Most of the unbelieving friends I know are convinced that autonomy is true freedom. We must have the ability to do one thing as much as another, to do evil as much as good. We must be a law unto ourselves. Only then, we are told, do we have true freedom.

Similar sentiments are obviously part of Arminian theology. Libertarian freewill (of one version) states that a person must be able to do A as much as non-A to be “genuinely free.” Freedom, then, is defined not in terms of conformity with God’s law or even human nature as God defines it, but can actually be defined in terms of breaking God’s law. Doing evil acts supposedly demonstrates our freedom.

But Scripture never defines freedom in terms of how much we can do, one thing as much as another. Freedom is freedom to do what is right – it is acting in conformity with God’s law. In fact, when people engage in sin time after time, they do not demonstrate freedom, but slavery (the one who sins is a slave to sin). The promise of autonomy (stemming from Satan’s promise in the garden) is a lie, for autonomy (attempts at autonomy) result in the exact opposite of what is promised. Premarital sex, kegger parties, embezzlement, gossip, and whole hosts of sins promise much, but gives only condemnation and chains in return.

A human being demanding autonomy is like a fish demanding freedom from water, freedom to live on land. Such freedom is destructive to human nature. It is not the way to self-fulfillment; it is the way of death. (Frame, DCL, 731)

Lots of projects!

That’s about the best way to summarize the current state of life. Many book publications, many journal publications, many seminary courses, many sermons, many job applications, many half-read, fully read, and unread  books, many holiday plans, many interpersonal drama episodes, and much excitement for our wedding in June. So, many plans, many blessings, many hopes, fears and dreams. Sorry to keep it all so broad, but I must remain cryptic for the majority of things, at least for now. Pray for us all.

Justin Taylor had a great post on Van Til that someone posted in the prosapologian chat channel. Apparently Taylor is very familiar with Bahnsen’s work Van Til’s Apologetic. Good for him, and I hope others in the mainstream evangelical world will take heed to his advice and read Bahnsen’s work thoroughly (I should re-read it myself sometime soon).

I just finished reading the Gospel Coalition’s Confession of Faith for the first time the other day. I really liked it. I’m always curious about new attempts to be somewhat ecumenical. Drawing lines is hard, hard work. But it’s necessary, and I appreciate a lot of the work that TGC folks have done.

Almost finished with Frame’s 900 page work The Doctrine of the Christian Life. Truly one of the best books on Christian ethics I’ve ever read. Highly recommended to everyone. I appreciate Frame’s willingness to be so frank about matters and stick his neck out when working out the tough details, even though it means no one reading his work will probably end up agreeing with him 100% of the time. But causing quibbles is a fair price to pay for making the broad and necessary strokes of establishing a truly Christian ethic. His section on the Sabbath has been the most helpful work on the subject that I’ve come across, though I’m still working out my own views. (I thought it was funny how, if Frame’s analysis is correct, Calvin’s view of the Sabbath probably has more in common with D.A. Carson than the Westminster Confession). The Frame vs. Grudem debate on whether “lying” is sometimes permissible has also caught my interest.

Just another recommendation that I’ve repeated throughout the last several years: The Pillar New Testament Commentary series. By far, the most obvious and necessary choice for serious students of the New Testament. Unmatched balance and depth and clarity. No surprise – that’s the very reason they exist. I thank the Lord each time a new volume comes off the press! After the ESV Study Bible, it’s the first place I go when I have a specific question about an NT text. I’d go to the NICNT series next, but they aren’t in my library yet. (Focusing on saving up funds for the NICOT series, a whopping $1100 list price, but usually $600 at most stores…I seriously need more OT reference).

Time for another highly opinionated dose of reality.

In the last year I’ve found a few Christian women pretty darn inspiring for a young academic like me. I’m talking like really smart housewives with fabulous scholarship and writing.

But I’ve also found three other figures whose works (and often, tone) continually make me vomit…Enjoy!

