Covenant Seminary

Here's an exercise in discernment.

Greg Johnson is a graduate of my denomination's seminary, Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri, and this article he's written strikes me as typical of the sort of poisonous grace talk I've run into too often, recently, including among men from Covenant. Because the error is so common, it might be good for us to critique this particular piece as a means of warning others away from these errors.

Note well: I am not saying everything in this article is bad. There are things here worth saying, some of which are downright helpful and good. But the admixture of truth and error ultimately renders this piece unsalvageable except as an exercise in the practice of that most-neglected-of-all-spiritual-gifts, discernment.

So would you please take some part of this article and, quoting it, show how it is contrary to Scripture? Don't worry if your work is duplicated by someone else. I'm hopeful we'll have thousands of words written about this piece, permanently deposited here in our comments section to be read by others. Of course, it's proper to note the good points Johnson makes, but my principal concern is to see the errors exposed as a warning to all.

Feel free to argue against another reader's critique. The goal here is to grow our discernment quotient, making us all more useful in defending the church against false teaching--particularly false teaching hiding behind the cover of "grace."

Freedom from Quiet Time Guilt: The rare beauty of Weakness Christianity

by Greg Johnson

1. The Diagnosis: Quiet Time Guilt

I recently watched as a congregation I love was spiritually raped. A Christian ministry came into the church for a three-day program whose purpose was to encourage believers to pray more. During one of the breakout sessions, a man expressed his frustration with unanswered prayer. He had faithfully prayed with and for his daughter for years, and still she was not walking with God. He was broken, depressed, perhaps more than a little ashamed. How does God in his grace speak to this man? A bruised reed was crying out for help.

"You need to try harder. You need to pray more." That was the message he was given. I was enraged. Having known this church for many years, I was horrified. What I was hearing was what one seminary professor calls sola bootstrapa. Self-reliance--we pull ourselves up by our own spiritual bootstraps. The teachers who said such things surely meant well. The problem was not a lack of sincerity on their part. The diagnosis is far more severe. The problem was heresy. Any heresy wounds the soul.

When I look upon the evangelical world today, I see millions of sincere believers who are loaded down with false guilt by teachers who fail to grasp the basics of biblical prayer. To sharpen the point slightly, Christ's sheep have been lied to. They have been told that prayer is a work that we must perform in order to get God to bless us. As heresies go, this one is often subtle. Prayer has become a work rather than a grace. The result has been a loss of joy in prayer.

And prayer is not the only grace we've turned into a work. Personal Bible study has become a source of bondage as well. A whole generation of Christians has been told that God will bless them if they read their Bibles every day, as if the act of reading the Scriptures were some kind of magic talisman by which we gain power over God and secure his favor. This is not the religion of the Bible. This pervasive belief that God gives us grace as a reward for our devotional consistency is antithetical to the religion of Jesus Christ. Prayer and Bible study--what evangelicals for the past century have called the "quiet time"--have become dreaded precisely because they have been radically misunderstood.

It's ironic, but the Quiet Time has become the number one cause of defeat among Bible-believing Christians today. At one time or another, nearly every sincere believer feels a deep sense of failure and the accompanying feelings of guilt and shame because he or she has failed to set aside a separate time for Bible study and prayer. This condition is called Quiet Time Guilt. And it's a condition with many repercussions. The shame of Quiet Time Guilt manifests itself in even deeper inability to fruitfully and joyfully study Scripture. Prayer becomes a dread; Bible study a burden. The Christian suffering from Quiet Time Guilt then despairs of seeing God work in his or her life, until finally he or she simply gives up. He may continue outward and public Christian commitments like church attendance, but secretly he feels a hypocrite. What is the root of Quiet Time Guilt?

2. The Culprit: Legalism

The root of Quiet Time Guilt is legalism. Often when we think of legalism, we think of the petty man-made rules that have so often strangled the churches--rules against dancing or drinking or makeup or 'secular' music. But these legalistic rules are merely an outward sign of a deeper legalism of the heart. When prayer and Bible study are thought of primarily as duties ('disciplines') rather than as grace, both prayer and the study of Scripture become unfruitful in our lives...

