Fallen and Flawed » Faith

Link Happy [Favorite Posts before 5.1.10]

Demian Farnworth — Sat, 01 May 2010 15:04:54 +0000

I’m breaking two laws today.

One spoken. The other unspoken.

The spoken law I am breaking has to do with a vow not to post on Saturday.

I’m making an exception since I’ve been posting only four times a week instead of five.

The unspoken law is about a personal pledge not to do posts devoted to sharing articles I like.

I reserved Twitter and Facebook for that.

But since I’ve abandoned Twitter and Facebook until May 23, my main source for sharing favorite articles is gone. So I’m sharing here.

Enjoy.

Survey: 72% of Millenials ‘More Spiritual Than Religious’
Little here to encourage you. Most notable: “Many are unsure Jesus is the only path to heaven: Half say yes, half no.”

Confession of Faith Guanabara
Brazilian blogger Jorge Bessa says it’s one of the oldest confessions of faith of Reformation era–written by four missionaries sent by John Calvin to the newly-founded Rio de Janeiro. [Click on the American flag to translate to English.]

Grilled Squid
Drawn to this article by the headline and sub-headline. That’s the headline up there. Here’s the sub: “A ghastly day on Capitol Hill for Goldman Sachs’s top brass.” Why I like the Economist.

Mind Over Money
Darling little 60-minute show by PBS on the battle between behavioral scientists and rational economists over this question: Can markets be rational when humans aren’t? Great sidebar resources, too.

Breaking Things Down to Particles Blinds Scientists to the Big Picture
I quote: “We want to believe we will understand nature if we find the exact right tool to cut its joints. But that approach is doomed to failure. We live in a universe not of clocks but of clouds.”

The Challenge of Writing about David Foster Wallace
I was immediately charmed when I learned DRW wrote a 1,300 page, heavily annotated, footnote dense novel. Then I read it. Thinking writing about him is hard? Try reading him.

By the way, do you mind if I do more posts like this? Yes or no? Give me your opinion. I’m thinking of doing more.

Did Christ Descend into Hell?

Demian Farnworth — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 17:20:57 +0000

In a simple but substantial summary of our faith called the Apostle’s Creed we encounter a very peculiar phrase:

“He descended into hell.”

One popular interpretation says that Christ went to the place of dead to announce redemption for the righteous who died before Christ.

But that interpretation is wrong. A little history is in order.

Why the Church Crafts Creeds

Historically, creeds have been crafted by the church to refute a specific heresy that’s threatening the church at that time.

The Nicene Creed refutes the heresy of Arius in the fourth century. The Council of Trent spelled out for the Roman Catholic church the major points of contention between them and Protestants in the 1500s.

The Apostle’s creed–circa the first or second century–has Gnosticism in it’s cross hairs.

In this case, Gnosticism denied the humanity of Christ. They denied the Incarnation and even differentiated between Christ [divine] and Jesus [human].

They argued Jesus didn’t become Christ’ spokesperson until his baptism [when the spirit descended on him] and the spirit left him before he died on the cross.

Thus, when Gnostics denied the humanity of Christ, they are basically arguing that he was never actually a flesh-and-bone person–that means he never suffered or died.

Which brings us to the point of this post.

The Meaning Behind “He Descended into Hell”

In the face of this heresy, up crops the Apostle’s Creed, hammering home the point that Jesus was not only God–but fully human as Scripture declares:

Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,
born of the virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead, and buried;

In other words, Christ the God-man was born like a man, suffered like a man and died like a man.

And because Jesus’ humanity is at stake here the composers want to make sure this is clear: Jesus died.

James Kiefer said, ” The reference to the descent into Hades (or Hell, or Sheol) is here to make it clear that the death of Jesus was not just a swoon or a coma, but death in every sense of the word.”

And this includes spiritual death. Calvin says:

If Christ had died only a bodily death, it would have been ineffectual. No — it was expedient at the same time for him to undergo the severity of God’s vengeance, to appease his wrath and satisfy his just judgment. For this reason, he must also grapple hand to hand with the armies of hell and the dread of everlasting death.

