Homeward

In a matter of hours (DV) I'll be on a plane to good ole Cork. I'll have a weekend with my brother, then off to JFK. I'm so relieved to be packed and heading back.

My last few days here were relatively relaxing. A real change of pace. I enjoyed the hospitality and home-cooking of the Griffioen's in their Loenen countryside village. And the 'Lommer boys gave me a nice reprint of Kuyper's short devotional work "The Practice of Godliness" as a going away gift.

It's been a trying 14 months, and I'm thankful to the Lord for all the patience and encouragement of family and friends. I look forward to the comforts of the land flowing with milk and honey and to the final conquest over Giant Thesis.

Outlaws Gone Before

Thank the Lord for all His outlaws gone before us.

See about William Tyndale and others like him, here and here.
Good family education and entertainment.

Other excellent videos can be found at monergism.

God alone is Lord of the conscience, and has left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men, which are, in anything, contrary to his Word; or beside it, if matters of faith, or worship. So that, to believe such doctrines, or to obey such commands, out of conscience, is to betray true liberty of conscience; and the requiring of an implicit faith, and an absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience, and reason also.
--WCF 20.2

More Thoughtful Audio

In case you hadn't noticed, over at my reformatorischeblog you will find a number of new links on the sidebar. Notice especially the CPRT Reading Room link, the nonEnglish site links, and Christian scholarly journals links.

I also have a group of links under "philosophy audio". Be sure to check out the Work Research Foundation's "think" audio resource. Currently, nine CDs are now available online in free mp3s, with more to come. These presentations reflect on faith and work in a broadly accessible style. Manual laborers, academicians, office workers... persons of all vocations can benefit from these recordings.

click HERE or image below

Quiets The Soul

Over this past year I've come across some music I like. You might like it too.

Damien Jurado has a new album "Now That I'm In Your Shadow".

Ox's "American Lo Fi" has just been released.

I can't say I've listened to a large number of Dutch bands, but At The Close Of Every Day, and their lead singer Minco Eggersman, appear to have something going on.

I think Timesbold [*] and the Baptist Generals [*] are due for something new. And I should mention that long-time favorite Will Oldham's latest "The Letting Go" sounds pretty good.

And did you know you can buy CDs of Mr. (Fred) Rogers' music?! Absolutely fabulous. See the bottom of this page for the four CDs: You Are Special, Bedtime, You Are Growing, and Coming And Going. (Don't even bother with the hackjob of a "tribute" album.) You can listen to some of his classics online here. I'm fairly certain that Mister Rogers was my introduction to jazz. One of my favorite songs to this day is "It's You I Like."

update : Speaking of jazz, I forgot to mention the music I heard months ago in a cafe near a neighboring town's train station. I was intently reading when the song lyrics crept to the fore of my consciousness. "Why does this sound so familiar?" I wondered. Don't miss Paul Anka's clever re-make album Rock Swings. Yes, Paul "put-your-head-on-my-shoulder" Anka doing a jazz rendition of Nirvana!

The Difference It Makes

So I'll be heading back to the U.S. in order to finish my thesis there. For now, I've ceased to make approximations about how soon I will complete it. But since I will not be finished by the end of this month as I had initially intended, financial considerations (among others) make returning the best thing. Plus, this way I won't miss the Great Thanksgiving Feast! But other celebrations will have to wait. I should be in the middle PA area by 15 November.

In any case, in light of my recent post about the SBC especially, I offer you this reflection:

In my nearly year&half experience here I have found that nothing is more conspicuous among the college age youth of the would-be orthodox confessional reformed churches in the Netherlands than the conviction that confessional reformed teaching is utterly irrelevant to authentic and practical Christian living. I perceived the substantial presence of this same conviction among the third and fourth generation Dutch immigrant communities I encountered in southern California and southern Ontario.

I suspect this conviction stems from their ironic but profound ignorance about reformed teaching and its biblical basis. But, even among some of my readers who are not ignorant about reformed teaching and knowledgeably embrace it, there may yet be a hesitance to unambiguously affirm that nothing is or can be more relevant to genuine Christian life. So, I want to take a moment to explain what I believe is the crucial practical difference between gospel proclaiming & believing overagainst that of a false gospel (which we will call, simply, 'nonCalvinism'. There are many false gospels, but this is an expression of the most prominent "Evangelical" one).