Addendum: Wednesday evening, March 8, Bryan Chapell and I met together to discuss this recent series of posts. From our discussion, it became apparent that my concern with Covenant not zealously dealing with believers who reject biblical headship led to my identifying too closely the position held by Bryan Chapell and Covenant Seminary and the very different position held by Anne Graham Lotz. I regret this error. Please read the post keeping this clarification in mind.

Today the Washington Post ran a short piece by Billy Graham's daughter, Anne Graham Lotz, that resembles the current doctrine of sexuality held by reformed evangelicals and their institutions such as Bryan Chapell/Covenant Seminary, Tim Keller/Redeemer Presbyterian Church, and Carolyn Custis James/Reformed Seminary (Orlando). Put these leaders in a room, make them talk together, and although they may not agree on every detail, their central thrust would be egalitarian and feminist.

And whereas Ms. Lotz may not agree entirely with the Covenant/Redeemer/Reformed mantra, "A woman may do anything a non-ordained man may do," her only quibble would be with the "non-ordained" bit. I'm guessing she's more straightforward than the men, and would not agree to that final Pharisaical barrier. She's already preaching and teaching; for her, elders meetings are small potatoes.

Here then is Ms. Lotz's brief article titled, "For Billy Graham's Daughter, Bible Crystal Clear on Male-Female Equality." After you've read it, come on back and read the following text--my response to Ms. Lotz.

* * *

Ms. Anne Graham Lotz writes:

The Bible states that in the very beginning of the human race God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it." (Genesis 1:27-28) In other words, the Biblical record is clear: God created men and women equal. Period. Dominion over everything was given to the woman as well as to the man. The woman was not created inferior to the man; nor was the man greater than the woman.

However, when sin entered the human race, one of the consequences was that men and women became separated from God. And that basic broken relationship distorted the Divine order in many ways, one of which was that men began to rule over women (Genesis 3:16).

At the beginning of her attack upon Scripture, Ms. Lotz writes as if she's a friend of Scripture, categorically stating, "the Biblical record is clear: ...dominion over everything was given to the woman as well as to the man." Wrong...

We all know what it is to play warfare in mock battle, that it means to imitate everything just as it is in war. The troops are drawn up, they march into the field, seriousness is evident in every eye, but also courage and enthusiasm, the orderlies rush back and forth intrepidly, the commander's voice is heard, the signals, the battle cry, the volley of musketry, the thunder of cannon--everything exactly as it is in war, lacking only one thing...the danger.

So also it is with playing Christianity, that is, imitating Christian preaching in such a way that everything, absolutely everything is included in as deceptive a form as possible--only one thing is lacking...the danger

-Soren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon "Christendom" 1854-1855, translated with an introduction by Walter Lowrie, (Boston: The Beacon Press, 1956) p. 258.

Addendum: Wednesday evening, March 8, Bryan Chapell and I met together to discuss this recent series of posts. After our discussion, here are several clarifications and corrections that I believe need to be made. I have made them here, at the top of the post, because it would be difficult to weave them into the post itself in a way that would call attention to them sufficiently as corrections.

First, it is unclear that the paragraph beginning, "The whole things is a tempest in a teacup" is not my judgment, but rather a hypothetical construct of what the average member of the PCA might have thought to himself.

Second, I refer to "the Covenant/Redeemer/Reformed mantra, "A woman may do anything a non-ordained man may do." Bryan told me that this is not his position and that he speaks against this position as an adequate representation of the Biblical perspective. This is an encouragement to me.

Third, Bryan rehearsed his actions in response to the chapel time in which Diane Langberg spoke, and clearly my own summary of those actions is not accurate. Here is an accurate record of what happened:

When General Assembly convened that summer and the time on the agenda arrived when President Chapell was asked to give an answer for what had happened on his watch, President Chapell told the assembly:

That Diane Langberg had been told ahead of time what the standards were for her speaking during the chapel time;

That after she spoke at Covenant Seminary, Diane Langberg received a letter reminding her of the standards, and expressing concern that those standards had not been followed; and

That the administration of Covenant Seminary met with students to explain the situation and to assure the seminary community that what had happened was not according to the standards they were committed to upholding.

Since I implied Covenant Seminary was not upholding the PCA position in its response to Diane Langberg's chapel time, I regret this inaccuracy and now believe Covenant's response was good.

