BaylyBlog: Out of our minds, too...

Carson on Matthew is very good...

Tim Bayly — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 22:17:31 -0400

(Tim) As I'm working on a sermon on Matthew 23:16-24, I'm again struck by how good Don Carson's commentary on Matthew (Expositor's Bible Commentary series) is. Typical of his ability to get to the heart of the matter is this comment on Jesus' third woe dealing with oaths found in verses 16-22. Note particularly his final statement:

Some writers have supposed that 5:33-37--which, formally at least, abolishes oaths--contradicts 23:20-22, which maintains that all oaths are binding but does not abolish them. In fact, however, verses 20-22 provide the rationale for 5:33-37. All oaths are in some way related to God. All are therefore binding, and thus evasive oaths are disallowed. On the other hand, the heart of the issue is telling the truth; and it is probably a new kind of casuistry that, failing to see this, insists that Jesus in 5:33-37 abolishes all oaths of every kind. (Carson, p. 479)

Normally, I wouldn't post such a simple thought and recommendation, but having drubbed Dr. Carson in a post earlier this week for his promotion of gender-neutered Bibles, it seemed right to say the good publicly.

A wonderful evening with Pastor Conrad Mbewe...

David & Tim Bayly — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:56:34 -0400

(Tim) Last night, our elders, pastors, and wives gathered for dinner and an evening's conversation with Pastor Conrad Mbewe, a dear brother who serves as the pastor of Kabwata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia. Pastor Mbewe was here in the States to preach at the missions conference of Heritage Baptist Church in Owensboro, Kentucky. Tonight, the men studying here at ClearNote Pastors College will also have dinner and an evening learning from Ba Mbewe. We all give thanks to God for this opportunity.

Some years back, Pastor David Wegener, a dear friend of my brother David and I who had served as a pastor here at Church of the Good Shepherd, moved to Ndola, Zambia, to begin serving as an instructor at the Theological College of Central Africa. Along with his wife, Terri, and their four children, Lizzie (who lives with Mary Lee and me this year), Mary, John, and Sarah, David is seconded to TCCA by the Presbyterian Church in America's mission agency, Mission to the World. At TCCA, David serves under Principal Joseph Simfukwe. Soon after beginning his work in Zambia, Pastor Wegener told us of the vital Biblically reformed work being done done in Lusaka by Pastor Mbewe, and since that time, Pastor Wegener has begun lecturing at the preaching college sponsored by Pastor Mbewe's congregation. So we knew of Pastor Mbewe through Pastor Wegener, but until last night, had never met him.

So who is Pastor Conrad Mbewe...

Submitting to Jesus Christ by faith back in 1979, Pastor Mbewe sat under the preaching of then-Pastor Joseph Simfukwe in Lusaka while he was an undergraduate studying mining engineering there in Zambia's capital. Through a series of sermons on Galatians Pastor Simfukwe preached, along with several other university students Mr. Mbewe came to embrace the sovereignty and providence of God. Hearing Pastor Simfukwe quote men like Hodge and Spurgeon, the young men decided to read what their pastor was reading. As Pastor Mbewe told us last night, they saw that a number of these good books had a picture on their spine of Whitefield preaching with his arm lifted in the air, so they concluded the best way to get good books was to ask for books with this picture. This was the beginning of the reformed Baptist movement in Zambia which many would consider the most vital reformed work on the continent today.

After graduating from university and starting his work as a mining engineer, in 1987 Pastor Mbewe received a call to serve as the pastor of Kabwata Baptist Church where he has been for the past twenty years. Kabwata Baptist has grown in southern Africa since that date. The church has founded Reformed Baptist Preachers College (Pastor Mbewe is the college's Principal), and for about ten years now Kabwata has been active in planting other reformed churches in Zambia and Botswana which are supported until they reach maturity (it's hoped in about eight years) by both Kabwata and HeartCry Missionary Society (directed by Paul Washer). Pastor Mbewe edits Reformation Zambia magazine and is a columnist for several Zambian newspapers. Married for twenty years to his wife, Felistas, the Mbewe's have three children by blood, but a number of others who live with them in their Christian household.

Readers interested in supporting this vital work God is doing through Kabwata Baptist Church and Pastor Mbewe may get in touch with HeartCry Missionary Society and join in their fraternal relationship with our Zambian brothers and sisters.

But more, if you're able, go to Zambia and visit Kabwata Baptist Church. Sit under Pastor Mbewe's ministry any way you are able. You will grow in wisdom and faith.

* * *

(If you're interested, here are the names of those in the picture: first, up front, Pastor Mbewe; behind Conrad starting from front left, Pastor Stephen Baker, Pastor Conrad Mbewe, Elder Tim Wegener and his wife, Anne; Elder Lawrence Howell behind his wife, Janet; Elder Jeff Moore with his wife, Laura, behind him; then, going up the stairs, Pastor Dave Curell next to his wife, Annie; with his arm on Dave's shoulder is Elder Wayne Huck (who's wife, Joyce, wasn't able to join us); behind Dave going up the stairs is Elder Jeff Ewer in front of his wife, Amanda and their week-old newborn son, Amos; next to Amanda is my wife, Mary Lee; and finally, Mary Lee's and my son and daughter-in-law, Joseph and Heidi Bayly who just graduated from ClearNote Pastors College.)

The "New Living Translation" and "Today's New International Version" are bad...

David & Tim Bayly — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:23:19 -0400

(Tim) Starting in 1996 or so (actually, my work on the NLT started years before this), David and I worked hard privately and publicly to oppose a number of members of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) who, working through the International Bible Society, Tyndale House, and Zondervan, were removing the sex-markings of thousands of texts of Scripture in the Living Bible and the New International Version. At the time, the NIV was the Bible translation standard of the Bible-believing, English-speaking world, so it was the efforts to modernize this particular translation that were our main public focus.

Our opponents' plan was to put out an updated NIV called the New International Version Inclusive. Since then, they've updated their work giving it the name, Today's New International Version (TNIV). In the TNIV, Hebrew and Greek words such as adam, adelphoi, and aner are stripped of their male grammatical component. These scholars, publishers, and corporate executives worked together to mute these words, ending up with new books called "Bibles" where thousands of changes had been made to render them innocuous to those of us raised in a feminized society in which it has become gauche to make references to mixed-sex groups using any word with a male marking. Thus, in their book, 'man' became 'humankind', 'brothers' became 'Christian friends' (NLT) or 'siblings' (NIVI), 'man' became 'person', and so on--thousands of times across the pages of Scripture.

As you'll see from the above reference to the NLT, the NIV was not the only Bible in wide use across the evangelical world being similarly updated. In an effort to update the Living Bible which was growing long-in-the-teeth, Tyndale House Publishers had hired a long list of ETS academics to produce the New Living Translation which, benefiting from millions of dollars in advertising and purchased product placement in national bookstore chains, was steadily gaining market share. (The writer is the son-in-law of Ken Taylor, owner of Tyndale House Publishers until his death several years ago.)

Partly because of the naturally lower expectations of accuracy the NLT inherited from its predecessor, the Living Bible; partly because the academics who had done the NLT's translation work likely expected it to be more a devotional than a study Bible; and partly because the NLT's publisher responded to expressions of concern over some of the more egregious mistranslations evident in the NLT's text with thoughtful consideration and, eventually, a number of changes to the text of the NLT's subsequent printings; the public battle was focused almost exclusively on the updated NIVI, its publisher Zondervan, and Zondervan's subsidiary (in a manner of speaking), the International Bible Society and her subordinate Bible Translation Committee.

The public became aware of the battle through the publication March 29, 1997 of Susan Olasky's cover article, "The Stealth Bible: the Feminist Seduction of the Evangelical Church," in World magazine. For almost everyone this was the first hint of Zondervan's plans and the response was a good measure of the profound theological divisions present within the vast entrepreneurial business park named "evangelicalism."

Predictably, one side decried Olasky's divisive spirit and focused their attack on World magazine...

...calling for the Evangelical Press Association to rebuke World's editor and publisher for their purported journalistic misdeeds. Their effort failed but members of ETS picked up the cudgel in Zondervan's behalf and they continue their efforts to this day. Having been paid, themselves, to do gender-neutered Bible translations, a number of scholars went on radio and television, wrote articles and letters to the editor, and published books defending Zondervan's new gender-neutral Bible product.

The best-known example of this academic circling of the wagons was Don Carson's book titled, The Inclusive-Language Debate: A Plea for Realism, published in 1998--one year after the battle was joined by Olasky in the pages of World. Long considered one of Carl F. H. Henry's most likely successors as the leading evangelical theologian, Carson took the posture of wise and impartial observer as he defended gender-neutral translations of Scripture. Claiming his defense was the only sane position for those knowing the intricacies of translation work, Carson denied outright that these changes were contrary to the plain sense of God's Word as the Holy Spirit had inspired it.

