Pete's Blog

Peter Kreeft, Catholic convert, formerly a reformed Protestant, is an apologist. He has a strong voice within the Roman Catholic Church. Furthermore, Protestants might also be aware of him, since he was the scholar interviewed for the first objection that Lee Strobel deals with in his book The Case for Faith.

I was reading Dr. Kreeft's testimony of his conversion to Roman Catholicism from Protestantism today, when I came across the argument that follows:

I was impressed by the argument that "the Church wrote the Bible:" Christianity was preached by the Church before the New Testament was written—that is simply a historical fact. It is also a fact that the apostles wrote the New Testament and the Church canonized it, deciding which books were divinely inspired. I knew, from logic and common sense, that a cause can never be less than its effect. You can't give what you don't have. If the Church has no divine inspiration and no infallibility, no divine authority, then neither can the New Testament.

What Kreeft, and Catholics in general, are arguing is that it is logical to conclude that the Church must be infallible. This comes in contrast to Protestants arguing that the Bible is the only infallible authority given to man (the doctrine of Sola Scriptura which was fought for intensely in the Reformation). For easier examination of the argument, and to see where Protestants take issue with it, let me restate Kreeft's argument in a syllogism,

1. The apostles (who were part of the Church) wrote the NT and the Church canonized the infallible Bible;
   
2. A cause (i.e., the Church) is never less than the effect (i.e., the Bible);
   
3. Therefore, the Church is infallible.
   

It is with the first premise that the protestant would take issue. The apostles did scribe the Bible and express it in their own words, but the thoughts were God's. He wrote the Bible. First Peter 1:21 reads, "no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." God wrote infallible books using fallible men. But it was the Spirit who overcame their fallibility, "as they were carried along," so that the books are infallible. So the syllogism reasons that since God is the cause of the Bible, and the Bible is infallible, we infer that God is infallible. We already knew that.

I suspect that Kreeft would admit that the argument more rests on the canon than on the Church writing the Bible. He knows that God wrote the Bible. Catholics like to argue that since Protestants have no infallible authority from which to state the canon (which, up to this point, I agree with), we have no Bible at all. They insist that to have a Bible, the canon must be infallible. Protestants take issue with this, saying that we have a fallible canon of infallible books. God in no revelatory way decisively stated which books were to be in the canon. So, we must discern which books of the early Church belong there. Since man is fallible, that canon is fallible. So, applying Kreeft's argument, in observing that the Church caused the canon, which is fallible, we infer that the Church is at least fallible (which is not news).

The point is to say that you need to presuppose that the canon is infallible for the argument to work. The only reason the Catholic Church knows the canon is infallible is because on the Church's infallible authority it was stated so in 1546. It's a circular argument. Protestant ecclesiology (doctrine of the Church) is not hindered by this argument because it does not use the Protestant doctrine of the Bible.

I'm eventually going to write a post on cause and effect, but when I saw this argument, I couldn't resist commenting on it.

Labels: Long, Miscellaneous

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

Al Mohler has been asked (question begins at 21:30 in the audio) before how he would argue the inerrancy of the Scriptures to an atheist. He came out and said that it will become a circular argument. The Bible says that it's perfect. That's how we know. The Westminster Confessions say, "And the heavenliness of the matter [the Word of God], the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is, to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man's salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it does abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God: yet notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts." That's very circular to a non-Christian who doesn't believe in the Holy Spirit. But, Mohler says not to give up there. He says to remember that our existence is an unproven assumption.

The Bible is able to testify to itself. If someone asks why he should trust the Bible Al Mohler and Russell Moore, probably John MacArthur, would say to just read it and see for himself that it is perfect. I really believe this is true with all my heart. I believe that the Bible is amazingly harmonious (i.e., despite having more than forty authors written over more than a millenium and a half it has no contradictions and has one over-arching message). I think the way that the Bible reports on the fulfillment of prophecy are great for affirming its divineness. Especially as my testimony bears witness to, I believe that reading the Bible can bring faith (Rm. 10:17).

As an aside before moving on from this point, I am not saying that other outside evidence of the greatness of the Scriptures is to be avoided (e.g., the number of manuscripts, the perfect alignment with historical events and archaeology, etc.), I just don't think that they convert a person. God does through His Son's Gospel. We must, however, be ready to stand up for Truth (1P. 3:15).

Now, moving on, I was listening to a Mark Dever interview with Josh Harris (who Kissed Dating Goodbye) and Mohler on dating. Mohler was talking about how some men are called to celibacy, either short term while fulfilling a certain role such as military service in a foreign nation, or long term. As an example of someone called to long term celibacy he described how in 2002 he was called by a missionary organization and asked for the names of seven single men he would recommend from his seminary. I thought that was one of the most exciting things that I'd heard in a long time. He was talking about how these men would be sent off to one of the Stan countries (e.g., Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan) and that they might not come back, so it would be irresponsible to send a married man.

First, I'm single, so I thought about how great it would be if I could be used in that capacity. But, more alluring was the idea of going to a place where the Bible's never been read before - not to mention, never had its reputation smeared before. What do you think the average person would say if you (a Christian) asked him to read it and see what he thought of it? He'd probably say (though, perhaps not in this language) that there's no point since 1) it's ancient and doesn't apply today, 2) it's not even accurate, 3) it was written by people not God, so it's not even Truth, and 4) that it's too boring, all that, without even having read it. It would be so great to go to a place and let them read the Word and hear God speak.

Upon writing this, I've now decided that along with my daily petitions for God to save my parents and brother, I am going to pray that He would get them reading His Word, before or after He saves them. I would love for my brother to read the book of Romans and talk with me about a Christian worldview of war and peace. I would love for my mother to read 1 Peter and ask me what it means to cast all her anxieties upon Him. I would love for my father to read Philippians and the Gospel of John and ask me how the most power being in existence could bow down and help someone less worthy than Himself. The Bible is so applicable today! Let me cut myself off before I start criticizing the seeker sensitive movement for their abadonment of the Word, to say that alongside what I said my family could find for themselves to read in their, they could also read about God's love and salvation, and be saved. The message of the Bible is their hope, but not only theirs, but that of the whole world.

Thanks for reading/skimming my rant on how great the Word is and how evil/ignorant the world is.

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I mentioned a Dever interview with Harris and Mohler. I highly, highly, highly recommend it for singles and couples; for all Christians. There's one thought in there, put forward by Mohler, that I've never thought of before, nor heard of it before. He actually says that adulthood should be equated with marriage except in the special cases. That boys should not only be raised to be men, but to be husbands and fathers. If for no other reason, listen to it to hear Mohler laugh at the question of Christian online dating and give an unequivocating, "No."

Labels: Bible, Long, Ministry, Resources