To heed:

1. Nancy Pearcey (MA Biblical Studies, Covenant Theological Seminary, honorary doctorate from Philadelphia Biblical University, author of Total Truth, mothers and homeschools two)
2. Susan Bauer (M.Div. Westminster Theological Seminary, Ph.D. College of William and Mary, author of The History of the Ancient World, mothers and homeschools four)
3. Diane Poythress (Ph.D, Westminster Theological Seminary, author of Reformer of Basel, mother of two)

To run away from:

1. Nancy Murphy (Th.D Graduate Theological Union, Ph.D. philosophy, author of Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies?
2. Patricia Williams (Ph.D., philosophy, author of Doing without Adam and Eve and Where Christianity Went Wrong)
3. Elaine Pagels (M.A. Stanford U., Ph.D. Harvard U., author of The Gnostic Gospels)

I don’t feel like I have to justify and wax on and on about the first three, and you may be wondering what my reasoning is for the last three…

Murphy isn’t a terrible scholar; some of her works in theological anthropology might be helpful. But as a materialist, her work undermines a biblical anthropology at a very crucial moment in history.

Patricia Williams’ work Doing Without Adam and Eve demonstrates that common young-earth creationist fundy gone super-liberal, all in a tone of revenge.

Pagels, we’ve recently critiqued her work on Revelation etc. recently on this blog. After the tragic death of her husband, she just kind of went overboard and started promoting perverse gospels and a lot of early-church pseudo history.

The world of female Christian scholarship is not really any different than the world of male Christian scholarship. Our job is simply to take what is true and use it, and give praise and appropriate criticism where it’s due.

How can a secular organization be qualified to judge the competence of a school for Christian ministry? In my judgment, the only organization qualified to judge the performance of a seminary is the church. It is, I think, legitimate for seminaries to seek outside help to warrant their financial accountability, and secular affirmations of the academic qualifications of professors is a valuable thing. But I bristle at the huge efforts required of a seminary to gain secular approval, and the changes that seminaries sometimes make in their programs to get that approval. Seeking such accreditation is not sinful in itself, but it certainly poses challenges to schools that seek to keep the first commandment. (Frame, Doctrine of the Christian Life, 438)

A few errors and issues compels one to respond to brother Hart’s recent post “Young, Restless, and Dunked.” He has essentially targeted Justin Taylor (who apparently represents a larger group of Calvinist Baptists who refer to themselves as “Reformed”) and Hart’s recent announcement that he’s not paedobaptist. Hart concludes his post:

Does this mean that the Young and Restless or other Baptists are bad people? Of course, not. Does it mean they aren’t Christian? No. Does it mean that they should not claim to be Reformed? Well, duh!

I’ve commented on what it means to be “Reformed” before (here), so I won’t go much into that. But a few other comments are in order.

After quoting Wellum, Hart says:

Actually, the covenant of grace as taught in Reformed confessions like that of the OPC has no trouble recognizing differences between the Old and New Testaments. In fact, the real flattening out took place when Baptists convened in London in 1689 to revise the affirmations of the Westminster Assembly and proceeded to delete important portions of the chapter (seven) on the covenant of grace, like the following…

Of course, Wellum never asserted that OPC folks simply don’t know “differences between the Old and the New Testament.” Wellum simply said that the covenant of grace as a concept of unity can be wrongly used to downplay the progression of revelation (refer back to original quote). And that’s certainly true – and I would argue that it’s especially true in arguments for paedobaptism.

Secondly, as far as I know, neither Justin Taylor nor Wellum are members of (confessionally) Reformed Baptist Churches. Now maybe they’ve publicly stated that the 1689 Baptist Confession is the best expression of their faith, and I’m just not aware of it. That’s possible. But as far as I know, neither Taylor or Wellum are very known for being proponents of the 1689 Confession of faith. Just something to note, as Hart finds it necessary to critique the Confession.

Third, what Hart says about the history of the Confession is factually incorrect. The 1689 London Baptist Confession was first printed in 1677, not 1689. 1689 is simply the date in which over 100 baptist churches in London adopted it at the London General Assembly of the Particular Baptist churches. So when Hart says the Reformed Baptist churches got together “in 1689 to revise the affirmations of the Westminster Assembly,” he’s obviously mistaken, since the confession had been together for over a decade.