At the time I had just taken on the position of Executive Director of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) and was chagrined to have Carson resign from CBMW when we became publicly aligned with opposition to this new trend in Bible translation. Having received his resignation, I suspected there was more behind his resignation than the gender-neutral Bible controversy, but I called him and, introducing myself, asked him to reconsider his resignation.

Carson was dismissive of my request saying that he was unwilling to align himself with an organization that took a position on the use of inclusive language in Scripture that would cause him to "laughed off the platform" of those secular universities where he regularly spoke. A year later, Carson came out with The Inclusive-Language Debate: A Plea for Realism.

Both the more liberal element and those lacking discernment within evangelicalism took Carson's work as an edict from on high and have not troubled themselves with this issue since Carson pronounced his judgement.

A couple years later Westminster Theological Seminary's Professor of New Testament Interpretation, Vern Poythress, wrote a response to Carson, and those who have read Poythress's arguments against gender-neutral Bible translation note that Poythress is every bit Carson's equal in academic credentials and expertise in the academic disciplines pertinent to this debate. The case he builds in The Gender-Neutral Bible Controversy: Muting the Masculinity of God's Words, along with the contributions Poythress' co-author, Wayne Grudem, makes to the work combine to deal Carson a decisive blow.

One critical aspect of Carson's work that has yet to be publicized and condemned as it ought is his failure to reveal to his readers that he had a prior commitment in the matter at hand, and that he could make no claim to be an impartial judge.

Why?

Because a few years earlier Tyndale House Publishers had paid Carson to produce a gender-neutral translation of the book of Acts for the New Living Translation. And it's interesting to note it was Carson's Acts in which, arguably, the worst example of gender-neutral Bible translation technique occurred. The first edition of the NLT's version of Acts 1:21,22 read: "So now we must choose someone else to take Judas's place. It must be someone (Greek 'aner' meaning gender-specifc 'man') who has been with us all the time that we were with the Lord Jesus--from the time he was baptized by John until the day he was taken from us into heaven. Whoever is chosen will join us as a witness of Jesus' resurrection" (NLT-First Edition).

As noted above, the Greek word is 'aner' and the New American Standard Bible translates it properly: "Therefore it is necessary that of the men (aner) who have accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us--beginning with the baptism of John until the day that He was taken up from us--one of these must become a witness with us of His resurrection" (NASB-95 Edition).

It is no small thing to remove the male semantical component from the verse dealing with the selection of a new man to hold the apostolic office and it's good to be able to report that Tyndale House Publishers chose to revert to the meaning of the original Greek in subsequent printings of the NLT. Still, the significance of this mistranslation occurring on Carson's watch cannot be overemphasized in considering Carson's credentials as an expert judge of the legitimacy of the whole gender-neutering enterprise.

When Carson issued his book and when the work was reviewed in the pages of the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, why didn't anyone note Carson's failure to disclose his prior commitments through which he profited financially from doing gender-neutral Bible translation? Can anyone seriously argue that this information is not pertinent to Carson's credentials as an impartial judge in this matter?

Regardless of how disillusioned one might be to learn how lax evangelical publishers are about requiring authors to divulge their own conflict of interest, another aspect of this debate didn't come to light for a couple years and has yet to receive the publicity it ought to receive across the evangelical world.

A short time back an article in the Jewish Telegraph told of the growing success of an 18-year campaign by retired Jewish publisher Irvin Borowsky to alter New Testament language he describes as "excessively faulting all Jews for the suffering and execution of Jesus."

Seventy-six-year-old Borowsky founded the American Interfaith Institute in 1982 to urge Christians to cleanse the New Testament of "hate language." According to Borowsky these efforts are finally bearing fruit: "History will record that the scholars and the president of the American Bible Society who published the first Bible that contained no anti-Judaism in nearly 2,000 years were the first to record accurately the historical events of the first century."

The particular Bible Borowsky is here referring to is the American Bible Society's Contemporary English Version (CEV). Adoption of inclusive gender language in the CEV has been common knowledge for years. Almost unknown, though, was the willingness of CEV translators to alter New Testament words referring to the Jewish people.

Yet the American Bible Society is not the only Bible publisher to bow the knee in deference to Borowsky, and to avoid "excessively faulting all Jews." What other recent translation has incorporated the same changes Borowsky praises in the CEV?

About a year ago (and quite by accident), I discovered Tyndale House Publisher's New Living Translation ( NLT) had joined the American Bible Society's CEV in obscuring the meaning of the Greek word 'Ioudaios' and its cognates in the Gospel of John. At times the NLT changed the translation of the Greek word 'Ioudaios' from "Jews" to "Jewish leaders." At other times, the NLT dispensed with any Jewish semantical component at all, simply translating Ioudaiois as 'people."

The fact that these changes to the words of the New Testament were quietly slipped into the NLT is remarkable for several reasons. First, the CEV has never been known as an evangelical translation: CEV translators were not culled from Evangelical ranks whereas NLT translators were. Obviously, the plenary verbal inspiration of Scripture was not an issue for CEV translators, while Tyndale House Publishers stresses that the translators of the NLT "are evangelicals who accept the Bible as the inspired Word of God."

Second, the NLT made clear its preference for inclusive gender language from the very outset. Before inclusive language became a major issue in the evangelical world, the NLT had publicly stated in the introduction of its first edition:

The English language changes constantly. An obvious recent change is in the area of gender-inclusive language. This creates problems for modern translators of the ancient biblical text, which was originally written in a male-oriented culture. The translator must respect the nature of the ancient context while also accounting for the concerns of the modern audience. Often the original language itself allows a rendering that is gender-inclusive.... There are other occasions where the original language is male-oriented, but not intentionally so. (New Living Translation, 1996 edition; Introduction)

The gender violence done Scripture by the NLT at least had the virtue of complete disclosure. So we took the NLT translators at their word, that it was only gender markings related to the generic Hebrew 'adam' (man) they wanted to obscure or delete. Well we were wrong. And why are we surprised to learn this, given the intensity of our culture's hatred for anything smacking of anti-Semitism?

It's not surprising the New Living Translation did not stop with muting the patriarchalism of Scripture, but also muted the texts which have been accused by Jews of leading Christians to call them "Christ-killers." The same men who saw nothing wrong with "muting patriarchalism" are unlikely to see anything wrong with muting "Ioudaios" and "Ioudaiois."

It never ceases to amaze how men of impeccable evangelical scholarly credentials think nothing of changing thousands of words in Scripture in order to diffuse or hide the language of patriarchy or purported anti-Semitism. Yet at the same time these same men see no need to cash in their inerrancy credentials. And tragically, no one has the courage to tell them they ought to do so.

Stop and think for a moment: if the Holy Spirit meant to say "Jewish religious leaders," would He not have breathed "scribes and Pharisees" or some similar construction as He has done in so many other New Testament passages? When there are so numerous places in the New Testament where what the Holy Spirit has inspired is the equivalent of the NLT's "Jewish religious leaders," is it not imperative to communicate that, for instance, in John 10:31-32 this is most decidedly NOT what He breathed? Similarly, look at John 1:19; 2:18; 5:10; 5:15; 5:16; 5:18; 7:1,2... Then notice other places where Jewish markings have entirely disappeared from the NLT: John 2:13; 2:20; 3:1; 6:41; 6:52; 7:2....

There is no logical end to this censoring of God's Holy Spirit. Once we set ourselves up as authorities over the Word of God, thinking that we can communicate more accurately the meaning of the Holy Spirit by hiding His words, we rightly come under God's judgment.

* * *

(This post was originally published in 2004. For a number of books and articles that rightly divide the Word of Truth on these matters, check out our congregations' web ministry, KepttheFaith.org edited by David's Associate Pastor, Andrew Dionne. Also, here's an article dealing with this subject that I wrote for the Banner of Truth web site.)

When you sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind...

David & Tim Bayly — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:34:43 -0400

(Tim) Zondervan is the publishing company that has licensed, printed, taken to market, and aggressively promoted Today's New International Version, a bowdlerized form of Scripture in which the original Greek and Hebrew has been amended in order to appease and mollify feminists. The TNIV is popular among the hipsters leading the Submergent church.

It's somewhat ironic then that Zondervan was just hit with a lawsuit filed by a man who is a sodomite and claims Zondervan's Bibles' treatment of sodomy has caused him great emotional injury. The lawsuit isn't likely to get far at this early date, but it led Zondervan to issue a press release defending their Bibles as follows:

We rely on the scholarly judgment of the highly respected and credible translation committees behind each translation and never alter the text of the translations we are licensed to publish. We only publish credible translations produced by credible Biblical scholars.

"Highly respected" indeed. Their heavy use of 'credible' is telling, isn't it?

There came a man sent from God whose name was...

David & Tim Bayly — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:43:35 -0400

(Tim, w/thanks to David) Well actually, I don't know his name, but he caused Sodomite Gene Robinson's sermon in an Anglican church in England to grind to a halt by calling the bad Bishop to "Repent! Repent! Repent! I stand on the Word of God! Repent!" (See link below.)

Why is this wicked Episcopal bishop over in England preaching just now?