Some wonder how I could accuse prominent teaching elders of the Presbyterian Church in America and the institutions they lead of sympathizing with the egalitarian, feminist cause? Don't I know the PCA's reason to exist is tied at the heart to opposing these ideologies? When a group of mainline PC(USA) churches left their own denomination for a more conservative one back in 1983, wasn't it necessary for them to found the new denomination, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, precisely because the PCA wasn't willing to compromise on women in office? And isn't the same reason behind our present failure to bring into the PCA many churches currently departing the PC(USA) train wreck: that these churches and their pastors are determined to enter a denomination that allows their women to serve as pastors, elders, and deacons?

So, as a denomination we've paid our dues. We've seen the cost of our convictions, and haven't wavered. What on earth am I thinking, then, to accuse our seminary and its president of being allies of the egalitarian, feminist ideology?

It's a fair question, although I have no confidence I'll be able to answer it to the satisfaction of more than a few because the heart of the answer is tied up, not with specific arguments about Scripture's teaching about sexuality, but rather its teaching concerning the nature of pastoral ministry.

Several years ago, Covenant Theological Seminary had a woman preach in chapel. When it was reported within our denomination, it scandalized a number of presbyters across the country...

Being raised in a publisher's home and married to a publisher's daughter, I try to keep up with debates over the ethics of journalism. One conviction developed over the years is that corrections should not be buried, but displayed prominently.

What that means with a blog, though, is not as simple as the New York Times. The Times does not display its corrections on page one unless those corrections are news on the order of their Jayson Blair affair. This blog, though, has no page two and no weekly "Week in Review." Rather than burying our corrections on old pages no longer visible, I'm calling attention here to clarifications and corrections I've just posted to a couple different posts dealing with Bryan Chapell and Covenant Theological Seminary.

Bryan and I met for a number of hours Wednesday night and had a frank exchange of our views. Following our time together, I believed these clarifications and corrections were necessary. They may be found on our Covenant Seminary page.

For a number of years, I've thought we need a book for preachers called The Feminization of Discourse. The book would show how the feminine priorities that have taken over the Western world have turned the preaching of God's Word from authority to mutual exploration and discovery. One friend lamented the preaching he'd sat under for a number of years saying, "Along with the indicative, can't we please have the imperative?" Read anything about the differences between male and female conversation and it's no mystery why the worship and preaching of our--yes, PCA--churches feel like a tea party. Having a reformed form of godliness, we deny the power thereof.

Our preaching is so graceful--more graceful than the preaching of Jesus or the Apostles. Anyone read the book of Acts, recently? Notice how often those listening to the sermon are confronted with the statement, "You killed Jesus!" No wonder repentance was the entry point to faith and baptism back then. But today? We're compassionate Christians, kinder and gentler elders, and sensitive graceful preachers who want to be liked. Above all. Yes, insofar as we can be liked and still be obedient, that's fine. But a choice between the two is no contest; being liked wins.

Now of course, right here the feminization of discourse kicks in and many are ready to condemn me for being dogmatic, making generalizations, or demonstrating a harsh and judgmental spirit, right?

Well, meet my friend Cesar Millan and see if we preachers have anything to learn from him about our exercise of the authority God has delegated to us, particularly in  the pulpit...

(Tim, w/thanks to David) What's wrong with this picture?

Look more closely.

In a month and a half, Dr. Diane Langberg will be preaching at the Princeton Regional Conference on Reformed Theology co-sponsored by the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, and she'll be sharing the conference pulpit with Don and Al. This ought not to be, right? Who governs this national parachurch organization?

Among others, Bob, Lig, Al, John, C. J., Alistair, Mark, Phil, R. C., and Gene-- you know, men we all know as stalwarts in the battle for orthodoxy. So why are they approving and publicizing on their web site a conference where a woman will preach to men? A conference on "reformed theology," mind you.

"Well, Tim; where have you been all these years? This is old hat. Women have been plenary preachers at R. C.'s Ligonier conferences for years, now. Dot your i's and cross your t's, dude. Clean up your precision. Get a focus. When the Apostle Paul forbids women to "teach" men, he's only speaking of the Church. Neither the Ligonier conferences nor any number of other forums--say for instance, a seminary chapel service--are the church. They're something else. Chill out, brother...