Therefore, “he descended into hell” suggests Jesus absorbed the full force of God’s punishment of mankind’s sins–past, present and future.

How a Creed Grows Over Time

It should be noted that the article “he descended into hell” doesn’t show up in the earliest form of the creed–the Old Roman Form. This article creeps in around 390 A. D.

That’s right: the form of the Apostle’s Creed we recite in church today wasn’t crystallized in one day–or even one year.

More than likely the Apostle’s Creed began as a very simple formula “I believe in God the Father” and accumulated articles ["maker of heaven and earth" and "he descended into hell"] over time as the church sought to maintain purity of the historical doctrines of the church as outside threats grew, like Gnosticism.

This process took about 400 years. Give or take a century.

One Final Thought

The precision of the creed is not an accident. There is deep meaning and reason behind each word, each article, as I demonstrated above with the phrase “he descended into hell.”

Let’s look at another example that’s relevant to our discussion

The phrase “suffered under Pontius Pilate” hammers home this point about the humanity of Christ: We can date Jesus’ death.

Why is this important? In the Hellenistic culture in which Christianity sprung and grew, competing claims of dying and rising gods typical in vegetation myths were abundant.

If you asked first century polytheist “When did Adonis die?” He’d say, “Long ago.” No definitive date, because no historical person.

Ask a first or second century Christian convert when Jesus suffered and died he’d answer ” Under Pontius Pilate,” which is nothing less than a concrete marker for the historicity of the Christian faith.

Definitive date equals historical person, which is all the more important when that person is God.

Truth [A Quick and Dirty Guide]

Demian Farnworth — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:06:17 +0000

What is truth? And does anybody have a lock on it?

The preacher? The scientist? The scholar? The engineer? The psychologist? The shaman?

Furthermore, can you trust them?

Not easy questions to answer.

There are so many competing claims and different approaches.

Can we REALLY know the truth? I think we can. And to help me answer that question, a while back I asked my friend Rob Powell to help.

He agreed and knocked out three posts on truth: Absolutism, Pluralism and Scientism. [See below.]

I then pulled together seven more posts dealing with the question “what is truth?”

Perhaps you’ve seen them before. If so, skim through each for a little refresher course on truth.

If you haven’t seen these posts before, walk through them slowly and then let me know what you think.

In the end, we might disagree. My hope is that I at least get you to think. And I promise to do the same for you. Enjoy the list!

Absolutism [What You Need to Know--and Why] Is truth absolute? Or is it relative and merely based on personal preferences? There has to be a right answer, right? There is.

Pluralism [What You Need to Know--and Why] On the surface pluralism seems like a reasonable explanation for the diversity of faiths we see. Look below the surface and it’s not.

Scientism [When You Shouldn't Trust a Scientist] Science is awesome. It provides us with great party tricks and is the most predictable way to study the world. But what is it? And can it ever go wrong?

The Blind Men and a Queer Animal In an ancient parable, dozens of hermits and scholars are making conflicting claims about reality. Who was right? D. None of the above.

How to Deal with Religious Conflict What beliefs create peaceful behavior and deal with the discord of religion? Here’s the answer.

Is the Gospel What the World Desperately Needs? Only Christian salvation can lead to a humble, enemy-embracing love that the world desperately needs. Sound counter intuitive? Let me explain why it’s not.

The Blissfully Plastic Moral Base of Humanism What does the meaningless, value-absent creed of humanism have to offer? It might surprise you.

Hard Questions: How to Make Sense of the World Answer these seven questions and you’ll discover what’s at the bottom of all your thoughts about God, yourself and the world.

What Camus and Frankl Can Teach You about the Meaning of Life Is it possible to find meaning in life without God? Albert Camus and Victor Frankl think so.

Is Jesus the Only Way to God? [Guest post at Sorting Beans] Great question. It’s one I’ve often struggled with and felt very awkward at times defending. Here’s what I’ve found.

What Happens to Our Faith When God Disappears?

Demian Farnworth — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 15:33:22 +0000

Christian faith is often brittle.