Archbishop Rowan Williams is presiding over the once-a-decade Anglican meeting of bishops known as the Lambeth Conference held in Canterbury. He's invited almost all the 800 Anglican bishops worldwide. Only a few were barred from attending. One of them--the most significant one--is Bishop Gene Robinson who the United States Anglican communion known as the Episcopal Church elevated to the bishopric despite his being an unrepentant sodomite. After his elevation, the first person to greet him in the chancel area as a part of the liturgy was his sodomite lover, followed by his ex-wife and two adult daughters.

Trouble is, by far the largest part of the Anglican communion today is in the Southern Hemisphere and, being somewhat backward, African and Central and South American, and even Australian, bishops and archbishops are scandalized by this heresy and threatening or carrying out schism. (Well, actually, not schism; it's impossible to be guilty of schism when you're separating from those who bless sodomy and elevate sodomites into the bishopric. Really, it's church discipline, but from the bottom up which is not the way things ordinarily are supposed to go.)

But back to the Archbishop of Canterbury His Grace Dr. Rowan Williams. He's in an awkward position...

It's sort of a north-south thing, and the hostilities have escalated to the point where he must take a position one way or another. And so he has, choosing to exclude Bishop Gene Robinson from Lambeth. Of course, you must understand that in no way is he to be understood to be judging the man or the American Episcopal Church for promoting sodomy.

So what crime is the basis for the exclusion? The crime of being divisive.

Really, in his masterpiece, The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom was right in saying that the only law left in the Western world is the law that everyone must do what is necessary to get along with each other. So Archbishop Rowan Williams has a choice: He can side with the masses of Anglicans from the Southern Hemisphere who refuse to be a part of a church that puts sodomites into the office of bishop; or he can side with his own Northern Hemisphere communions who have used the Holy Name of God to promote birth control, abortion, unbiblical divorce, adultery, and now sodomy.

Tough choice for the Archbishop of Canterbury. With his hand forced, he excludes the bad Bishop Gene Robinson from Lambeth.

But note, it's not the sin of sodomy that caused Rowan Williams to give in to exclusivity. Rather, it's the sin of being too progressive without waiting for the backward and ignorant Southern Hemisphere Anglicans to catch up.

Yes, I know no one has ever said they're ignorant. Nor backward. Nor explicitly that it's just a matter of waiting a while so they can catch up. But I thought it would be helpful to say explicitly what has been implied all over the place for years, now.

So, leave it to a long-hair riding a motorbike--by decades the youngest man in the sanctuary--to call the bad Bishop to repent. And what irony that the congregation tries to silence this young prophet first by clapping, and then, as he's man-handled out of the sanctuary, singing:

Thine is the glory, risen, conqu’ring Son;
Endless is the victory, Thou o’er death hast won...

Sinews of discipline at Westminster Theological Seminary...

David & Tim Bayly — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 15:02:42 -0400

(Tim, w/thanks to James) Friends, here's one to keep your eyes on. David and I believe the training of pastors is best done in the context of the local church, but if we were asked which seminaries we believe hold true to biblical faith, Westminster Theological Seminary would make the short list.

Now, though, they have a professor who has written things that call his commitment to the authority and plenary verbal inspiration of Scripture into question. After suspending him from teaching, they're investigating the matter formally.

Lots of sheep think the seminary's action is scandalous. You know, criticisms of the "Don't you idiots know that the church has repented of heresy trials?" sort. Well, there you have it: "No heresy any more," say the sheep, "so don't bother guarding us--we don't need your care." How David and I thank God for allowing us to serve congregations who love us precisely because we seek to guard them as the Apostle Paul exhorted the elders of Ephesus to guard their own congregation, warning them: "From among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them" (Acts 20:30). Further, our congregations have chosen elders who share in that work with us, rather than seeking to silence this aspect of our (and their) calling. What joy!

This past week, I finished Calvin's letter to Cardinal Sadoleto. Let me end the post with this excerpt:

...the miserable condition into which the Church had fallen was owing to nothing more than to its enervation by luxury and indulgence. For the body of the Church, to cohere well, must be bound together by discipline as with sinews.

Since then, abortion has been legalized and tobacco's been banned...

David & Tim Bayly — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:20:53 -0400

(Tim, w/thanks to Kamilla and Dawn Eden) Mike Wallace was doing interviews back in 1957 sponsored by the Philip Morris Company. Courtesy of the Harry Ransom Center of University of Texas, Austin, here's an interview with Margaret Sanger, patron saint of Planned Parenthood and its scholarly cover organization, the Alan Guttmacher Institute. To whet your appetite, here's an excerpt:

* * *

MIKE WALLACE: What are your religious beliefs, Mrs. Sanger? Do you believe in God in the sense of a Divine Being -- who rewards or punishes people after death?

MARGARET SANGER: Well, I have a different attitude about--the divine--I feel that we have divinity within us, and the more we express the good part of our lives, the more the divine within us expresses itself.I suppose I would call myself an Episcopalian by religion and there's a--many other, if you travel around the world you get quite a bit of the feeling of all--all religions--have so much alike in the divine part of our own being. And I suppose you just couldn't just put that into a book or you couldn't put it to a phrase or a sentence.

WALLACE: Do you believe in sin -- When I say believe I don't mean believe in committing sin do you believe there is such a thing as a sin?

SANGER: I think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world--that have disease from their parents, that have no chance in the world to be a human being practically. Delinquents, prisoners, all sorts of things just marked when they're born. That to me is the greatest sin -- that people can -- can commit...

WALLACE: But sin in the ordinary sense that we regard it -- do you believe or do you not believe.

SANGER: What-what would they be?

WALLACE: Do you believe infidelity is a sin?

SANGER: Well, I'm not going to specify what I think is a sin. I stated what I think is the worst sin.

WALLACE: Yes, but then you asked me to say what--and I said what and ah--you refuse to answer me?

SANGER: I don't know about infidelity, that has many personalities to it--and what a person's own belief is--you can't, I couldn't generalize on any of those things as being sins.

WALLACE: Murder is a sin...

SANGER: Well, I naturally think murder, whether it's a sin or not, is a terrible act.

A modest proposal for ordination exams...

David & Tim Bayly — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:57:28 -0400

(Tim) Within a number of reformed denominations holding to the Westminster Standards, we have men who seem not to have a heart for opposing the heresy of feminism. To work to reform this reality, we would do well to ask several questions on the floor of presbytery of candidates for ordination. Here are a couple that might serve the purpose.

First, we might ask, "Do you believe it's a faithful summary of the Biblical doctrine of sexuality to say, as many have said publicly in our denomination, that 'a woman may do anything a non-ordained man may do?'"

If the man responds, "Yes" or "Maybe," it's clear he's either woefully uninformed or opposed to the Biblical doctrine of sexuality and has no heart for opposing this heresy even though he likely knows he can't advocate women elders or senior pastors. Certainly no prior father of the Church would recognize this as a faithful summary of Scripture's teaching. They would be left scratching their heads.

If he says "No, I don't think that's a good summary of Scripture's doctrine" we ought to be encouraged, but still, we're not yet finished.

The first follow-up question could be: "Will you require the bride to repeat, as part of her marriage vow, the historic Biblical promise to "obey" her husband in those marriage ceremonies at which you officiate?"

If he says "No," our work is cut out for us. If he says "Yes," we're still not finished...

The second follow-up question could be: "Do you believe our Standards are correct in pointing out that vows are prohibited by Scripture that seek to bypass the authority of a husband over his wife?" Then, it may be helpful to cite the Confession and its (subordinate) Scripture proof simply by way of explanation of the question.

If he says "No," again, it may be he has no ability to oppose this heresy, although it could simply be a matter of his need of instruction. He may be teachable and grow into a faithful guardian of the good deposit. But there remains one final question.

Finally, he could be asked, "Do you believe that the Biblical doctrine of father-rule extends beyond the Covenant community, beyond the Christian Church and family, to all spheres of life?"

If he says "Yes," we're finished. He has demonstrated a faithful understanding of Scripture as it would be tossed off with no sweat on the brow by all previous generations of fathers in the Faith.

If he says "No," we should follow up by asking if he believes other aspects of the pre-Fall, Creation order are also to be applied to the People of God, only? Heterosexual marriage? Life-long marriage? Monogamous marriage?

Explaining our question, we could point out all aspects of God's Creation order stand or fall together. If we understand all of them were established by God in the state of perfection in the Garden of Eden, we'll confidence in proclaiming their beauty and calling men to repentance for their unbelief, leading them to Gospel grace.

Of course, at that point presbyteries in the north or metro areas may get impatient and some of our fellow elders may do everything possible to stifle "this inquisition."

In time, though, if this sort of faithful defense of the Faith were carried out when a candidate for ordination was examined, the Church would grow in faith. Also, I believe it would grow numerically--principally by the addition of young men and women who have not yet been habituated to feminism's untouchable status in the Church and whose hearts ache for Scripture's Truth.

Defending this doctrine is no effort to repristinate the past or to hedge up male perquisites. It is love of God. It is true love of Christ's Bride. It is love for the lost. And do I really need to say it? It is true love and compassion for women.