(Tim) Is there a larger point that sits above this week's posts; a larger lesson to be learned from the vulnerabilities we've seen in the PCA's Christian Education & Publications, Women in the Church, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, Westminster Theological Seminary, Tenth Presbyterian Church, Covenant College and Seminary, and Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City? What's to be learned from the sort of leadership we've seen demonstrated this week by the men called to guard these institutions and churches?

Joseph remembered the dreams which he had about them, and said to them, “You are spies; you have come to look at the undefended parts of our land.” (Genesis 42:9)

We have allowed spies into our midst and they are scheming how to capture the undefended parts of the land given us by our Heavenly Father.

Trustees, presidents, parents, and alumni of confessionally reformed colleges and seminaries (and, of course, leaders of denominational agencies and church elders) are going to have to decide which side they're on.

(Tim) The past couple of weeks, I've spent a great deal of time tracking down the historical record concerning the actions of the 154th (1976) Synod of the Reformed Presbyterian Church Evangelical Synod (RPCES) related to woman deacons.

Why?

Tim Keller wrote an article, recently, for the PCA's byFaith magazine arguing that the PCA should allow woman deacons because, just before joining with the PCA in 1982, the 154th (1976) Synod of the RPCES, "narrowly defeated a motion to ordain women as deacons."

Keller suggests the trajectory of the RPCES immediately prior to her union with the PCA was towards lifting her own restrictions against woman deacons, and therefore this same trajectory should lead the PCA now, thirty years later, to change our polity. Here's how Keller puts it:

For Keller's argument to work, though, his version of history has to be right.

It's not.

The RPCES did not vote whether to have woman deacons at its 154th (1976) Synod. And when the vote was taken, woman deacons were not "narrowly defeated." The vote was decisive...

(Tim) The Fall 2008 issue of Covenant Seminary's review, Presbyterion, has an article by Covenant's Dean of Faculty, Jimmy Agan, titled "Deacons, Deaconesses, and Denominational Discussions: Romans 16:1 As a Test Case." Dr. Agan works hard not be viewed as putting his finger on the scale of a greatly controverted issue being weighed by our ecclesiastical association known as the Presbyterian Church in America. He warns his readers not to come to any easy conclusions about the meaning of the texts, but he does seem to have a few conclusions, himself, and they are helpful.

First, this from Footnote 29:

While fuller discussion is beyond the scope of the present article, we may at least name two implications... for the office of deacon if the conclusions summarized above are correct. First, it seems that the ecclesiastical title diakonos was chosen not because of its associations with the service rendered by domestic or table attendants, but because it well suited an arrangement in which "deacons" functioned as "agents" in authority over the congregation and under the authority of the elders, at whose behest they carried out a variety of tasks. Second, if deacons were such" agents," we should not speak of the office as one which was (or is) devoid of authority.

It can't be emphasized often enough that, whatever else deacons may be, they are officers and exercise authority over the believers of their church...

(Tim) No links to Rob Bell's schlock, the deep and sensitive thoughts of Brian McLaren, the Christian Medical and Dental Society, Talbot Seminary's groundbreaking ethics and public policy think tank, faculty members at Wheaton College, or CTi journalists on this site. Ron Sider and Jim Wallis haven't made an appearance just yet--nor their "me too" buddy, Al Gore. There's been no sighting of Niel Nielson or Bryan Chapell--nor any of their professors, for that matter. In fact, no sign of anyone in the Presbyterian Church in America...

"Women at Redeemer will be free to use all the gifts, privately and publicly. There are no restrictions on (women's) ministry at all." -Keller/Redeemer

(Tim) In what was billed as a debate, but turned out to be more a love-fest between Tim Keller and Lig Duncan in the PCA's deniminational magazine byFaith, Tim gave his rationale for something approximating his church's practice of woman deacons. If readers take Tim's piece at face value without comparing this public argument with what Tim writes and does in his local church, everything will be muddied and obfuscation will win. The obfuscation may be unintentional or inadvertent, but it will win.

Thus it is that the article must be interpreted in the larger context of Redeemer's structure, words, and actions.