I focus here on the gospel because it is the sine qua non of salvation, the heart of Calvinism, and the essence of the whole of reformed teaching. I focus on the practical difference in terms of 'proclaiming and believing' this gospel because out from this root springs all real Christianity. So, the central question is what is meant in the actual proclamation of and faith in "Christ, and Him crucified." The difference at stake is not theoretical, but a question of life or death.

The nonCalvinist proclaims that Christ died for every single person whether or not they ever believe and are saved. He proclaims, not that Christ alone guarantees salvation by His death, but that sinners must contribute their native ability to believe, and that this action is what ultimately makes the difference for salvation. In stark contrast to the nonCalvinist's gospel, the Calvinist proclaims that all persons for whom Christ died will be given faith and full salvation. He proclaims that Christ absolutely guarantees this salvation by His death, and that no sinner is able to believe of themselves, so that Christ and Him crucified makes the exclusive difference for salvation.

When a person believes the proclamation of the nonCalvinist gospel, that person is not given faith by Christ, nor do they trust in His work alone as guaranteeing salvation. This is a false gospel. It does not come with the power of God, and no one is saved by it. In total opposition to that, when a person believes the proclamation of the Calvinist gospel, that person is given faith by Christ and they trust in His work alone as guaranteeing salvation. This is the true gospel. It alone is the power of God unto salvation.

Only when, by God's sovereign grace, the churches in the Netherlands and around the world repent of their culpable ignorance and diligently live and teach this truth with and to their children, will they know His power. Until then, you yourself, dear reader, can know the reality of that power in your own life with assurance through the Spirit as He speaks in the Scriptures.

Le Garçon In DarkTown

Brother Gary got to meet and play with Lee Konitz* recently; a phenomenal opportunity. He's says he'll do some more sax study with Konitz at some point.

Gary's also been playing more in his duo with Brendan O'Connor, The Darktown Strutters. You can listen to a bit of their repertoire. Who doesn't love "My Favorite Things"?

His DoubleTime dj gig still seems to be as swingin' & hoppin' as it ever was.

Thanks to Donal for the DTS pic and heads-up on their myspace site!

Honest To Pod
from my computer to yours...

My new podcast module is on the sidebar, and you can subscribe via this link. The first episode, now available, is about the Reformation.

It's about 7 minutes long, and features a selection from an article by Dr. Robert Godfrey that you can find here. I also mention my short "Reformation Day" blog entry from last year.

Let me know what you think.

Reconstructing The Puzzle

The material complexity of Dooyeweerd's transcendental critique is hidden by a comparatively simple formal structure. But in order to really explain the critique (as I must for my thesis) one cannot, obviously, avoid explaining the material concepts. This is a significant part of what's taking me longer than I had hoped.

For example, in his A New Critique of Theoretical Thought (3 volumes), Dooyeweerd asks on page 41 of the first volume "And how is this abstraction possible?" Then, approximately 525 pages later, on page 6 of the second volume he says "The question how this entire process of abstraction is possible will be answered later on in a special chapter on the epistemological problem"... referring to a section approximately 990 pages after the original question!

Everything in between is building up to the answer. Thankfully, I don't need to distill and summarize everything in between. But the necessary "selection" process, prior to distillation, is itself a puzzle. I think I've got a handle on it, but my grip feels slippery.

The Soft-Petal SBC Calvinists

The CT article on Calvinism in the Southern Baptist Convention is now online.

My favorite quotation was "We're not the kind [of Calvinists] who are off in a Grand Rapids [read: ethnic Dutch] ghetto crossing our t's and dotting our i's and telling the world to get their act together. We're in the New Orleans slums with groups like Desire Street Ministries, raising up black elders through Reformed theology from 9-year-old boys who had no chance." (Although, I was under the impression that Desire Street was actually a PCA mission.)