* * *

After posting this, I read it to my wife. When I was finished, I asked her, "What do you think?"

She said, "It's good, but people will hate it."

"Really?" I asked.

She laughed and said, "You're an idiot."

A Psalm of comfort on a hot summer day...

David & Tim Bayly — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:05:32 -0400

(Tim) Doubting, I tell myself that, if I were righteous, I could take comfort from this Psalm. But alas, I am not. I look at my heart and my sin overwhelms me. And yet, there is One Who is my righteousness, Whose robes are spotless and reserved for sinners who receive Him by faith. Oh how deep are the riches of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ! How kind and patient is our God! Come Lord Jesus--quickly! Bring us peace.

* * *

(A Psalm of David.) Do not fret because of evildoers, Be not envious toward wrongdoers. For they will wither quickly like the grass, And fade like the green herb. Trust in the LORD, and do good; Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness. Delight yourself in the LORD; And He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD, Trust also in Him, and He will do it. And He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, And your judgment as the noonday.

Rest in the LORD and wait patiently for Him; Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, Because of the man who carries out wicked schemes. Cease from anger, and forsake wrath; Do not fret, it leads only to evildoing. For evildoers will be cut off, But those who wait for the LORD, they will inherit the land. Yet a little while and the wicked man will be no more; And you will look carefully for his place, and he will not be there. But the humble will inherit the land, And will delight themselves in abundant prosperity...

The wicked plots against the righteous, And gnashes at him with his teeth. The Lord laughs at him; For He sees his day is coming. The wicked have drawn the sword and bent their bow, To cast down the afflicted and the needy, To slay those who are upright in conduct. Their sword will enter their own heart, And their bows will be broken. Better is the little of the righteous Than the abundance of many wicked. For the arms of the wicked will be broken; But the LORD sustains the righteous. The LORD knows the days of the blameless; And their inheritance will be forever. They will not be ashamed in the time of evil; And in the days of famine they will have abundance. But the wicked will perish; And the enemies of the LORD will be like the glory of the pastures, They vanish--like smoke they vanish away.

The wicked borrows and does not pay back, But the righteous is gracious and gives. For those blessed by Him will inherit the land; But those cursed by Him will be cut off. The steps of a man are established by the LORD; And He delights in his way. When he falls, he shall not be hurled headlong; Because the LORD is the One who holds his hand. I have been young, and now I am old; Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, Or his descendants begging bread. All day long he is gracious and lends; And his descendants are a blessing. Depart from evil, and do good, So you will abide forever. For the LORD loves justice, And does not forsake His godly ones; They are preserved forever; But the descendants of the wicked will be cut off. The righteous will inherit the land, And dwell in it forever. The mouth of the righteous utters wisdom, And his tongue speaks justice. The law of his God is in his heart; His steps do not slip. The wicked spies upon the righteous, And seeks to kill him. The LORD will not leave him in his hand, Or let him be condemned when he is judged.

Wait for the LORD, and keep His way, And He will exalt you to inherit the land; When the wicked are cut off, you will see it. I have seen a violent, wicked man Spreading himself like a luxuriant tree in its native soil. Then he passed away, and lo, he was no more; I sought for him, but he could not be found. Mark the blameless man, and behold the upright; For the man of peace will have a posterity. But transgressors will be altogether destroyed; The posterity of the wicked will be cut off. But the salvation of the righteous is from the LORD; He is their strength in time of trouble. And the LORD helps them, and delivers them; He delivers them from the wicked, and saves them, Because they take refuge in Him. (Psalm 37)

The Gospel Blimp...

David & Tim Bayly — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:26:46 -0400

(Tim, w/thanks to Valerie) You've all been waiting for a copy of Dad's classic, The Gospel Blimp, in comic book form, right? Well, dream no more.

The new morality reverts to medieval indulgences...

David & Tim Bayly — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 12:45:30 -0400

(Tim) My friend, David Talcott, writes:

* * *

Certain parts of the American and European elite class have taken to telling us to reduce our energy and food consumption in order to make sure everyone has enough. But, their talk doesn't match their walk. Al Gore has been hit over this since his home uses over 10x that of an average American home. Yesterday the Telegraph reported that the G8 Summit, hosted by Japan, served a 6-course lunch and 8-course dinner to world leaders who were meeting for talks on the world food crisis.

* * *

Check out these additional links here, here, here (the transcript from the Sean Hannity show dealing with former VP Gore's private jet travel), and (this one's priceless) here.

The Shame of Alfred Kinsey...

David & Tim Bayly — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 21:59:24 -0400

(Tim: Titled The Shame of Alfred Kinsey, this ran December 3, 2004 as a guest editorial in Bloomington's Herald Times.)

The late Allan Bloom was an Indianapolis native who served as professor at University of Chicago. In The Closing of the American Mind, Bloom lamented the destruction divorce caused his students. Noting that parents often used therapists to help their children cope, Bloom wrote, "Psychologists are the sworn enemies of guilt."

If therapists are the sworn enemies of guilt, sex researchers are the sworn enemies of shame-with IU's Alfred C. Kinsey leading the pack.

Although hired by IU as a zoologist, in 1938 Kinsey contrived to land a job lecturing engaged and married seniors on "biology." He ended the course by taking his students' sexual histories.

Kinsey spent the rest of his academic career conducting these interviews and disseminating the data. He was convinced that publicizing peoples' private sexual lives would usher in a more peaceful age devoid of shame and inhibition.

But his efforts did not bring the dawn of Aquarian freedom...

Rather, one set of negative consequences was exchanged for another. The fruitful discipline of true morality was exchanged for the fruitless bondage of false morality. The Biblical law codified throughout the Western world over many centuries was exchanged for infinitely smaller and petty laws.

So today, instead of community pressure being brought to bear against adulterers and sodomites, it's brought to bear against those condemning such crimes. Freedom is shrinking as IU's diversity advocates and the Bloomington City Council's Human Rights Commission use shame as a disciplinary tool against innocent souls caught in the act of expressing disapproval of sexual perversion.

Pity the poor widow who conscientiously declines to rent her upstairs apartment to an unmarried couple. She will soon learn what G. K. Chesterton warned of: "When you break the big laws, you do not get freedom; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws."

Motivated by the love of their neighbors, godly citizens work to oppose the sin destroying homes, marriages, and souls, but find their convictions censored and their motives smeared as "hatred." And the civil authority joins in the oppression by, for instance, using citizens' tax dollars to provide support for the local baby-killing organization, Planned Parenthood. The biblical prophet, Isaiah, spoke of this day:

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; ...who are wise in their own eyes (and) take away the rights of the ones who are in the right. (Isaiah 5:20 ff.).

Since Kinsey first began to expose men's secrets, incest, domestic violence, divorce, the poverty rate of women and children, and deaths due to sexually transmitted diseases have all increased dramatically. But no one seems to notice. At the recent Bloomington premier of the biopic, Kinsey, partygoers making a donation of $1,000 were granted the privilege of hobnobbing with the filmmakers at a private reception where Kinsey was feted.

When the Kinsey Report was released in 1948, noted anthropologist Margaret Mead critiqued it:

In every society sex patterns depend on a careful and meticulous balance between ignorance and knowledge, sophistication and navet. (The Kinsey Report) has upset the balance ...between the things we don't mention, and the things we do. And it may be expected to have considerable effect in our society for that reason. Quite a good deal of our virtue has depended upon people not knowing what other people were doing... In the past, it was said, "It is better to marry than to burn." Now we translate (the verse), "It is better to have an outlet of some sort, because you've got to have an outlet of some sort." ...so it's just a question of which outlet and (Kinsey) suggests no way of choosing between a woman and a sheep. (Footnote 1)

Two weeks ago the following invitation was circulated here at Indiana University:

SLAG is pleased to announce that Will Stockton will be presenting "The Normalization of Bestiality: Kinsey's Analysis of Human Sexual Contact with Animals" ...at the next brown-bag colloquium (Friday, November 19 at 12:10 pm in Indiana University's Ballantine Hall, Room 221). (Stockton's paper) explores Alfred Kinsey's assertion that bestiality, rather than being "a strange perversion of human affection," is actually "part of the normal mammalian picture" of human psychosexual development.

Kinsey was no hero. Those who think he was demonstrate no love, but hatred of sexuality's God-given beauty. So now we've arrived at the day when men no longer know why they ought to choose a woman instead of a sheep.

And the band plays on.

* * *

Footnote 1: Margaret Mead, "An Anthropologist Looks at the Kinsey Report," in Child and Family, vol. 18, no. 4, 1979; pp. 294-303.

Keller, Piper, Yancey and the meaning of words...

David & Tim Bayly — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 18:02:50 -0400

(Tim) Tim Keller's coming out with another book titled, The Prodigal God. Unlike his last book written for unbelievers, Pastor Keller says this one's addressed to Christians. From Alex Chediak's blog, here's an interview with Pastor Keller. Below the interview, Steve Camp comments about Pastor Keller's use of the word 'prodigal' to refer to God.