The operative rule at Redeemer with regard to all things sexual is, "A woman may do anything a non-ordained man may do." So the working out of Redeemer's theology of sexuality is that women at Redeemer are allowed to teach and exercise authority over men everywhere and always except from the pulpit Lord's Day morning and in any way reserved for the elders as they exercise something they call "teaching authority." But whatever this "teaching authority" is, it's not when women teach Scripture to men because that precise thing they explicitly allow:

"In a nutshell, our position is this: whatever a non-ruling elder male can do in the church, a woman can do. We do not believe that I Timothy 2:11 or I Cor.14:35-36 precludes women teaching the Bible to men or speaking publicly. To 'teach with authority' (I Tim.2:11) refers to disciplinary authority over the doctrine of someone. For example, when an elder says to a member: 'You are telling everyone that they must be circumcised in order to be saved--that is a destructive, non-Biblical teaching which is hurting people spiritually. You must desist from it or you will have to leave the church.' That is 'teaching authority'--it belongs only to the elders. Thus, women at Redeemer will be free to use all the gifts, privately and publicly. There are no restrictions on ministry at all...

A prominent evangelical magazine just did a piece on the complaint by Calvin College faculty reps that Calvin's board has issued policy barring members of their faculty from promoting sodomy. The article starts this way:

The magazine, published in Wheaton, continues:

The case is being watched with interest by other (evangelical) schools struggling to balance compassion and doctrine in their policies on gays.

"Struggling to balance compassion and doctrine?" What on earth are they saying?

Well of course, the point is that the evangelical world today is moving toward the normalization of sodomy and the rubric under which it's being done is the silencing of Scripture's denunciation of sodomy as an abomination before the Lord. Other abominations such as fornication, unbiblical divorce and remarriage, and adultery have already been normalized, and now it's sodomy's turn.

The path to normalization is cleared by much talk of compassion with only an occasional tip of the hat to sin and righteousness and judgment. Which is to say that the Holy Spirit is nowhere present in such discussions since "When He comes, He will convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment."

There's no conviction of sin going on--none at all. Instead, we're busy balancing compassion and doctrine. Wheaton College's "sexuality scholar," Stan Jones, puts it like this...

(Tim) This is written by a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy. Thinking readers might have some responses, I post it here. I've received it second or third hand, so I don't know the writer or context.

While recognizing that some people have a calling from God to speak out specifically on these sins, I find that the focus among many Evangelicals on the abortion and same-sex marriage issues to the exclusion of all others reflects the extreme individualism of Protestant theology and ethics, both "conservative" and "liberal". Evangelicals care rightly about the killing that goes on within a woman's womb, and about the improper and irreverent use of our God-given sexual organs in our own bodies or in the bodies of others. But there is not always a corresponding concern about the killing and grave threats to human life that are present outside of the womb, and about the improper and irreverent use of the natural world and material possessions given to us by God.

I don't think it's an accident that the same individualistic faith traditions that emphasize and sanctify "my personal choice" (to accept Jesus as "personal Savior" in the case of conservative Protestants, to have an abortion as a "personal matter" in the case of the liberals) but downplay the physical unity and continuity of the Body of Christ across space and time would also be quite uncertain regarding the social obligations that Christians have to their political and military enemies, to the poor and sick among us, and to the rest of God's creation. A faith tradition that fails to connect our moral obligations inside our bodies with our moral obligations outside of our bodies is deficient in both its anthropology and its ecology.

To get things started, it seems to me evangelicals are now close to the heart of the movement for the social justice of cutting carbon emissions, calling for the government to increase funds for AIDS research, and shaming people who litter. Rick Warren, anyone? Brian McLaren? Rob Bell up there in Grand Rapids? Inter-Varsity? Zondervan? Navigators? Willow Creek? Tim Keller and his flock?

And of course, every last prof at Covenant and Taylor and Gordon and Westmont and Wheaton.

Maybe our critic is only speaking of historic evangelicalism--not the classic liberalism that's taken over these past few decades.

But then he has an entirely different problem...

(Tim, w/thanks to a faithful man) By now, when the President of our own Covenant Theological Seminary invites Tim Keller to model pastoral ministry to his students over in St. Louis, he should know precisely what he's going to get and not be left batting cleanup for him. But take a listen to this exchange from one of Keller's recent visits, there.