But notice that the predominant attitude among these SBC Calvinists is that as it concerns spiritual life, gospel truth is "best," but optional. This comes across in Mohler's panel discussion with Patterson at the SBC pastor's conference this year. The gospel will only shake things up in the SBC when it is understood that it should divide churches. Perhaps some of these SBC Calvinists will embrace the perspective of Spurgeon who famously said,

"And what is the heresy of Arminianism but the addition of something to the work of the Redeemer?... [T]here is no such thing as preaching Christ and Him crucified, unless we preach what nowadays is called Calvinism. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism; Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else. I do not believe we can preach the gospel, if we do not preach justification by faith, without works; nor unless we preach the sovereignty of God in His dispens[ing] grace; nor unless we exalt the electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable, conquering love of Jehovah; nor do I think we can preach the gospel, unless we base it upon the special and particular redemption [ie, "limited" or definite atonement] of His elect and chosen people which Christ wrought out upon the cross..."

The gospel cannot be optional. Biblical grace is not a secondary, inessential teaching only for the mature. It is the foundation. And there is not a true church apart from the profession of this gospel.

The research department of LifeWay, the "products and services" provider of the SBC and publishers of the Holman Christian Standard Bible, has conducted a survey of SBC pastors and found that about 10% consider themselves Calvinist, with (surprisingly) no present correlation to age of the pastor. With about 42,000 congregations and 10,000 missionaries, a conservative estimate would equal about 5,200 self-identifying SBC Calvinist pastors. Of course, the percentage and correlation with new (younger) pastors may be growing. A similar survey in a decade would be enlightening.

On another note, I suspect that some SBC'ers and other "Evangelicals" have been attracted to the Reformed faith, not only by its explicit teaching and meaning for church life, but also by its implications for worldview and approach to culture. Reformational Baptist David Naugle is the "Piper" or "Mohler" (ie, main promoter) of neocalvinism in Baptist and Evangelical circles. Read his pdf Intro to Reformational Worldview.

Framing The Debate

How could I disagree with John Frame on almost every Reformed in-camp debate? I think he has been wrong about Dooyeweerd*, wrong about the regulative principle of worship, and wrong about the nature of doctrinal controversy itself, and many other important issues. I hope to offer my reasons for disagreement with him on these issues in the future. However, in a recent article he attempts to characterize two opposing sides in a debate about the Christian approach to civil government. I want to touch on this briefly, because it has culture-wide implications.

The larger question at stake is whether there is a distinctively Christian (ie, Calvinistic) perspective on and approach to culture. In other words, 1) is it possible to understand and do culture Christianly. If so, then 2) how and where can we discover, learn, and/or develop such an approach? And 3) what exactly is that approach, and what makes it distinctively Christian? Those who answer the first question in the negative must still address "how, then, shall Christians live culturally?" (if not in a distinctively Christian way). But those who answer the first question affirmatively (as most, if not all, genuine Calvinists do) may answer the second in reference to God's revelation.

Revelation is given in two basic kinds, often called "general" and "special" revelation. A lot can be said about these two kinds of revelation, and what is said has crucial implications for the third question. But basically, general revelation is what God reveals through the created temporal order, and special revelation is what God more particularly reveals by (what we now know as) Holy Scripture. The relationship between general and special revelation is decisive for the second and third questions too.

In any case, Frame says that there are Kuyperians and then there are Klineans. Klineans, he says, do not believe in the necessity of special revelation for civil government (nor, one can infer, for "Christian culture"). Now, as both a Klinean and a Kuyperian (a Kuyperian-Klinean, or vice versa, if you will) I cannot agree with Frame's mischaracterization. Kline is himself both "Vosian" and "Vantilian". Certainly there are some differences between Vos' and Kuyper's views, but not disagreements on this issue. And Kline follows both Vos and VanTil in agreement with Kuyper concerning the sufficiency of general revelation, the necessity of special revelation, and the correlation between both kinds of revelation. Dooyeweerd, by the way, also agrees with Kuyper, Vos, VanTil, and Kline on this.

The specific meaning of sufficiency of general revelation, necessity of special revelation, and their correlation, and how they are articulated is crucial. I hope to address this in detail at some point. There are, of course, differences and disagreements between the views of these important thinkers, and some of those are relevant to this debate. Historcial development of the issues should also be taken into account. But Frame's (mis)characterization is inaccurate and is a detriment to clarity and to moving the discussion forward**. Some comments on Hegeman's blog [1, 2].