Furthermore, the major work of the Confession took place long before 1677, and it wasn’t merely to revise the Westminster Confession. The 1689 Confession is based off of the First London Baptist Confession, which was written in 1646 (two years before the Westminster Assembly finished), as well as the Savoy Declaration (1658) and of course, the Westminster Confession (1648). According to the preface of the 1689 Confession, work on the confession began in 1643. Therefore, even though there are great similarities between the Westminster Confession and the London Baptist Confession, it is a bit rash to simply say the Baptists got together (in 1689, especially) to revise the Westminster Confession.

Hart then makes a number of assertions that, in my opinion, also demonstrate his ignorance of the subject. I would simply challenge Dr. Hart to let go of the common broad strokes that supposedly justifies infant baptism and deal with the exegesis of the text of Scripture (as anyone “Reformed” should do!). Refute Barcellos‘ and Salter‘s essays, for example, that clearly demonstrate how Colossians 2:11-14 do not parallel circumcision and baptism as paedobaptists have claimed for many centuries. Refute Dr. White’s essay on the newness of the new covenant, since the non-newness of the New Covenant is required for (many, anyway)  Presbyterians in order to support paedo-baptism. Until that kind of interaction takes place, it’s just talk.

Hart makes a troubling accusation:

Taylor’s post should put to rest the claim by the Young and Restless crowd that they are Reformed. Their position on the sacrament of baptism differs little from Anabaptist teaching.

How ironic! A modern day OPC is accusing a baptist for discontinuity in their arguments for a particular sacrament. My question is obvious: is Hart’s reasons for baptizing babies really the same as John Calvin’s? Calvin said that infants are baptized into “future repentance and faith” (Inst, 4.16.20). Is that really one of Hart’s reasons for being a paedo-baptist? Because as far as I know, no OPC or PCA or any other Presbyterian would make such an exegetically-bankrupt argument. If that isn’t a reason to be paedo-baptist, then according to Hart’s own standards, he probably isn’t being “Reformed.”

In short, Hart needs to cut the rhetoric, the same-ole same-ole of paedobaptist apologetics, and deal with what Scripture really teaches. And I’d be more than happy to debate him (see format here) on say, for example, whether Acts 2:39 really supports paedobaptism or not.

Time for a small dose of common sense.

Michael Moore apparently wrote “10 Things We Want: A Proposal for Occupy Wall Street” a couple days ago. I just read it today:

1. Eradicate the Bush tax cuts for the rich and institute new taxes on
the wealthiest Americans and on corporations, including a tax on all
trading on Wall Street (where they currently pay 0%).

2. Assess a penalty tax on any corporation that moves American jobs to
other countries when that company is already making profits in
America. Our jobs are the most important national treasure and they
cannot be removed from the country simply because someone wants to
make more money.

3. Require that all Americans pay the same Social Security tax on all
of their earnings (normally, the middle class pays about 6% of their
income to Social Security; someone making $1 million a year pays about
0.6% (or 90% less than the average person). This law would simply make
the rich pay what everyone else pays.

4. Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, placing serious regulations on
how business is conducted by Wall Street and the banks.

5. Investigate the Crash of 2008, and bring to justice those who
committed any crimes.

6. Reorder our nation’s spending priorities (including the ending of
all foreign wars and their cost of over $2 billion a week). This will
re-open libraries, reinstate band and art and civics classes in our
schools, fix our roads and bridges and infrastructure, wire the entire
country for 21st century internet, and support scientific research
that improves our lives.

7. Join the rest of the free world and create a single-payer, free and
universal health care system that covers all Americans all of the
time.

8. Immediately reduce carbon emissions that are destroying the planet
and discover ways to live without the oil that will be depleted and
gone by the end of this century.

9. Require corporations with more than 10,000 employees to restructure
their board of directors so that 50% of its members are elected by the
company’s workers. We can never have a real democracy as long as most
people have no say in what happens at the place they spend most of
their time: their job. (For any U.S. businesspeople freaking out at
this idea because you think workers can’t run a successful company:
Germany has a law like this and it has helped to make Germany the
world’s leading manufacturing exporter.)

