Faith | Books | Culture
As in regular life, you are under no obligation to interact with someone on the internet. This is especially true if someone is abusive or unkind or rude.
If someone (uninvited) walked up to you in a parking lot to yell or berate you, then you might walk away fast out of caution for safety’s sake. You can do the same online. [Read more…] about You Are under no Obligation to Interact with Someone on the Internet
In Toronto, a Jewish school resists lockdowns on the basis of breaching charter freedoms. In Alberta, authorities shut down Whistle Stop Cafe. In that same Province, authorities also arrested a mayoral candidate in connection to (but not exclusively for) breaching health guidelines. In Manitoba, Maxime Bernier, the leader of the PPC party was arrested for breaching health guidelines. I am sure I could cite many such examples across Canada.
Churches too have not escaped heavy application of law. Three pastors in Alberta have been arrested. Evidently, Alberta Health thinks it’s wise and good to shut down businesses, arrest mayoral candidates, and pastors even at the cusp of reopening the entire Province—which will happen on July 1st. Other churches have received fines. Chuches, politicians, schools, and businesses all have likewise received heavy applications of law in Canada.
I dislike such heavy-handed application of law against Christians in Canada. As I have said more than once, I support religious freedom in Canada, and so if someone feels conscience-bound to act in a certain way, then I support their freedom to do so. I also dislike immensely the heavy handed application of law against any citizen or business in Canada.
But here we are. [Read more…] about Persecution and Condemnation in Canada
John Peckham calls his conception of God covenantal theism. To make the case for covenantal theism, he uses a two-fold standard. Theological concussions must be biblically warranted and systematically coherent (250). Through this biblical and systematically coherent method, Peckham aims to describe God according to Scripture.
His goal is to better understand the nature and attributes of God (1). In pursuit of this understanding, he asks key questions about God that he believes the Bible can answer. “These questions include: Does God change? Does God have emotions” Does God know everything, including the future? Is God all-powerful? Does everything occur as God wills? Is God entirely good and loving? How can God be one God and three persons?” (1).
In this sense, even though Peckham aims to discern God according to biblical warrant, he nevertheless starts with a set of questions. I say this not as a critique but a clarification of how Peckham makes his argument. That said, Peckham’s Divine Attributes is full of Bible. In the first pages, Peckham lists biblical patterns of speech about God before summarizing these patterns. He also interacts widely with other contemporary writers, even some less known but important authors like James Dolezal.
Peckham summarizes his argument economically and in more than one place. By covenantal theism, he aims to describe God as the Bible describes him. The term covenantal conveys “that God enters into real back-and-forth relationship with creatures but does so voluntarily, remaining transcendent even as he condescends to be with us (immanent)” (37). He then defines the attributes he discerns in Scripture: “In brief, covenantal theism affirms God’s aseity and self-sufficiency, qualified immutability and passibility, everlasting eternity, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence and sovereign providence, conventional action, omnibenevolence, and relational triunity” (37).
He will also talk about God being analogically temporal and in a real relation with the world through, as noted, a back-and-forth covenantal relationship (250). He elsewhere explains: “While God’s essential nature is changeless, the covenantal God of Scripture changes relationally because he voluntarily engages in back-and-forth (covenant) relationship with creatures while always remaining the same trinitarian God who was and is and is to come” (254). While he claims to hold to a qualified immutability and impassibility, such statements do not seem to match historic idioms and notions of these concepts. Of the latter, in the context of a theodicy of love, Peckham notes that “the voluntary suffering of God of the cross suffers most of all” (253). As I will argue below, this language appears in the tradition but not in the way that Peckham uses it.
He also does not affirm simplicity (241) and defines the Trinity along social trinitarian lines (244). Each person of the Trinity has “a distinct faculty of reason, will, and self-consciousness” (253). When it comes to trinitarian relations, he sees no biblical warrant for eternal relations of origin, eternal generation either (237). Again, these conclusions flow out of his method of biblical warrant and systematic coherence. With this method and Peckham’s conclusions summarized, I want to reflect on his method (he calls it canonical theology), which relies on biblical warrant and systematic coherence. [Read more…] about Divine Attributes: Knowing the Covenant God of Scripture by John C. Peckham (A Really Long Review)
“For millennia,” wrote Owen Strachan, “followers of God have practiced what used to be called patriarchy and is now called complementarianism.”[1] Others have made similar statements, and so we might not be surprised that Beth Allison Barr identifies complementarianism with patriarchy, which Barr understands as a system of male power and female oppression.
How does she make this connection between patriarchy and complementarianism? First, Barr discusses a taxonomy of patriarchy and highlights this definition of it: “A society that promotes male authority and female submission” (13). She then explains, “Both the tradition of male church leaders and the authority of male household heads function within cultures that generally promote male authority and female submission” (14). In other words, male-only pastors and male leadership in the home exist as instances of a larger patriarchal society.
Although Barr may allow for good in hierarchies, she does not explain if or how that might be the cause. And she argues that “gender hierarchies oppress and damage both women and men in the name of Jesus” (9). If I understand her argument correctly then, gender hierarchies as such indicate patriarchy, and patriarchy by definition creates a system of power and oppression that privileges men and devalues and damages women. [Read more…] about The Making of Biblical Womanhood by Beth Allison Barr (A Review)
The reformers recognized that God reigned over the universe, but that we could distinguish how God reigned through his administrations of church and government.
We render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. Since grace does not destroy nature, we belong to heaven even while having obligations to administrations on earth. So we pay taxes to whom taxes are due (Rom 13:6). And we honour God with our conscience, worship, and so on.
This kind of thing represents what the reformers meant by two-kingdom theology. It was not two discrete kingdoms but two distinguishable administrations of God’s one reign. [Read more…] about Brief Thoughts on the Two-Kingdoms
Make sure to subscribe to the podcast on Spotify and/or Apple Podcasts. Also, see the host page at Anchor and the Youtube page. And bookmark this page to see every episode. [Read more…] about Episode 46: Craig Carter on Classical Theism