Similar comments caused Pastor Keller to give this explanation.

The word ‘prodigal’ is an English word that means recklessly extravagant, spending to the point of poverty, of ‘being in want’ (Luke 15:14.) The dictionaries tell us that the word can be understood in a more negative or a more positive sense. The more positive meaning is to be lavishly and sacrificially abundant in giving. The more negative sense, is to be wasteful and irresponsible in one’s spending. The negative sense obviously applies to the actions of the younger brother in the Luke 15 parable of the two sons. But is there any sense in which God can be called ‘Prodigal’?

Dropping the discussion on Alex Chediak's blog, Steve Camp moved it to his own for continuation. I think Steve Camp's concerns are legitimate, although I'm not sure had I been the editor I'd have forced a title change. Seems to me Helmut Thielicke's title, The Waiting Father (a superb book, by the way), is even more effective. In the discussion, those souls who try to strong-arm Steve to silence strike me either as intentionally obtuse or as possessing only an elementary understanding of language--something you could never say about Pastor Keller.

Other well-known Christian writers have been intentionally risque with their language...

Think of Phil Yancey's Disappointment with God, and John Piper's Meditations of a Christian Hedonist. The phraseology of each of these three men has been chosen with an eye to giving the reader a jolt, hoping that jolt will move him away from the stultifying complacency of evangelical Christianity long enough to allow him to hear Biblical truths that might otherwise be beyond his capacity.

Today, when we want to say what Pastor Keller means by his archaism 'prodigal' while avoiding its pejorative connotation, we use the word 'extravagant'. Maybe a better discussion would be whether the extravagance of God's love or His judgment is the message Christians are most resistant to?

In other words, a book better-suited to the church's need of the hour might be The Bloodthirsty God, detailing His hatred of sin and the horrors of the judgment He revealed to the Apostle John, and commanded him to record for us in his Apocalypse.

THE BOX BASH: You and your children are invited!

David & Tim Bayly — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 15:07:57 -0400

(Tim) Church of the Good Shepherd is having a grand opening this Saturday, July 12th, and we're calling it The Box Bash. (Here's the web site--beautiful work, Ben!) Here's our ad:

Come to the Box Bash!

A community carnival and concert for everyone, festivities will begin at 3 PM. There will be a free dinner at 6 and a free concert at 7. Fun for Everyone!

Free food, a live concert with the Good Shepherd Band, the Dunk-a-Pastor Dunking Booth, Dangerous Boys Shooting Gallery, Face Painting, Wii Knockout, Horseshoes, Free-Throw Shootout, the Baker Boys' Double-Jeopardy Trivia Challenge, and so much more!

It's all happening at Church of the Good Shepherd, 2501 South Endwright Road (across from Karst Farm Park).

The concert will feature our own Good Shepherd Band, including live covers of Cake, Radiohead, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen.

COME ONE, COME ALL!

3Here's the Facebook page. And here's our alternative text, posted on Bloomington's community calendar, The Scene.

The Box Bash, named after our new, gloriously square-shaped church building, is a community carnival and concert for everyone. The fun festivities will begin at 3 PM. We'll have everything from bean-bag toss to face painting, gun shoot to crafts. Have you ever wanted to hit the bulls-eye and dunk Pastor Tim Bayly into a pool of cool water? This is your chance! Around 6 PM we'll have a cookout with a nice, FREE hot dog dinner. Afterwards The Good Shepherd Band will be performing some assorted rock covers for our entertainment. Again, the event is for the whole community so bring your friends, family, and neighbors.

Barack Obama rocks (XI): On newborn babies, he says he's been misunderstood...

David & Tim Bayly — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 00:33:00 -0400

(Tim, w/thanks to someone) If I've been unfair to Senator Obama in saying he's bloodthirsty, this interview will make the case as well as it can be made in a once-over-lightly-and-no-follow-up-questions interview. By all accounts, he's the most liberal senator serving in the United States Senate today, and he advocates abortion--for his own daughters, no less. Read this over at Human Events for the history Senator Obama calls a "lie."

So no, I don't think Senator Obama's responses here tell much of the story. No one thinks the Senator is stupid. So when he was interviewed, here, by Cameron Strang, publisher of--can you dig that title?--Relevant magazine, we can be sure he knew his audience. Still, in the interest of full disclosure...

By the way: Christianity Today and Relevant? What a pair. So up-to-date.

The Fourth of July revisited...

David & Tim Bayly — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 14:34:01 -0400

(Tim) Just before Dad died, we had dinner together at a restaurant. The occasion was later in the evening after Dad had defended the anti-abortion position (he preferred "anti-abortion" to "pro-life") at a forum on abortion held on the campus of Wheaton College. Some woman whose name escapes me did the pro-baby-slaughter thing--as a Christian, of course. As I recall, Dad was invited after they couldn't find anyone on campus who was willing to take the biblical position.

Dad did an admirable job and I was proud to be his son as we ate together later that night, father and son.

During the meal, I asked Dad what he thought about armed rebellion to end abortion?

He said he didn't think it was right.

I asked, "Why? We celebrate the Fourth of July, which means we endorse armed rebellion to end financial oppression. Wasn't the battle cry of the Revolutionary War, 'No taxation without representation?' Maybe, as Christians, we shouldn't support the Revolutionary War or a war to end abortion. That position would have some consistency. But to celebrate the Fourth of July and oppose armed rebellion to end the slaughter of millions of little babies? I don't get it."

Dad said he didn't agree with me. And that, dear friends, was that.

Barack Obama rocks (XI): Why submergent types love him...

David & Tim Bayly — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 06:00:00 -0400

(Tim) Since the decline of his health about a year ago, requiring him to move in with his daughter, leaving Washington D.C. behind, my favorite columnist on American culture and politics, Joe Sobran, has been on hiatus. His articles are few and far between, about every three months, now, and I've missed him quite a bit. So it was a happy day, today, when a new column arrived--this one on our recurrent theme of why Senator Obama rocks, as hip, chic, submergent types see it.

For my money, the keys needed to unlock the submergent church scene are chronological snobbery--after all, they are chrysalises emerging from the slime of our patriarchal, authoritarian, institutional roots--and they hate authority. Thus their support for Senator Obama. He's new, he's about change; what's not to like?

But of course, neither Arcbishop McLaren nor Cardinal Obama are about change, not to even the slightest degree. They're carbon copies of one another. They're both relentlessly superficial, adroit, and non-Christian, in lockstep with our superficial, adroit, and non-Christian information class. Why bother faulting them with wanting to be on the winning side? It's positively democratic, isn't it?

But I do fault them with claiming originality in their consummately predictable, boring opinions. Sobran says it so much better...

The Reactionary Utopian
July 3, 2008

Obama and Abortion

by Joe Sobran

What is he really saying?

Barack Obama, that gourmet among dung beetles, appeals strongly to the sort of smug people I used to find mildly irritating when I was in college -- the sort who wore lapel buttons bearing such bold messages as "Question authority" or "I read banned books." In America, everything is mass-produced, including non-conformity, and these buttons were a standard part of every young non-conformist's uniform. The most comically egregious of these "non-conformists" were the hippies of the late Sixties.

You know the type: I think it was the art critic Harold Rosenberg, who memorably dubbed them "the herd of independent minds." They confirm Samuel Johnson's witty remark that most people's opinions are "not propagated by reason, but caught by contagion." One of the marks of this breed is an unconscious predictability, a certainty that one has achieved one's own views, however trite they may be, without the assistance of any Authority.

...They are passive yet passionate agents of fashion. As G.K. Chesterton puts it: "There is everywhere the habit of assuming certain things, in the sense of not even imagining the opposite things." He explains: "The thing I mean is a man's inability to state his opponent's view, and often his inability even to state his own."

Small children often have highly original thoughts, and one of the purposes of education is to correct them early, before originality reaches the point of heresy or psychosis. A wise Christian, George MacDonald, notes: "Our Lord never thought of being original." Amen. Jesus said the truth will make us free. He said nothing about being "original," or clever, or eloquent...

* * *

Sad to say, this column isn't yet available, publicly. Only subscribers to Sobran's "Reactionary Utopian" e-subscription service may read it in its entirety. Still, I hope these few paragraphs demonstrated what you're missing...

Barack Obama rocks (X): "The New Yorker's" got his number...

David & Tim Bayly — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:20:39 -0400

(Tim) Back in 1987, I found this comment about Ronald Reagan's 1984 presidential campaign interesting enough that I filed it for future reference. If this is what they had to say about Ronald Reagan, imagine what they could do with Barack Obama's "Time for Change" were they so inclined. But of course, they aren't.

The 1984 Reagan campaign ad from TV with the line "It’s morning in America again," …conjures up pure atmosphere rather than any specific political aim or accomplishment. It refers to feeling good rather than to doing anything good--not to mention being good. (In our culture, the swift decline in recent years of the idea of "guilt," as an unwelcome leftover from our Puritan legacy, seems to have been followed in short order by a less noticed decline in the idea of accomplishment.)

