Van Til Announces Class Action Lawsuit Against Justin Taylor For Cruelty and Abuse of Bibliophiles

http://www.esvstudybible.org/images/countdown.swf

Just in case the talking dog doesn’t do it, this is a bit o’humor. I can’t wait to get my copy….and if it’s not here by the 15th, I’m starting a crusade to Wheaton.

Let me say hello to the Internet Monk audience and re-introduce myself. My name is Van Til, and in addition to my day job as the BHT’s Magic Tail Chasing Wonder Dog and technical producer at the Internet Monk Radio Podcast, I’m also a recent graduate of the St. Sadie’s School of Law. Yes, yours truly is a lawyer. (I’ve been chasing ambulances for years, but that’s another story.)

As an attorney, I’m constantly looking for financial opportnity injustice and suffering. I’m aware that some attorneys have reputations of using the misfortune of others in order to enrich themselves, but I would never consider such an abuse of our precious legal system….unless led to do so by the Holy Spirit with signs confirming. I have dedicated myself to representing those whose suffering goes largely overlooked because of the ability of “the man” to cover up, obfuscate and evade responsibility.

I am, therefore, announcing a class action lawsuit against Justin Taylor, the man responsible for the suffering of thousands of bookish Calvinists and Bibliophiles all over the world. My clients- whom I believe will soon include many of you reading this post- hope to reclaim millions of dollars in compensation for mental anquish and suffering.Continue reading “Van Til Announces Class Action Lawsuit Against Justin Taylor For Cruelty and Abuse of Bibliophiles”

Rebaptism: How Did We Get Here?

LINK: John H at Confessing Evangelical is one of six Lutherans in the UK. He comments on some of my advocacy of Wright’s “consensus” position on baptism. In my response to him I reference the document “Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry” from the WCC. I know, but it’s really excellent.

Just a friendly warning that I am not going to allow a free for all on infant baptism vs believer’s baptism. The post is on rebaptism.

There is one rebaptism in the Bible (Acts 19), and plenty of contention among Christians about exactly what is going on there. Unless Paul’s cryptic mention of “baptism for the dead” is a kind of rebaptism, then the Bible doesn’t speak directly to the topic.

Christians have demonstrated their inability to agree on the meaning of baptism for at least half a millenium. Jesus didn’t invent baptism, and unlike the Lord’s Supper, the Jewish roots of baptism are unclear. Ritual washings, Essene baptisms, Jewish convert baptisms- no one is really confident as to where John received his baptism- including the Pharisees of Jesus’ day. No one is sure what the disciples understood baptism to mean as they performed it during the ministry of Jesus. There is little agreement on why Jesus was baptized, and no agreement on the mode.

Baptism scholars like David Wright do offer up a consensus that has been helpful to me*: the earliest Christians baptized adult converts, almost certainly by immersion, relatively soon after a profession of faith.

The baptism of infants developed quickly, but was not universally normative. Catechetical instruction before baptism changed the way the church treated those coming to profess faith. The mode of baptism quickly became dependent on less water. The recognizable contours of the “Catholic” view of baptism were solidified by the time of Constantine.Continue reading “Rebaptism: How Did We Get Here?”

Rebaptism: What Is It?

Since I have some break time ahead of me, I’m going to do several (3?) posts on Rebaptism. I know there are several angles to this subject, varying according to your own denominational preference. I am going to be writing from my position as an evangelical, a Southern Baptist and a lifelong minister to youth.

It will be impossible for me to write these posts without using illustrations, and yes, those illustrations will be related to real events that I’ve experienced. If that gets close to home with people who know me, I assure you I’m not taking aim at you at all.

I’m going to write about rebaptism, an issue that has deeply affected and weakened my own denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, and an issue that touches every Christian communion I am aware of in some way.

Rebaptism is a very emotional issue. One reason we don’t talk about it is how quickly it becomes an occasion for disagreement and division. I have seen many tears and heard many angry words over this subject. Just thinking about it and remembering what I have experienced has brought strong emotions back to me, even as I wrote.Continue reading “Rebaptism: What Is It?”

Recommendation and Review: Saving Paradise by Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker

A lot more interesting than Brian Mclaren, and guranteed to make you twice as mad.

Sometimes I feel like I’ve wasted a lot of my reading time.

Let me explain that one. I read many books, and when I look back at them- or over my shoulder at them- it’s very obvious to me that since I was a boy of 15 up until today, a lot of my reading has been covering the same ground, over and over again. Different writers. Same basic stuff.

I’m a conservative evangelical Baptist. I have reformation leanings. I’m a communicator with and teacher of young people and adults. I’m curious about a lot of things related to religion as it touches on what I believe. When I draw the circle of books that concern all those things, there’s more than I could read in ten lifetimes.

But in my lifetime I’ve spent a great deal of time reading books within that circle that say the same things again and again. And I think thousands of other thinking, reading Christians would say the same thing: a lot of what I read tells me a great deal of what I already know. It’s not at all unusual for me to get fifty pages into a book and say, “What am I gaining by reading this?”Continue reading “Recommendation and Review: Saving Paradise by Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker”

I Can’t Say What I Want to Say About the 40/40 Prayer Emphasis….but You Can

LINK: Read Matt Davis’s take on the 40/40.

