadership, the church doesn't deal with public sin, the preaching is unsystematic and possibly only loosely based on a text of Scripture, where they need to change a lot of the ways that they do ministry, thus, it needs a reformation), now pleads with pastors shepherding churches in need of reformation not to do it quickly, nor with a totalitarian style to it. So, if she's dealing with some men with baggage, it might take a long time. Fortunately, a church has that amount of time, five to ten years. A campus ministry, where your leaders are around for at most four years (i.e., a degree for five years minus the frosh year), is not a likely place for this reformation to be able to happen.

(Back to answering the issue.)

I was about to use the word "unqualified" where I wrote "unready" in the first sentence of the question paragraph, but I chose to use "unready" because I don't think that in every case it takes too much to be qualified. For example D.A. Carson said in a talk on elders that the churchmen in Derbe, Lystra, Iconium and Antioch of Pisidia couldn't have been believers very long before Paul and Barnabas "had appointed elders for them in every church" (Ac. 14:23). This suggests to me that they were simply relatively spiritually mature (i.e., they were spiritually mature in comparison to some of their brothers within the church).

With this in mind, I think that the woman should select two or three of the men who she sees are the (relatively) stronger believers. Then she should (gently) encourage that they be appointed the elders of that church. (This is where I think that the Stinson talk would prove helpful.) These men obviously want the church to exist (otherwise they wouldn't be in the picture). After she suggests that they should be part of it they'll leave, desiring to remain in complacency, or they'll stay, and, with fear and trembling, accept the task of building the church. These men can resource the woman and ask her help in setting church direction, as long as the responsibility and outcome rests on the shoulders of the men. The individual men can ask her help when doing Bible study preparation, or even in their quiet times in finding out what the Bible means.

Hopefully with much prayer and patience, the Lord would bless this entreprise.

(That's it for my suggestions. All of the following is my attempt to explain why I'm thinking in this way, from the Bible.)

The reason this is difficult is because we need to apply 1 Timothy 2:11-15 in a God-honouring, people-building way. The first observation that I would make is that the passage in question is referring to the local church and corporate worship within the body (read Grudem for the argument behind this claim). More specifically, I think that it's saying that elders (or pastors; same thing [cf. 1P. 5:1, 2]) may not be women (read Piper for his argument behind this claim). Otherwise, it's not very specific. I think that Paul deliberately left lots of room to work within. The woman, then, would be balancing giving as much help as possible to build the church, while neither giving the church the appearance of being led by a woman, nor of giving the members the feeling of reliance on female leadership that would become systemic and difficult to heal later on. For example, I think that the woman could legitimately do a lot, but she needs to be concerned about what the future outcome of her current actions will be: With what I am doing right now, will the church in the future be more feminine (and thus, less healthy) than if I take a step back now, slowing down the progress of the church, but investing in the long term health of the church? That might be the case.

For this reason, if there were other churches around in the area, or even in the next city over, I think that the wisest choice for the woman (for the sake of clarity, from, say, church A) would be to discern from among them a healthy church (say, church B) that would be able to help church A. She could then ask the elders of church B to offer the men of church A some guidance and help in building up their body (i.e., church A). This would show the importance of relying on male leadership, but would also give her church real and valuable help.

As a note, Mohler, for example, would say that 1 Timothy 2:12 prohibits women from speaking at C4C functions. Since Paul was specifically referring to the local church, I don't entirely agree. Paul was not specific, so, in trusting that the Scriptures are sufficient in their restrictions, we must believe that God is not opposed to women speaking at C4C meetings. (If you disagree with this, then, essentially, you're saying that 1 Timothy has wider applications than just within the church. Are there to be deacons in every C4C group? Are there to be weddings? Lists of widows? All in all, I don't think Paul is referring to outside of the local church, and I don't think that C4C is a church.) So it comes down to a question of beneficial and unwise, as opposed to right and wrong. So, while I think that it's beneficial to have as many male speakers as possible at C4C, I don't think that it's wrong to fill in the gaps with female speakers. (That was my attempt as Weekly Meeting Coordinator at Carleton.)