It’s often punctuated with moments of doubt. Persecution. Isolation. Fear.

We can sometimes spend entire nights staring at the ceiling or pacing the floor praying, “God, I cannot do this unless I know you are with me. Where are you? Don’t hide. Please. I need you.”

It’s as if God’s gone AWOL.

Michael Patton confessed he felt God first went AWOL when his sister died.

It was a devastating buzz kill to a man who was a seminary superstar on a spiritual high, always optimistic when everyone else was in the dumps…

Always seeing the good in the evil.

However, this tragedy caused enormous confusion. And he couldn’t shake it.

Spiritual Loneliness and Our Circumstances

Since that time he’s had his ups and downs. Exhausted from ministry and struggling to provide for his family, you could easily say that when he wrote that post he’d spent an extended period in the downs.

But don’t count him out.

In the midst of his painful post he writes:

Those of you atheists and former Christians who suspect that they are about to have another Christian cross over to the dark side, put up your party hats, blowouts, and (ahem) cake. I am not close. One thing that I have learned, believe, and teach with great conviction is that my circumstances do not have a vote in truth. Nothing that I go through can alter or affect the cardinal issues of my faith. Jesus Christ either died and rose from the grave or he did not. It is upon this that the entirety of my faith rests.

Here’s the deal: Our faith will be assaulted…and then weakened. But true saving faith will always prevail because it’s not dependent upon our circumstances.

It’s dependent on something more concrete.

What Does Spiritual Growth REALLY Look Like?

The doctrine of the perseverance of the saints doesn’t mean our Christian life is one of steady upward growth without failure.

Yes, it’s upward. But it looks more like a saw-tooth than a gentle slope toward the sky.

Any Christian can relate: We can go from an acute sense of holiness and the presence of God to very bad sin and feelings of isolation all the way back to a so-called intimacy–within weeks…or even days.

Being born again doesn’t mean we won’t sin or experience despair. Nor does it mean we won’t sin or despair GRIEVOUSLY. Truly regenerate Christians can commit murder, adultery and even publicly reject Christ.

They even can live in depression. But NEVER persistently. The Bible is clear: A Christian can fall. And fall hard. But not fully or finally.

Spiritual Growth Involves War

Our faith is weak. And we will naturally be bruised as we fight the good fight of faith. The Bible promises us a war.

Thing is, we’ll never be abandoned during that war. Even when it feels like God has gone AWOL.

Martin Luther stood alone at the Diet of Worms against the most powerful men of his time. He spent the prior night praying in agony. He knew he could not do what he was going to do unless God was behind him.

In his second letter to Timothy Paul writes:

My persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra—which persecutions I endured; yet from them all the Lord rescued me. Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

In the same letter Paul uncovers his own despondency when he declares: “No one came to stand by me. All deserted me…. But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me. …The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom.”

We are in good company when we experience despair and pain. Furthermore, we also know that we will be victorious. God will rescue us because Jesus Christ is the author and finisher of our faith.

And what is our faith? Hebrews says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for.” Our hope in Christ is the anchor of our soul.

What Faith Is and Isn’t

This is not faith AGAINST the evidence. But a faith of substance. Nor is it a faith in skimpy evidence…and we’re told to believe anyway.

It is not ephemeral and wishful, but rooted in the historical life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It’s based upon the manifold evidence that Christ is God’s son.

And that he came to redeem the world.

Faith is a gift from God. He is the author of that faith. He’s also responsible through the Holy Spirit to nourish that faith. And we have God’s promise that he will not abandon that work–but finish it.

And that’s why in the midst of doubt or trials Michael Patton, Martin Luther, the Apostle Paul and even Demian Farnworth can say, “The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom.”

David Platt Frightens Me

Demian Farnworth — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:59:46 +0000

Ever hear anyone complain that academics are divorced from reality?

That theorists would simply collapse in shock if they ever stepped down from their ivory tower into the dirty world of human beings?

That some professors are educated beyond their usefulness?

That scholars are cut off from emotion, compassion and spiritual devotion?