Resource: IM lurker Pastor Scott sends along Greg Boyd’s sermon/prayer guide for a current emphasis in his church called “The Great Reversal: The Upside Down Kingdom of God.” Woodland Hills Church media for the series will be here starting Oct. 5.

UPDATE: Read IMB Missionary in the comment threads.

I can’t blog what I want to blog on this post. Wouldn’t be prudent, as George H. W. Bush often said.

I’ve just spent the last 30 minutes looking through this Prayer Guide promoting the current big emphasis in the Southern Baptist Convention, The “40/40” Prayer emphasis.

The 40/40 Emphasis is for “Personal Revival and National Renewal.” It’s as big a focus on the culture war as I’ve seen in the SBC, straight up.Continue reading “I Can’t Say What I Want to Say About the 40/40 Prayer Emphasis….but You Can”

Hey America…We’re All Here

I haven’t written anything political in a while, but I find myself wondering….

Are we really as stupid in this country as the main stream media make us seem to be?

After more than two and a quarter centuries, are Americans really as clueless about their country as we seem to be listening to ourselves every night on television? Are we really as shockingly naive about America as we seem to be in the comment threads of so many political web pages and call in programs?

Do we not know that…..that we’re ALL here in America?

All of us.Continue reading “Hey America…We’re All Here”

The Missing Voice of the Christian Counter-Culture

(For N.T. Wright, Bono, Bob Dylan, Sara Groves, Derek Webb, Steve Earle, Larry Norman, Johnny Cash, Michael Been and Steve Taylor)

Floating somewhere around the web is a picture/mp3 of Anglican bishop and theologian N.T. Wright, complete in lavender shirt and bishop’s collar, playing Bob Dylan’s sixties anthem, “Blowing In the Wind” on an acoustic guitar.

It’s not anything I’d pay money to have on my ipod, and I doubt his audience was blown away. But I don’t think the bish was having a moment of youth minister envy. His admiration for Dylan and the counter-culture voices of the sixties comes from something else.

Wright was singing Dylan because, in his particular take on Christian eschatology, he sees something very admirable and good about those idealistic kids in the sixties. Something in their optimism and idealism resembles his belief that we are called to Kingdom work in every area of human life now. Wright believes that Christians are a Holy Spirit empowered Christian counter-culture movement at work with God in the world’s hopeless places and unsolvable problems. He profoundly believes in resurrection, but not in the despair that has overtaken much of the church- Protestant and Catholic- in these days.Continue reading “The Missing Voice of the Christian Counter-Culture”

An Internet Monk Exclusive: What The Bible Says About the American Economic Crisis

What does the Bible say about our current financial crisis?

Evangelicals who want to know how to pray for our economy and its leaders deserve to hear the Bible’s message for these financial times.

As a result of in-depth study on the subject of Biblical Principles for Financial Success, your Internet Monk can now release to the public the definitive teaching on “What The Bible Says About The American Economic Crisis.”

This is teaching you won’t get anywhere else. Be sure and read it all!

What the Bible says about the Wall Street crisis:Continue reading “An Internet Monk Exclusive: What The Bible Says About the American Economic Crisis”

Where Are They Keeping That Secret Book?

UPDATE: One actually should be wondering at what kind of church will a person be ostracized and labeled for not believing the whole enchilada. Who is drawing the lines here on what is and is not “essential” to the complementarian position?

Listening to the discussion at the “Send in The Clowns” post, I had a thought.

Some evangelicals seem to have a very detailed view of the issue of authority as it pertains to men and women in the church and in the family. Extremely detailed. Like they’ve got a book or something.

When I say detailed, I mean these brethren have a view of authority that answers all sorts of questions- detailed questions- right down to some rather astonishing specifics like who can read what book on what topic in what room with whom present.

Where is this information? Can I get my hands on it?Continue reading “Where Are They Keeping That Secret Book?”

Send In the Clowns

To the contrary….my friend Wyman Richardson says it’s a tempest in a teapot.

ONE MORE: A life well lived.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s Beth Moore’s (excellent) website. I don’t see the announcement anywhere that she is a teacher for women only. Looks like she’s a Bible teacher for anyone who wants to be taught.

UPDATE AGAIN: Bill Mackinnon writes “Ten Questions For Complementarians.” I’d like to read some answers. In fact, I wonder where the detailed theological exposition on the Southern Baptist doctrine on authority of men over women is laid out in Southern Baptist theology. Have I missed that one?

UPDATE: Just so you can see what the other side of this issue actually looks like with a human face…Pastor Julie Pennington-Russell is pastor of Decatur First Baptist (CBF, formerly SBC). Atlanta Magazine did a major piece on her and her pastoral ministry. (Please Lifeway, don’t shut down my website!)

Rereading the story of the story of Lifeway Christian stores pulling from sale a magazine with five female pastors on the cover, I was really overwhelmed with the vacuity of evangelicalism.

At what point is someone allowed to say that in those same Lifeway stores, the #1 selling Bible teaching marterials are the resources published by Lifeway by Beth Moore? When are we supposed to notice the dozens and dozens of Beth Moore books and workbooks? The Beth Moore aisle in most Lifeway stores? When are we supposed to notice that Beth Moore’s materials in Lifeway DWARF any male pastor or teacher? When do we get the exercise in pretzel logic that explains there’s no inconsistency in having a female Bible teacher with an audience larger than any pastor in a denomination that opposes women pastors?Continue reading “Send In the Clowns”