Unfortunately, a notable characteristic of feeling good (or of feeling bad, for that matter) is its very loose connection with anything outside the one doing the feeling. (“Notes and Comment”, The New Yorker, January 19, 1987)

How to choose a church...

David & Tim Bayly — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:33:54 -0400

Out of the kindness of our church and her elders, Mary Lee and I are away on a two-week study leave for me to work on completing a book tentatively titled, How To Choose a Church: Lessons from the Apostolic Church in Jerusalem. Dear Mary Lee has suggested I post a short excerpt and ask for your prayers for the completion of the work, and that it would serve the Church well. So would you please pray for this work?

Maybe it would be good to mention that most of the posts, but particularly the last two--on divorce and remarriage, and why David and I still call ourselves "evangelicals"--were written some time ago and, since then, have been awaiting posting.

Here's the preface...

PREFACE

For about fifteen years, now, Mary Lee and I have ministered in a university community where a large part of our congregation moves each summer. Once or twice, we’ve lost as many as a quarter of our members in a year, most of them leaving shortly after commencement for graduate school or a job in a new location. So we have a steady stream of members asking us, “Do you know a good church in Nashville,” or “Do you have any recommendations for how to choose a church?”

Sometimes we can recommend a church. More commonly, though, one of our pastors meets with the member, gives him a few contacts in his new city, and makes a couple suggestions on how to choose a new church home. Like many of the questions we answer over and over again, we began to wonder whether there was a helpful book we could recommend? Nothing too long. Just something to provide a start in the right direction.

For years, I was in the habit of saying the best question to ask of a church’s elders or pastor was whether they practiced church discipline. There are so many factors in making the choice of a church home that, rather than listing them all, I thought this would be a silver bullet, able to pierce to the heart of the matter, quickly weeding out those congregations that didn’t fear God and were unconcerned about holiness.

Hearing back from our members the responses they got to that question, though, it became apparent there were few churches that would admit to not practicing church discipline. Typically, the elder or pastor would trot out a case of discipline—sometimes many years earlier—that had involved a notorious sinner. He’d recount how they’d excommunicated the man. Then he’d look at our former member and ask if he had any other questions?

Trouble was, the cases used as illustrative of each church’s commitment to discipline almost always involved a crime or some serious sexual sin; never greed, gossip, or divisiveness—things that were more a matter of subjective judgment than objective fact. Also, the examples the pastor or elder gave always involved the formal disciplines of public censure or excommunication. They would never speak of the normal discipline a healthy church carries on week in, week out—from the pulpit through correction and rebuke, as a part of conversations before or after Sunday school classes, or during the fellowship of a weekly home fellowship group.

This is to say that everyone thought of discipline only in terms of the formal response of a church to sin that had become so notorious that the shame of not dealing with it had become painful enough for the church’s elders (or deacons) that their commitment not to cast the first stone was finally overcome by their stronger commitment to avoid the scorn of their congregation.

Maybe you’ll understand my saying that this is a very limited understanding of the discipline of the Apostolic church as its inner community life is recorded for us in the New Testament. But more on this later.

As the years went by, it became clear we’d have to come up with a few more suggestions of questions to ask in choosing a church. This book is the result.

Although our church is reformed in its doctrinal commitments, with the Westminster Standards part of our Constitution, I’m hopeful this book won’t be too offensive to brothers who aren’t reformed. Rather, I hope what I’ve written is sufficiently anchored in the record Scripture provides us of the Apostolic church that a broad cross-section of evangelical or Bible-believing Christians will find it helpful. Because finally, it has not been my purpose to convince readers of the correctness of my own personal preferences regarding this or that aspect of church life, but to show what Scripture commands concerning the worship and fellowship of the Household of Faith, the Church of the Living God, the Pillar and Foundation of the Truth, the precious Bride of Christ.

May the Holy Spirit use this little work to help you find a church where you and your loved ones may grow into maturity in Jesus Christ, kept safe for the great Marriage Feast of the Lamb.

Still evangelical after all these years...

David & Tim Bayly — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:19:54 -0400

(Tim) Some of our elders and closest friends think the commitment David and I have to evangelicalism is quixotic, with the kindest of them hoping we'll see the light some day, and give it up. It's not likely.

Take the sermon text this past Lord's Day, for instance. It was Matthew 22:34-40, where Matthew records the exchange between Jesus and a lawyer who asks Him which is the greatest commandment? Jesus answers that the greatest commandments is to love God with all our heart and soul and mind.

Today's evangelicalism has eviscerated love of much of its objective biblical content, so I'm not suggesting anyone take out membership in a megachurch and join in a sing-along...

It's easy.
All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
All you need is love (all together now)
All you need is love (everybody)
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.

On the other hand, I wouldn't propose old school presbyterianism, either, where it carefully avoids placing any emphasis on conversion--what Jesus called being "born again"--and has no intimacy, fellowship, or house-to-houseness at the center of Christian life...

The Lord's Supper without unity around the Table is a violation of that Table. Without that unity, love of God and neighbor is a sham. Our Lord made this clear when He initiated the Lord's Supper in the context of His prayer:

I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. (John 17:20-23)

Yet really, Lennon was on to something here. All we need is love. Not the ceremonial laws. Not circumcision. Not the Sabbath. Not phylacteries. Not circumcision. Not the icons. Not the Mass, Eucharist, consubstantiation, or the weekly celebration of the Lord's Supper. Not covenant-renewal liturgies. Not baptism in the Name of the Triune God administered by a properly ordained minister of the Word and Sacrament. But love.

You say I'm setting up a false antithesis. Really?

Consider. Jesus could have answered this question in a number of other ways. The scribes and Pharisees did. Most of them considered the ceremonial law weightier than the moral law. And taking their speculation down to the individual laws, they were split over whether the weightiest law was the Sabbath, phylacteries, or circumcision. But love? No one would have expected that to be Jesus' answer. And if we're honest, we'll admit we wouldn't answer that way today. Sure, the answer wasn't unknown in Jesus' time; and yet, who'd have guessed it? Love?

Apparently, faith without love is dead.

Roman Catholic and Protestant divorce and remarriage...

David & Tim Bayly — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:56:00 -0400

(Tim) Divorce is one of the most difficult questions pastors and elders face as we shepherd God's flock. Providing spiritual counsel in cases where husband and wife don't get along is relatively easy. Much harder are those cases in which husbands or wives physically abuse their spouses, fathers or stepfathers sexually abuse their children, husbands or wives commit serious sexual sin (what Jesus refers to as "porneia" in the exception clause of Matthew 19), or husbands demand their wives and children deny the faith. Each of these matters requires the most careful study of Scripture, prayer, and pastoral counsel. Sometimes the result is a session (board of elders) recommendation of divorce.

In the twelve years since Church of the Good Shepherd was founded, our session has made such a recommendation two or three times, each by unanimous consent. Sometimes it's hard to say whether the believing or unbelieving spouse is the one taking the initiative in the divorce. This is why it's impossible to say precisely how many times we've counseled divorce. We don't make the decision--the innocent party does. Yet neither do we abandon that innocent party to their own counsel. Our Westminster Standards are correct..

in their statement:

Although the corruption of man be such as is apt to study arguments, unduly to put asunder those whom God hath joined together in marriage; yet nothing but adultery, or such willful desertion as can no way be remedied by the Church or civil magistrate, is cause sufficient of dissolving the bond of marriage; wherein a public and orderly course of proceeding is to be observed; and the persons concerned in it, not left to their own wills and discretion in their own case. (WCF XXIV, 6)

Although things would be considerably easier for the session if it steered clear of providing counsel at such times, we believe the Confession is right to exhort sessions that the couple ought not to be "left to their own wills and discretion in their own case."

When a church member pursues divorce at the counsel of the session, there are folks inside and outside the church who are scandalized that Christians, let alone elders, would give such counsel. These folks say they're opposed to any divorce for any reason at any time. At first blush, their position seems to be on a higher road of spiritual devotion. When I was fresh out of seminary, I may have agreed with them. Over the years, though, it's become apparent things aren't always as they seem, and this not simply due to the callouses that come with age.

Some time back, I preached a series of seven sermons from Matthew 19 on the biblical doctrine of divorce and remarriage. Divorce is terribly destructive of the social fabric of a nation, of individual men and women, of households, of children (young and old), of churches, and of immortal souls made in the Image of God. There is little done by pastors, elders, and Titus 2 women that is more important than the work of reconciliation between husbands and wives who are tempted to pursue divorce for marital difficulties other than sexual uncleanness and desertion by an unbeliever.

But note I said "other than sexual uncleanness and desertion by an unbeliever." In these two circumstances, Scripture approves of divorce. In Matthew 19:9, Jesus explicitly states that divorce is right and proper in cases of sexual uncleanness. And in 1Corinthians 7:15, the Apostle Paul explicitly declares the believing spouse is "not under bondage" when an unbelieving spouse wants out of a marriage. So in these two cases, God Himself approves of divorce.