Granted, there’s a lot of truth behind these complaints.

Intellectuals tend to elevate the mind over the heart, making the pursuit of doctorates more important than people.

But not all academics fall to this temptation. Take David Platt for example.

Educated to the Hilt

At first glance, you could level those accusations at David Platt.

He earned two undergraduate degrees from the University of Georgia. He followed that up with three advanced degrees.

But he wasn’t finished.

He added a doctor of philosophy from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary [NOBTS] to his curriculum vitae.

He then served as dean of chapel and assistant professor of expository preaching and apologetics at NOBTS.

The man is a highly accomplished academic. [And as an arm-chair intellectual, he scares me.]

Naturally, you’d expect his book Radical to read like a professional journal. But it doesn’t.

Entering the Dirty Business of Human Beings

Here’s what can’t be missed: Platt gets around.

His book is shaped by his overseas mission trips to places like India and Indonesia.

It’s influenced by his time as pastor at the Church at Brook Hills.

And it’s predisposed to sound a lot like John Piper–the quintessential scholar-turned-pastor–who obviously impacted Platt.

All this serves to make Platt firmly grounded in the dirty business of human beings, compassionate to the bone and ridiculously eager to make disciples.

Which in turn makes Radical a book anyone could read.

In fact, it’s almost simplistic. Sometimes redundant. It’s Richard Wurmbrand meets Kevin DeYoung.

You won’t get lost in this book. Neither will you have to re-read any sentences. In fact, you’ll almost get bored.

But at that moment when you’re tempted to close the book, Platt pulls you back in. He does this in a handful of ways.

Radical: Sticky from Experience and Education

He might draw out a beautiful analogy about the church being a troop carrier turned luxury liner.

Or a gripping story about a young, intelligent woman killed in a bizarre bus accident while she served Palestinian refugees in Egypt.

Or a potent scene where believers in China begged him to teach them the Old Testament…and ten days later to teach them the New.

While all these things make for a good read we have to remember that Platt argues from a very simple platform: the gospel of Jesus Christ.

A platform he demonstrates you don’t need a degree to preach. Or a doctorate to understand.

Just a heart that hungers to lose it’s will in the will of God and no longer desires anything for himself–except the glory of God.

And it’s just this kind of heart that drives the hardcore academic David Platt.

The Simple, Bare-Bones Secret to Radical Faith

Demian Farnworth — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:57:17 +0000

Back in the early 19th century British Protestant missionary to China C. T. Studd said:

“Too long have we been waiting for one another to begin! The time for waiting is past!…

“Should such men as we fear?

“Before the whole world, aye, before the sleepy, luke-warm, faithless, namby-pamby Christian world, we will dare to trust our God,..and we will do it with His joy unspeakable singing aloud in our hearts.

“We will a thousand times sooner die trusting only in our God than live trusting in man.

“And when we come to this position the battle is already won, and the end of the glorious campaign in sight.

“We will have the real Holiness of God, not the sickly stuff of talk and dainty words and pretty thoughts; we will have a Masculine Holiness, one of daring faith and works of Jesus Christ.”

A manly, near-reckless faith. Where does one get that? Great question. First, let me explain what I’m doing this week.

Here’s the deal: I want to devote the entire week to what I started yesterday as a review of David Platt’s book Radical.

That book is simply too rich to compress into one 1,000 word post. And simply too valuable to drop after just one day.

We need to expand. So let’s go.

Resisting Typical Expectations

Arguably the best chapter in Radical is the second to the last: “Living When Dying Is Gain.” That chapter can be summed up like this:

The stories we hear about believers who are hated, beat and killed in distant countries are stories about people who’ve found a desire deeper than the basic human will for self-preservation: the desire to serve Christ and be his witness.

This desire even trumps the fear of death.

In fact, death isn’t viewed as an enemy and a coffin as a rot box. They’re viewed as a reward and a launching pad. This is the essence of what Jesus taught in Matthew 10:38-39:

And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Thus, when talented young men and women dismiss the expectations and promises of the world to live in filthy Palestinian refugee camps on the outskirts of Egypt…

Or in dilapidated section 8 housing in dangerous urban neighborhoods to share the gospel with the people who live there…

Only to die in obscurity a few months or years later…

Their lives are not a waste and neither are their deaths a tragedy. Rather, those lives are treasures and those deaths rewards.