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I introduced three characters in this post. Randy Stinson is the president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and Dean of the School of Leadership and Church Growth at Southern. Sometimes he reminds me of Driscoll, making fun of guys who don't fit the Wild At Heart paradigm for men (i.e., guys who might cry, or wear pink – though Stinson is more apologetic in this case than Driscoll typically is, or who drink decaf coffee). Other than that, I find him helpful. He must be brilliant to serve under Mohler at Southern, though.

D.A. Carson is a professor at TEDS (i.e., Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, but I call it by the rhyme of "peds" for short, while most of its students, I think, call it Trinity for short). He was born in Quebec, shepherded a Baptist church in B.C. and now lives in Chicago. (Well, not quite, Deerfield, Illinois.) The biography of him that I linked to above was written by Andreas Köstenberger and is thoroughly enjoyable. It's short, descriptive and enlightening. Piper once said that he recommends choosing one author and devoting yourself to reading everything he's written. (Piper's chosen Jonathan Edwards.) I might choose Carson. Carson is so well renowned that he became the subject of a satire blog on the subject of him. (Of which, I particularly enjoyed, this entry involving Paige Patterson.) I could go on about Dr. Carson, but I'll stop here.

Labels: Abbreviations, Bible, Blogs, Characters, Friends, Humour, Long, Manhood, Ministry, Resources

Luke wrote in Acts 14:19, "having persuaded the crowds, they stoned Paul." I wasn't reading that part at first, but my eyes glanced at it and that's what I read. At first it sounds like Paul was trying to convince the crowds to stone him. Interesting. The beginning of the verse says, "Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, and having persuaded the crowds...". So it was not Paul convincing them to stone him.

Taking this verse out of context, one may come to the conclusion that Paul was a mad man. Imagine was other dangers and inaccuracies could arise from reading the Bible selectively and its parts out their contexts.

Be on your guard.

Labels: Bible, Humour

This is a brief break from the marriage three-parter.

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I regularly read this blog, written by the author of I Sold My Soul On E-Bay, Hemant Mehta. Today he has a fantastic post. Very funny. It's surprising because in my mind I typically think of his blog as being the most boring of all the ones that I regularly check.

Labels: Blogs, Humour

First, I want to say how much I disapprove of so much of what has happened behind the doors of the courts in Canada and the US, whether it's Roe v. Wade in the States or homosexual unions here, there is no end to the shock that I get from what the courts are doing. I now want to draw your attention to something absolutely disgusting.

The courts are now the senior parents of Canadian children? This is ridiculous. "Whoever spares the rod hates his son,but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him" (Proverbs 13:24). Denying privileges (not rights) doesn't seem too bad by comparison.

Second, having nothing to do with the former, a Piper wrote an interesting thought on his brother's blog: "It's odd: those most opposed to 'topical' preaching are often the most committed to systematic theology. Soteriology and pneumatology are topics, no?"

If you know me, even if you don't know the terminology, you probably know that I love jumping into the Bible and seeing how it answers certain questions. That falls under systematic theology. I am a systematic theology buff.

Barnabas' (the guy who wrote the quote) post is really good though, because expository, verse-by-verse preaching best models biblical theology. I would far opt for expository preaching of whole books of the Bible before choosing topical sermons. Which makes Barnabas' point so insightful.

This second portion of the post seems to be begininning to neander aimlessly, so let me conclude in my agreement that good systematic theology must begin with excellent biblical theology.

If you want an application, I've got one: Read your whole Bible. Don't pick and choose which books of it to read. Read two books of the OT, one book of the NT. Read the "whole counsel of God" (Acts 20:27)!