No divorce for any reason at any time is essentially the Roman Catholic position, but the Reformers explicitly rejected that position. Why?

Well, to bring the question into our own time, the tension of setting up a system where salvation depends upon the good works of infusion--attending Mass being principal among those works--and then to deny hundreds of millions of divorced souls access to the Sacrament because of their divorce; and finally, to offer the services of canon lawyers who, for a fee, will work on an annulment does seem cynical.

Some time back, commenting on the vindication of Joseph Kennedy's ex-wife, Sheila Rausch, in her finally-successful battle to get the Vatican to reverse the annulment her husband had received from the Archdiocese of Boston, The Independent reported:

There are eight million divorced and remarried Catholics in the US; although the country contains only 6 per cent of the world's Catholics, it accounts for three-quarters of all annulments sanctioned by the Vatican each year. In 1968, the American Catholic Church granted only 600 annulments a year. That figure is now 60,000.

The issue cropped up in 2004 when it emerged that John Kerry, a Catholic and Democratic presidential candidate, had obtained an annulment of his first marriage. It might arise this time around as well. Another Catholic, the former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, is the front-runner for the Republican nomination in 2008. He has had one of his two previous marriages annulled.

Here's an interesting article on the larger context of Roman Catholic annulments.

So, things aren't always the way they seem, are they? And this is true in the Protestant church, too. There are pastors who say they're opposed to any remarriage after divorce, but it turns out their churches don't agree with them and the other pastors on staff have no hesitation remarrying those who are divorced.

This post is not intended to be a Biblical treatise on divorce. Others have done a much better job than I could (scroll down to the position statement on divorce--it's an invaluable resource).

But it's worth saying that, particularly in this matter, there ought to be some degree of symmetry between what we say we believe and the common practice in the churches we serve as pastors and elders. If we've been the pastor of a church for several decades; if our church still neither agrees with our position on remarriage nor practices it in its common life; if the other pastors on staff don't agree or practice our convictions either; if our church has any number of couples who have been remarried after a divorce, although by someone other than us, and we believe these couples are adulterous; then really, this state of affairs is similar to the state of affairs in the American Roman Catholic church.

This is not a vote in favor of pragmatism, but we should see that the Reformers had good reasons to sanction divorce and remarriage in cases of porneia and abandonment by an unbeliever. They are biblical exceptions, after all.

And regardless of the difficulty of determining the correct course of action in particular cases, this work properly belongs to elders and pastors, as the Westminster Standards point out.

For more on the Reformers' reforms in this area, here's a book on adultery and divorce in Calvin's Geneva recommended by my brother, David. It's author, Robert Kingdon, taught me reformation history during my undergraduate days at University of Wisconsin.

Cindy McCain rocks (I): And contra Barack Obama, she thinks babies born alive should live...

David & Tim Bayly — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:32:28 -0400

(Tim) Last night, Michele Peatie left a kind comment here in which she mentioned her blog, Unborn Word of the Day. My curiosity piqued, I went and read some of her posts including this on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of orthodox Roman Catholic French composer, Olivier Messiaen. If you're not familiar with Messiaen's music, try this.

Further down the page was this gem of a post, "Living Pro-Life - 3 Politicians." Here Mrs. Peatie tells the stories of two female politicians' response to their Down Syndrome children, as well as the adoption by Senator John McCain and his wife, Cindy, of a special needs child from Mother Teresa's orphanage in Bangladesh.

A teenager now, the McCain's daughter, Bridget, would not have survived without surgery and years of rehabilitation. Cindy brought her home and, with her husband, provided her surgery, care, and love. Actually, Mrs. McCain brought back two babies: The other is also a teenager, now, and was adopted by one of McCain's aids, Wes Gullett, and his wife. Her name is Nicki. She too needed much medical care and Mr. Gullett says he "never saw a hospital bill" for her care, implying the McCain's paid for it all.

Turning to another politician who shows love for the poorest among us, this woman is a member of Feminists for Life and the Governor of Alaska...

Governor Sarah Palin gave birth to their fifth child, Trig Paxson Van Palin, on April 18th. With her family, Governor Palin welcomed him to this world with this statement: "Trig is beautiful and already adored by us. We knew through early testing he would face special challenges, and we feel privileged that God would entrust us with this gift and allow us unspeakable joy as he entered our lives." Isn't that wonderful?

Over eighty percent of children diagnosed with disabilities while in the womb are aborted each year. The Van Palins knew of Trig's Down Syndrome back in December, four months before his birth. He was one of the twenty percent who escape the slaughter of Planned Parenthood. And after he was born, he escaped the slaughter Senator Obama is zealous to protect.

Thank you, Michele, for these stories of love which have partly restored my hope for these United States and our public servants.

Barack Obama rocks (IX): More bloodthirsty than Teddy Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, and Barbara Boxer...

David & Tim Bayly — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:41:03 -0400

(Tim) Those Christian hipsters still mesmerized by Senator Obama, thinking him to be a gentleman, need to watch this video. And anyone wondering how believers could vote for such a man need only listen to a podcast of the sermons these hispters sit under, week after weak. Vacuous and sentimental, but so very chic.

Pastoral approaches to opposition...

David & Tim Bayly — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:34:42 -0400

(Tim: For those who skip the comments, here's one just posted as part of an exchange under the post, "Slaughterhouse-Two hundred and fifty thousand...." It would be good to read this in context, seeing the comments that gave rise to it. Regardless, the issues here dealt with come up frequently enough on this blog that I thought I'd give it main level posting in order to make some of the methods David and I employ on this blog more clear to our readers.)

* * *

Dear Friends,

It's unusual for such comments as that made by Ben above to be signed, and thus for us to know the person and life that's given rise to them. My guess is that, almost always, such comments come from desperate sinners who make no effort to hide it; their anger and tormented consciences are right there in plain sight.

It's my inclination to deal with them one of two ways: Either dismiss them and delete their comments, or call them to the Cross. Arguing and exposure are not my first choice.

On the other hand, most of the comments put up here on this blog that oppose what we write--particularly on matters such as abortion and sexuality--come from those who think of themselves as leaders, wise souls, deep thinkers, the cream of the crop. These people should be treated in an entirely different way; not at all with patience and tenderness, but satire, irony, and any other weapon that will expose them before the eyes of the sheep...

To help myself in this, I always keep the distinction before my eyes that Jesus made between the scribes and Pharisees, on the one hand; and poor sinners, on the other. With the first, He was satirical, ironic, and inscrutable; at times with weal, but almost always woe. Sometimes even a whip. He called them "hypocrites" over and over again, publicly.

Sinners, though, He hung with and led to faith and repentance.

We ought to take Him as our model. It won't be easy to diagnose the person with just one comment, lacking the additional details personal contact gives us. And often our diagnosis will differ with one of us seeing a sinner where the other sees a wolf. That’s fine.

What we all need to see, though, is that there is a place for exposure of wolves. And when we’re dealing with an elder or pastor who’s a wolf, exposure is required. In this connection, I often think of Luther’s comment (particularly the final paragraph):

“In regard to doctrine we observe especially this defect that, while some preach about the faith by which we are to be justified, It is still not clearly enough explained how one shall attain to this faith, and almost all omit one aspect of the Christian faith without which no one can understand what faith is or means. For Christ says in the last chapter of Luke [24:47] that we are to preach in his name repentance and forgiveness of sins.

"Many now talk only about the forgiveness of sins and say little or nothing about repentance. There neither is forgiveness of sins without repentance nor can forgiveness of sins be understood without repentance. It follows that if we preach the forgiveness of sins without repentance that the people imagine that they have already obtained the forgiveness of sins, becoming thereby secure and without compunction of conscience. This would be a greater error and sin than all the errors hitherto prevailing. Surely we need to be concerned lest, as Christ says In Matt. 12 [:45] 'the last state becomes worse than the first.'

"Therefore we have instructed and admonished pastors that it is their duty to preach the whole gospel and not one portion without the other. For God says in Deut. 4 [:2]: ‘You shall not add to the word ...nor take from it.’ There are preachers who now attack the pope because of what he has added to the Scriptures, which unfortunately is all too true. But when these do not preach repentance, they tear out a great part of Scripture. They have very little good to say about the eating of meat and the like, though they should not keep silent when they have an opportunity to defend Christian liberty against tyranny. What else is this than what Christ says in Matthew 23 [:24]: ‘Straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel?’

"So we have admonished them to exhort the people diligently and frequently to repent and grieve over their sins and to fear the judgment of God. Nor are they to neglect the greatest and most important element of repentance, for both John and Christ condemned the Pharisees more severely for their hypocritical holiness than for ordinary sins. The preachers are to condemn the gross sins of the common man, but more rigorously demand repentance where there is false holiness."

With love and deep appreciation for the help you all give in your comments, here,

Tim Bayly

Slaughterhouse-Two hundred and fifty thousand (per year)...