Let me explain what I mean by that.

Death Is Dead to Me

The Bible teaches us that the instant we die we are ushered into the presence of Christ.

In that instant we glimpse God’s glory and unimaginable majesty. Remember, this is the great reward of the gospel: God himself.

But WAY too many Christian’s have lost that vision. A vision confiscated by the American Dream.

See, when we accept the reality that death is nothing more than a line we cross between life and God’s presence, something happens to us: We embrace a near-reckless devotion to spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ.

This is the way Paul puts it:

When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 15:54-57

Death has been conquered. And victory secured. What do we have to fear?

Don’t Make This Mistake

Some people bristle at the notion of setting our minds on death and the afterlife because they believe it makes us worthless here on the earth.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The person who sets his mind on heaven knows that his destiny is secure and glorious. He’s free to live the most radical life of love and sacrifice here on earth.

Listen. The hope of safety in the afterlife cures us of timidity, fear and hopelessness. It releases a radical, risk-taking love that baffles skeptics and forces them to ask for the reason for the hope that is in us.

When you invest emotional and mental equity into the hope that death is reward and the doorway to our savior, you’ll be set free to live a fearless, near-reckless life of love and sacrifice.

That’s the kind of believer the modern church should be training and churning out. What can we do to make that happen in our own churches? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

What Is True Saving Faith?

Demian Farnworth — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:59:34 +0000

When the Apostles proclaimed the gospel in the first century, it had a certain content.

People could reject that content. But they could also accept it as true.

They could even believe in it.

Yet, that still left them with out true saving faith.

Listen: Accurate content and sincere belief in that content doesn’t amount to saving faith…

Those are necessary elements–but not sufficient elements. There’s one more element.

Let’s address the first two elements before we get to that last one.

Notitia–the First Element of Saving Faith

One, we must make sure that content is accurate. No use believing in something that isn’t true or heretical.

As you probably know, there’s something dreadfully wrong with this statement: “It doesn’t matter what they believe–as long as they are sincere.”

Joseph Kony was sincere in his belief that he was called by God to abduct children, murder entire families and displace over a million Sudanese so he could establish a theocratic kingdom.

Sincerity can go awfully wrong.

The same is true for Christians: It’s meaningless to be sincere in our belief but not know whether our belief is accurate or not.

We risk heresy if we do otherwise. Thus, the first element of saving faith is accurate content–notitia. Let’s look at the second.

Assensus–the Second Element of Saving Faith

Second, we must believe that content is true. We must assent to it. This is assensus.

But it’s still not enough to redeem us.

I believe that Augustine wrote the City of God. However, that doesn’t redeem me. There has to be something more.

Fiducia–the Third Element to Saving Faith

The third element to saving faith is fiducia–personal trust and commitment in the accurate content we believe.

This is when a Christian accepts, receives and RELIES on Christ alone.

Granted, the message of that content is important. I could put my trust and commitment in Augustine–but it wouldn’t do me any good.

He’s not offering salvation. Only Jesus Christ is.

What Saving Faith Does to Our Lives

We look to Jesus [not Augustine nor any man] for justification, sanctification and eternal life.

With saving faith, we tremble at the commands of God…yield in obedience to the mandates of Christ…and put our trust in the promises of God for now and for the future.

In essence, it radically rearranges our lives. Christ becomes our object of delight. Our obsession.

And we long to do nothing more than please him. [We don't always succeed, but that's another story.]

Here’s the core content we we confess as true, deserving of our belief and worthy of our submission:

That Christ was born, willingly and perfectly lived under the law of God and died as an atoning act. We believe he was dead, buried and rose again.

Only when we believe that information is accurate and trust it holds the power to save us can we safely say we are born again. Anything less and Jesus is not saving us.