Labels: Bible, Blogs, Humour, Miscellaneous, Politics

The following was taken from a message given by John MacArthur at the Together for the Gospel Conference in 2006. I thought that it was funny so I figured that I would share it. If you're listening to the audio, it starts at 32:27.

One other note: Mac will say there are "three reasons…". Fear not if you missed the third (and even the second). He only says two, and the second was is only distinguished from the first by the words, "the other."

I hope that it edifies your souls, and makes you chuckle at the end.

"I think, I mean, this is arguable, I guess, but I think, maybe the most assaulted doctrine today is the headship of Christ over His Church. ... We say, 'Oh, what do you mean, "Christ is the Head of the Church"? We all know that; Colossians 1, Ephesians 1 - we all know that. Isn't that a little benign to us?' Do you know, that doctrine has sailed down to us on a sea of blood? You know how many people have been massacred over that issue? ... In the conflict between the Reformers and the Roman Catholics about who is the Head of the Church, Roman Catholicism still says the pope is the Head of the Church, and if you deny that, you're anathema. Take the covenanters, they fought the battle, lost their lives, over whether the king or queen, or the pope (when there was a Catholic monarchy) is the Head of the Church. Today, we've got a whole bunch of little heads of their churches popping up all over everywhere, who, in effect, have produced a mutiny against the true Head of the Church by taking the Word of the Head of the Church out of the Church, and silenced Him. You take the Bible out of the Church, you take the Word of the Head of the Church, away from the Church, and you have carried off a revolution. When you bring to the people the mind of Christ, contained in the Word of God, you exalt the headship of Christ over His Church. At [the] Ligonier Conference I talked about this, and went back to Jan Hus. He was July 6th, 1415 burned at the stake. And there were basically three reasons they burned him at the stake. It's really an incredible story. They burned him at the stake, one, because he said the true Church is made up of all predestined believers. That doesn't sound too revolutionary. Not unless you accept the Catholic view at the time. The true Church is the pope, the cardinals, the bishops, the priests, period. And the only way that lay people communed with the Church is through the wafer. Well, Hus was in agreement with Wycliffe, that all predestined believers are the Church. This was unacceptable to them - absolutely unacceptable. And the other big issue was that he said that the pope was not the Head of the Church. And for that he was burned at the stake. R.C. Sproul told me an interesting story, a little bit of a history. When Hus was burned at the stake, you remember he was called 'the Goose,' he was from Husinec, but he shortened it to Hus 'the Goose,' that's where we get the phrase, 'The goose was cooked.' ... But when Hus was being martyred, he made the statement that, 'You could kill me,' (something like this) 'but there will come another after me, that you will not be able to silence.' Well, that was a hundred years later, exactly, that was Martin Luther. Luther was rummaging around in a library, and found a whole bunch of papers of Hus's sermons. And he found Hus to be a pre-Reformation Reformer, who was dealing with the same doctrinal issues and even Hus came out strongly against Indulgences. So Luther found a real partner. That's why some paintings of Luther, you'll find a goose in the background, because Hus was like a hero. Hus was sentenced to die by the Bishop of the Council of Constance and he died in the flames, singing psalms. A hundred years later Luther comes along, reads his sermons, picks up on it, he's a hero, even adapts the idea of being a goose. Luther is the fulfillment, in a sense, of that prophecy, 'One will come after me, that you will not be able to silence.' Curious note, R.C. Sproul told me, Luther was ordained at Erfurt, and when you were ordained in those days you had to lay, on the ground, flat on the floor, below the altar, with your arms spread ... in the sign of a cross. And Luther was lying there in that position when he was ordained, and he was lying on a crypt. And the crypt was the crypt of the Bishop of Constance who had condemned Hus to death. And R.C. Sproul imagines that when Hus said, 'You may silence me but there will come one after me you will not silence,' that maybe the Bishop of Constance said, 'Over my dead body.' Maybe, maybe."

Labels: Humour, Ministry, Miscellaneous, Resources