David & Tim Bayly — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 06:46:00 -0400

(Tim, w/thanks to Mark, James, and David) Across the country, Christians should be refusing to participate in United Way campaigns that fund Planned Parenthood. It's not enough that some United Way chapters allow donors to specify certain charities or exclude others. We should have nothing to do with an organization that provides a single dollar of support for those making a living off the slaughter of unborn babies safely nestled in their mother's womb.

Planned Parenthood is wicked, ruthless, heartless, cruel, deceptive, bloodthirsty, and depraved. Planned Parenthood is also obscenely rich.

How many of your tax dollars will be used this year to fund these worshipers of Molech? Have you and the men of your church opposed that funding? Let's not be monkey see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil men.

To help in our recovery of the pure religion that is undefiled before God and the Father, here are some recent articles exposing the business end of Planned Parenthood...

First, these graphs doing the numbers as only The Wall Street Journal could. Turns out, Planned Parenthood ended this past year with a surplus of $100,000,000 on annual revenue of $1,000,000,000.

Second, another article from The Wall Street Journal detailing Planned Parenthood's expansion out of poverty services into the greener pastures of suburban shopping malls.

Third, a piece from National Review illustrating how those who throw out the big laws end up replacing them with thousands of little ones. National Review reports a Massachusetts Planned Parenthood affiliate has made plans to build a “green” clinic constructed of materials that are recycled or otherwise environmentally friendly. Dianne Luby, president of the Planned Parenthood's Bay State branch, is quoted saying: “we’re trying to reposition ourselves as caring about their health, about prevention, about a sustainable planet.”

A sustainable planet? Does the murder of somewhere around 75,000,000 unborn babies each year qualify us for "sustainable planet" status? And if so, may I ask precisely what is it that's being sustained if coming generations of the unborn are being slaughtered?

Jonathan Swift himself couldn't satirize this monstrosity.

Phil Ryken on B. B. Warfield and woman deacons: a correction...

David & Tim Bayly — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:43:00 -0400

(Tim: Given the importance of this correction, we'll leave this post at the top for a few days. Please check below for more recent posts. Thanks.)

Speaking of Bryan Chapell putting forward Phil Ryken for service on a study committee on woman deacons, I held off correcting some significant errors in Phil's commentary on 1Timothy 3:8-13 until I'd been able to notify him of those errors, giving him a chance to correct the text of the PDF available for download. A week and a half after we exchanged e-mails (Phil was quite cordial, by the way), it appears the text hasn't yet been corrected. The errors appear in Phil's commentary issued as part of P&R's Reformed Expository Commentary Series, and specifically his comments on 1Timothy 3:8-13 where the Apostle Paul enumerates qualifications for the office of deacon. In this text, Phil misquotes B. B. Warfield...

Phil placed this section of his commentary on his church's web site and the document has been widely circulated within the PCA leading up to this year's assembly. It's the section that deals with the controversy of woman deacons, giving Phil's position on the matter. But more importantly, this is where Phil gives the position taken by Princeton's revered B. B. Warfield, and it's Phil's quotes and summary of Warfield that are in error.

Let me simply quote from my e-mail to Phil:

* * *

(Two places) you quote from Warfield's essay which you use to support your position (on woman deacons) are misleading. Here are the quotes from your commentary, followed by the actual text of Warfield's article in the original (B. B. Warfield, “Presbyterian Deaconesses,” Presbyterian Review [1889]):

First, this quote from your commentary:

Closer to our own times, Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield was a strong proponent of women deacons. Warfield taught at Princeton and was among the leading conservative evangelicals at the turn of the twentieth century. He based his argument for deaconesses partly on the example of Phoebe, and partly on a letter from the Roman governor Pliny to the Emperor Trajan. The letter, which was written around A. D. 112, referred to women as holding a servant office in the church. Warfield’s conclusion was that these women “constituted a female diaconate similar to and of like standing with the board of deacons which, in the New Testament, we find in every church.”

(But here is the) text showing Warfield's words as they appear in context in the original. I have placed the words you chose to quote from Warfield in italics, below:

When we seek Biblical warrant, we have only the isolated phrase, “Phebe, the deaconess;” when we ask after the testimony of the first age of the church, we have only Pliny’s witness that the church in Bithynia had ancillæ which they called ministræ; and after that all is darkness until the deaconesses emerge into light again as part of the already considerably corrupted ecclesiastical system of the third century. We have no Biblical account of the qualifications for the office or its duties, and no very early account of the functions it actually exercised. We are left only to the meager inferences that as Phebe was “a deaconess of the church that is at Cenchreae,” the office was a local one and inhered in the individual congregation; that as Pliny tortured two ancillæ, there may have been a plurality of deaconesses in each congregation; and that as the name was primitively the same and the functions exercised by them from the third century were parallel, they constituted a female diaconate similar to and of like standing with the board of deacons which, in the New Testament, we find in every church. Theories aside, this is all we know of the primitive deaconesses.

Seeing these words in context; but more, reading the essay in its entirety clarifies that Warfield was no strong proponent of deaconesses, and no proponent at all of deaconesses as they are employed by churches across the PCA today. More specifically, your use of the above quote from Warfield's text is made to carry more water than those reading the original would think his actual words should rightly bear.

Your readers would hardly be led to the conclusion ...that the paragraph is filled with words and statements such as "only the isolated phrase, 'Phebe the deaconess,'" or "only Pliny's witness," or "after that, all is darkness," or "part of the already considerably corrupted ecclesiastical system of the third century," or "no Biblical account," or "no very early account," or "we are left only to the meager inferences," or "theories aside, this is all we know of the primitive deaconesses."

...Second, this quote from your commentary:

The church of Warfield’s day did not ordain women to serve as deaconesses, but Warfield himself recognized the need for putting the gifts of women into service. He believed that returning women to the ministry of deaconess would restore order in the church: “If the people of a particular church would simply elect women as well as men to the office of deacon, making one board or two separate boards, at their pleasure, of course ordained with the same vows and responsible to the same authority . . . the order is restored.”

(But here is the) text showing Warfield's words as they appear in context in the original:

In these arrangements, we observe, “widows” are confused with deaconesses ; and the success of this revival of the office was doubtless greatly handicapped by this unfortunate circumstance, requiring, as it did; that the deaconesses should be at least sixty years old. It is interesting to note, even in this error, the care that the Congregationalists took humbly to follow the Scriptural form; and therefore also it was that they made the office a local one, belonging like the deacons themselves, to the individual church. It was in this understanding of it also that Dr. McGill desired its renewal. “If the people of a particular church” he says, “would simply elect women as well as men to the office of deacon, making one board or two separate boards, at their pleasure, of course ordained with the same vows and responsible to the same authority, as now provided in our constitution, the order is restored.” He suggested, no doubt, further that, “from this beginning, a development could be made of larger boards, in gradation; corresponding to Presbyteries, Synods, and General Assembly, by way of representation; keeping records at every step of such gradation, and reporting their work done or projected to the Judicatories of each plane, composed of ministers and elders.” But he would scarcely have claimed a direct Scriptural warrant for this “development,” as he claimed it for the office of deaconess itself; nor indeed was it wholly congruous with his suggestion that the deaconesses might be incorporated into the already existing board of deacons, who are not organized thus into graded bodies. This development thus appears to be an excrescence on Dr. McGill’s view of the form which the revival of the deaconess should take; the board of deacons find no difficulty in working upon the universal church through the proper officers of the church to which they belong, who represent them along with the whole church; and no more should the corresponding board of deaconesses require a separate parallel organization, carrying up their influence to Presbytery, Synod or Assembly. It is evident that this extension was due to Dr. McGill’s earnest desire to bring the women’s organizations at present existing into some sort of vital connection with the church at large.

Here you see that your assertion that Warfield "believed that returning women to the ministry of deaconess would restore order in the church" stands on a foundation of false attribution. The words you use to support this assertion which you attribute to Warfield himself are not Warfield's words at all. Rather, they are McGill's words, clearly delineated by quote marks in the original.

My dear brother, I'm sure you recognize these are serious errors, and those who have read your commentary, whether hard copy or the e-text that is hosted on your church web site, will be misled by the text as it now stands.

* * *

That's the end of this excerpt from my e-mail to Phil.

Now, just a few comments about these errors. First, I'm certain neither Phil nor the P&R editors were intentional in this error, nor in failing to correct it later. But now that the error is known, it's incumbent upon both the author and publishing company not to allow future distribution of this book without an errata or oops sheet inserted in the book at the pages containing the errors. Similarly with what's available on the web: it should be corrected immediately.

Second, it's clear that this error has received the widest distribution and will be for years to come the most likely place people learn of Warfield's position on woman deacons. So I encourage our readers to read Warfield's complete essay on the subject for themselves, and to give the actual essay the widest possible distribution so the error that's out there will be corrected by people who have read the primary source. Yes, Warfield was supportive of something approximating deaconesses, but how he did and didn't support them is critically important.

Third, learn the lesson I learned years ago, that you should never depend upon modern authors for your knowledge of primary sources. Don't depend on anyone else to read them for you, and to report to you what they say.