Pluralism [What You Need to Know--and Why]

Demian Farnworth — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 14:35:09 +0000

**Guest post by Rob Powell. Part of a series on truth.**

In continuing our discussion about truth and absolutism let’s move to how that idea intersects with the wide diversity of faiths represented in our world, specifically in the concept called “pluralism.”

We’ve all heard the allegory of the blind men feeling different parts of an elephant.

Each man describes a completely different animal based on what part they are feeling.

The moral of the story is that each is relating just a small but true part of a larger truth.

This parable is a feel good way to reconcile the differences between the thousands of different religions in society.

In fact, somebody should make a song out of it so they can add a verse to It’s a Small World.

Pluralism: The Good and the Bad

On the surface pluralism seems like a reasonable explanation for the diversity of faiths we see.

Nobody gets their feelings hurt by being told they are wrong and everybody gets to do what they think is true.

A little deeper inspection though shows that just like relativism this view falls apart under it’s own weight.

To allow all these discordant faiths to agree the pluralist has to do a few things, but first let’s take a look where faiths disagree.

Do All Religions [Basically] Agree? Eh, No.

To make that less than a 2 year doctoral thesis we’ll limit our discussion to the most populous religions.

Not that numbers equals truth but even the most PC pluralist isn’t going to say that the Heaven’s Gate Cult or the Branch Davidians has a truth claim equally as valid as Buddhism or Islam.

Bottom line: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism all have a diagnosis for what is wrong with humanity and a cure to fix it.

It’s past the scope of this article to delve into all the differences but they are not insignificant. Here are a few:

The number of gods. Some religions believe there is no God while others believe in only one and still others embracing many.

The problem of sin. All religions describe a very different program to curing sin.

The body and mortality. Each religion seeks to explain the purpose behind our bodies and solve the riddle of death.

In all these examples, the cures range from faith in Christ, to an esoteric experience where we see we are immaterial self aware beings with all knowledge or to realizing that all we are is fleeting conscious states.

The pattern here is clear.

There are a diversity of perceived spiritual problems–and a myriad of just as diverse solutions.

What We Must Avoid

To try and boil all this down and just say that people are broken and need a cure would be as silly as saying a person has “sick” and needs “better”.

If your appendix has ruptured you will not find a doctor that recommends in vitro fertilization.

Each specific diagnosis needs a specific remedy.

Maybe the pluralist believes that God will save those not of a certain tradition based on how they responded to what knowledge they had accessible to them. For example, the Christian God might save Buddhists because they were sincere in their belief.

Unfortunately this is not what ANY of these individual faiths teach. Also, past just the general diagnosis, religions disagree on what makes up a human.

What the Pluralist Must Do to Make Religions “Agree”

Do we have an enduring soul or are we merely a collection of momentary states? Either people come in two (or more) distinct flavors or you have to believe these both of these self contradicting things to be true at the same time.

So how does the pluralist make all of this work for them?

For example, there is no mechanism in the Christian worldview where the Buddhist’s sin problem is resolved outside of faith in Christ. Nor is there is no mechanism in the Buddhist tradition whereby the Christian becomes enlightened.

So the pluralist must create their own system whereby the two are compatible and neither can hold the other as incorrect.

This involves either treating all religious exclusive claims as either being non-literal (mythical) or having limited importance.

This would include any claims to miracle which would seem to add credence to one faith over another. What really matters to the pluralist is harmony, love, justice and unity.

In other words, how you live your faith (orthopraxy) is more important than what how your faith says you should live (orthodoxy).

The Pluralist’s Sleight of Hand

But did you see what just happened there? The pluralist in attempting to negate all the exclusive claims of different religions created an exclusive claim of their own.

The pluralist denies the Muslim a chance to define his or her own religion with exclusive claims but is completely free to do so themselves.

Pluralism fails pluralistically. Which brings us back to the elephant.

A pluralist takes each person describing their religious truth and enlightenment and says “Yes but what you don’t know is that you are blind and only see in part.”

That’s perfectly laughable because the implication is that the pluralist can see just fine and in whole–and you can’t.