10. We, the people, must pass three constitutional amendments that
will go a long way toward fixing the core problems we now have. These
include:

a) A constitutional amendment that fixes our broken electoral system
by 1) completely removing campaign contributions from the political
process; 2) requiring all elections to be publicly financed; 3) moving
election day to the weekend to increase voter turnout; 4) making all
Americans registered voters at the moment of their birth; 5) banning
computerized voting and requiring that all elections take place on
paper ballots.

b) A constitutional amendment declaring that corporations are not
people and do not have the constitutional rights of citizens. This
amendment should also state that the interests of the general public
and society must always come before the interests of corporations.

c) A constitutional amendment that will act as a “second bill of
rights” as proposed by President Frankin D. Roosevelt: that every
American has a human right to employment, to health care, to a free
and full education, to breathe clean air, drink clean water and eat
safe food, and to be cared for with dignity and respect in their old
age.

My fiance’s comments on reading this was, “it reads like something I would write in junior high, like those creative-writing assignments where you dream up solutions to the world’s problems and put them down, thinking they’re just genius.” Yep.

Here’s a rational alternative to Moore’s nonsense, point by point (I encourage you to read them side by side):

1. Eradicate the progressive income taxes on the rich; in fact, remove all income taxes and property taxes from Americans and institute a fixed-rate national sales tax (“Fair Tax”).

2. Assess a penalty tax on any 9/11 conspiracy theorist who target the poor by attacking “corporations” for a living which, in seeking to make profit, are raising the standard of living for both the consumers (folks who love the sweet deals at Walmart, etc.) and the workers (those in foreign countries who would otherwise be paid less, or unemployed altogether, had it not been for the corporation).

3. Require that Social Security be completely abolished, as it makes no sense to require people to give my money to someone else so they can sit on it and spend it, only to return to me less than the principle at age 65. (Our government is the most financially irresponsible entity in world history: over 15 trillion in debt; do we really want to give it money to “invest”?).

4. Abolish the Central Bank: the Federal Reserve. (It is undoubtedly the cause of the business boom-bust cycle, and the robbery of Americans’ money via inflation).

5. Investigate 911 conspiracy theorists, and bring to justice those who are committing any crimes.

6. Reorder our nation’s spending priorities (actually create a budget that pays back debt, instead of slows the rate at which we accumulate debt). This will prevent America from being the world’s financial laughing stock, and give hopes to the average American that it’s possible for us to pay back what we’ve spent, even if it hurts.

7. Join the rest of world history and resist the temptation to give private-sector responsibilities over to the government – such as healthcare, since it will only end in debt, waste, and poor results (I know it’s a crazy idea, but doctors know more about healthcare, both in principle and in practice, than politicians concerned about the next election).

8. Immediately lift laws that prevent companies from drilling oil, so the price can be reduced and unemployed Americans stop paying more than they should for fruitless (and continually bankrupt) green programs.

9. Require government programs to be eliminated so that corporations can work more efficiently in achieving the goals of a people’s society.

10. We, the people, must pass three constitutional amendments that
will go a long way toward fixing the core problems we now have. These
include:

a) A constitutional amendment that fixes our broken electoral system
by 1) exposing voter fraud 2) making all illegal immigrants and those who have not paid taxes ineligible to vote.

b) A constitutional amendment declaring that corporations are made up of people and as such have the constitutional rights of citizens. This
amendment should also state that the interests of the general public
and society are manifested in the interests of corporations; corporations are no more “evil” than the individuals who comprise them, or than individuals who are not working for a corporation.

c) A constitutional amendment that that will act as a “second bill of
rights” as proposed by President Frankin D. Roosevelt: that every
American has a human right to create employment, to offer health care, to offer education, to produce clean air, to produce clean water and
safe food, and to create homes for the elderly – all without the input, intervention, or interruption of the American government system.

Happy thanksgiving! A Savior, a gracious God, a certain way of salvation and hope for tomorrow. The holiday is nothing but soft sentiments or a purely historical reflection for those who do not honor Christ as Lord. But for the Christian, our thanks goes beyond our own efforts and beyond chance events. It is truly meaningful. Our prayers and thanksgiving reaches the One who made us, brought us into existence, and will take us out from this world when he pleases. To him be all honor, glory, and thanks – for only He is worthy!