In the end, he’s more than happy to make a claim to exceptional knowledge that he won’t let any single faith make own their own.

The Pluralist Is Just as Blind

As you can see, pluralism isn’t an overarching view that combines all faiths in one big bubble bath of goodness. It’s just one more view claiming special enlightenment and truth–which isn’t very pluralistic, don’t you think?

So when someone says “What matters is that it makes sense to me and enables me to grow spiritually,” it’s easy to see the benefit to this claim even taken at face value and not applying it to itself.

It allows everyone to do what they want how they want to do it.

But if there is no objective truth to be found outside of one’s belief then you can never be wrong in what you believe.

In essence you’ve created a Stepford God that is made in your own image–he’s a robotic butler who will never contradict you but always please you.

Unfortunately this approach destroys the distinction between the terms “truth” and “belief” and implies that something is true because “I believe it.”

Where Pluralism Threatens the Christian Church

So where does pluralism affect the Christ follower and it’s church. Here’s a quote from JP Moreland’s book Love Your God with All Your Mind that I think says it well.

[Such] a church . . . will become . . . impotent to stand against the powerful forces of secularism that threaten to bury Christian ideas under a veneer of soulless pluralism and misguided scientism. In such a context, the church will be tempted to measure her success largely in terms of numbers—numbers achieved by cultural accommodation to empty selves. In this way, . . . the church will become her own grave digger; her means of short-term “success” will turn out to be the very thing that marginalizes her in the long run.

The call is clear to preach the obnoxious and offensive gospel to a world and church that most of the time doesn’t want to hear it.

How Faith Is Created in Your Soul

Demian Farnworth — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:44:46 +0000

Ever wonder how you got the faith necessary to believe Christ is the Son of God?

Some people would tell you that God’s grace assists a believer to exercise his faith…

A faith that’s native to his being.

That’s the so-called semi-Pelagian view.

And on this view, everything depends decisively on a person’s response.

But this was not the view of Augustine, Luther, Calvin or Edwards. Nor is it the teaching of the New Testament.

The New Testament tells us that we are spiritually dead and blind rebels and unless the Holy Spirit raises us from spiritual death, God’s offer of grace would be like giving water to a dead man.

Dead men don’t drink water.

Neither do dead men respond to offers of grace. At least not until they are raised from the dead.

This view is spelled out in Paul’s letters. For instance, Paul writes, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”

What is NOT our doing? Paul is clear: the origination of our faith.

The Killer Blow to Semi-Pelagianism

Yes, it becomes our faith. We exercise that faith. Nobody else does it for us. But we can’t exercise what we don’t have, so God, through salvation, gives us faith to accept his grace.

Paul’s simple statement is a deathblow to all forms of semi-Pelagianism. It affirms that the faith by which you are justified…by which you are united in Christ…and that is the instrumental cause of your justification…did not originate in some activity or decision of your will.

It did not come from unregenerate flesh. It came from God. Decisively.

God made a promise to save every person who responds to the gospel with faith:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16

Fortunately for us that response doesn’t depend on our self-absorbed, wretched will.

No. It depends on God. That way our faith is eternally stable and secure. Our preservation is a promise that can’t be broken.

In all things–from creation to redemption to glorification–he remains the sovereign, provident and all-powerful God.

And that is a God worthy of our adoration.

Anthony Horvath: Director of Apologetics Ministry Talks

Demian Farnworth — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:37:14 +0000

I get the feeling that Anthony Horvath doesn’t sleep.

The guy’s got a lot going on.

For starters, he’s the director of Athanatos Christian Ministries, an organization “committed to applying the Christian world view in creative contexts that range from Christian apologetics to education to the edification of the church to literature and the arts.”

He’s also a public speaker on the pro-life circuit [for good reasons]. An author of two fiction books. The founder of a literary apologetics writing contest. And the brains behind this publishing group.

Throw in a wife and four children–and Anthony is busy. But very interesting. As you’re about to see.

1. Give me a little bio of you and your ministry.

I was raised in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and had every intention of becoming a pastor when, in my first year of college, abandoned my beliefs.

When faith returned, my new passion was Christian apologetics.

I graduated with a pastoral ministry degree with a minor in the Biblical languages and then proceeded to be a religion teacher and other church work positions.

In the midst of the professional church work I continued to do apologetics. I started with AOL and then moved to forum discussions.

About five years ago circumstances conspired so that I became a ’stay at home’ dad and apologetics my ‘full time’ activity. I am a father of four, and on account of the birth of my daughter who has spina bifida, my ministry has a distinctly pro-life bend in it, too.

2. What motivated you to start Athanatos Christian Ministries?

ACM made official what had been going on all along. There are any number of duties involved in running a ministry, much of them having nothing to do with ministry at all. People don’t appreciate this fact. I think small businessmen will understand, though.

Most of the ministry activities we’re doing now were started before ACM became an official non-profit. I chose the name ‘Athanatos,’ which is Greek for ‘immortal’ or ‘not dying’ rather than ‘Sntjohnny’ (my AOL presence my ministry began with) to cast a larger vision for an apologetics ministry.

“He has set eternity in the hearts of men…” Solomon said. As Lewis said, “We have never met a mere mortal.”

I take as my starting point that everyone is longing for truth and meaning and they pursue it as naturally as they breathe. ACM seeks to facilitate that pursuit by any means possible.

3. You state on Anthanatos website that you no longer believe “the best, exclusive use of my time is to reach out and contend with atheists.” I like how you qualified that statement, but I’ve found in my own experience that engaging atheists enhances my understanding of my faith and actually better prepares me to answer challenging questions from Christians. Would you agree with that statement or disagree.

Well, I can see how this might come across as not wanting to engage with atheists but perhaps the statement should be understood by contrast to what I was doing before. My discussion forum, slightly a ghost town now used to consume all of my time.

When I say ‘my time’ I mean something on the order of 40 to 60 hours a week.

This includes the loads of reading and research that one would have to do to write intelligently. I draw heavily on this experience as I seek to equip Christians.

I definitely think that that kind of engagement is useful, because it helps us bridge the gap between what we think people’s objections will be and what they actually are.

I still contend with atheists (and others!). It just isn’t as much of my time as before. Also, as alluded to before, much more of my time is needed to management and administration of the ministry, which is a reality I’m not particularly happy about.

4. In 2006, you said that the Church was actually creating atheists. What did you mean by that? You also said that if you made that statement today, it’d hardly get noticed. What’s changed in four years?

That 2006 pronouncement was born of my realization that many, if not most, if not even all, of the atheists I was conversing with had been raised in the Church.

This goes to the other reason why I’ve shifted my time to equipping Christians over against banging heads with atheists: I deemed it might be more practical to stop Christians from falling away in the first place rather than try to win them back after they were long gone.

The really controversial part of my 2006 pronouncement, though, was that the Church itself was instrumental in breeding atheists.

Now, a certain natural cycle of doubt and questioning and a certain amount of people deciding that Christianity doesn’t have the answers is to be expected and is not problematic on its face.

The problem is that the Church is doing a poor job making sure that people are asking the right questions and then exposing them to the best answers. It’s worse than that: much Christian education actually sets people up to be clobbered when they finally started thinking through their faith.

I think Ken Ham’s Already Gone documents this very well. That book represents a survey that he personally commissioned and to his surprise they discovered that those most likely to have hardened positions against Christianity were those who had been through Sunday School, VBS, Confirmation, and the like.

Nonbelievers who were ’softer’ on Christianity hadn’t actually been through any Christian programming! While I don’t agree with Ham’s total conclusions, I think his theory on why this particular phenomena is taking place is probably correct.

Since I made that pronouncement in 2006, there have been a variety of studies that have come out showing that a high percentage of unbelievers were raised in the Church. Ken Ham I mentioned. Barna has produced numerous reports indicating something is amiss. There are others, too.

It isn’t a controversial pronouncement any more because I think generally speaking it is agreed that there is something seriously, seriously wrong in the transmission of the faith.

The remaining dispute is over what is wrong and what to do about it.