It's a Q & A session in front of men preparing for pastoral ministry. A Covenant student asks the Rev. Dr. Tim Keller this question: "How do you think the church is or should be proactive with regard to the issue of homosexuality? I see the prevalence of homosexuality, yet the church seems to be afraid to touch the issue. How do we actively speak to believers about this topic in truth and in love?"

Which question launched the Keller/Chapell duo into this session of semantic dodge ball, with protective pads and helmets.

Was Tim Keller's answer bad?

Yes, his answer was bad.

Why?

Because he's a preacher of the Gospel and he ought to rejoice at being used by the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment. He ought to know God's Moral Law is man's schoolmaster, his crossing guard to the Cross. Pastor Keller's ministry is to singles in Manhattan, so he should (and easily could, given his gifts) excel at the proclamation of the wickedness of sodomy along with God's love and mercy for those ensnared in this foul pit...

(David/Tim) When they couldn't get state legislatures to embrace abortion, men like Bernard Nathanson from New York City were pleased to have the US Supreme Court issue their 1973 ruling, Roe v. Wade, throwing out the western world's historic laws against abortion in one fell swoop across all fifty states. It was the exercise of raw judicial power. And speaking of judicial power...

At next week's PCA General Assembly in Nashville the Nominating Committee has put up these men for the Standing Judicial Commission: Bryan Chapell, Bruce Terrell, and Sam Wheatley.

Bryan Chapell, a teaching elder candidate for the Standing Judicial Commission, has had years to condemn or oppose the introduction of woman officers into the life of the PCA by Redeemer Presbyterian Church of Metro New York Presbytery, as well as the creeping of this practice across our denomination. Sadly, such concern finds no place in Bryan's strategic plan.

Pastor Sam Wheatley, another teaching elder candidate for the SJC, has this to say about the Strategic Plan Bryan is promoting:

"To me, the Strategic Plan is a hopeful call to remembering our passion."

Sam agrees with Bryan's call for the PCA to create "safe places" to talk, and to provide "more seats at the table (for) women (to have an) advisory voice on committees, (S)essions, Boards, speaking at gatherings, consulted by presbyteries. In the face of a Strategic Plan for the PCA that's as strategic as cold mutton, Sam's voluble support must be considered an indication of his allegiances and priorities.

To complete the troika...

Bruce Terrell, a ruling elder candidate for the SJC, is Executive Director of Redeemer's Pastoral Staff. Before moving to Redeemer, he assisted Mission to the World's CEO, Paul Kooistra. The practice of woman officers within Bruce's church and presbytery gave rise to this disciplinary action filed against the presbytery that eventually made its way to the Standing Judicial Commission last year.

Voting to place Bruce Terrell on the Standing Judicial Commission is tantamount to voting for a response favorable to women deacons from the Standing Judicial Commission in any case that comes before it. We would prefer to see men elected to the Commission who do not have vested interests in opposition to the historic practice of Reformed Protestant churches concerning woman officers.

Not men associated with what we consider a feminist revision of that practice.

Obviously, the proponents of woman officers care a great deal about who has a seat at the table of the Standing Judicial Commission as it hears these complaints concerning the promotion of woman officers in the PCA.

We agree with them. The men we entrust with the judicial power of the PCA is critically important.

(David) I received the following email message from my good friend and fellow PCA pastor, David Wallover, after posting my initial reflections on the Presbyterian Church in America's 2010 General Assembly (GA). I've asked David Wallover if I could present both his thoughts and my subsequent response on this forum and he has graciously agreed. David Wallover pastors Harvest Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Medina, Ohio.

Hi, David (Bayly)-

What's at stake here?  You, your brother, and I came up through the "bloodbath" of the UPCUSA/PCUSA.  Did you imagine when we each found our way into the PCA, that it or any other manmade denominational institution, could possibly remain focused?  What I said to my wife upon entering the PCA is, "Well, now we trade heresies on the left for heresies on the right"--my point being that fidelity to the truth, which is itself a fixed target, remains elusive because we are constantly shifting around the target. And even if the PCA falls prey to the old heresies on the left (which would be ironic in light of the whole "Federal" controvesy, which is a "heresy" on the right...), it still will be a result of OUR inability to stay fixed on the truth, veering as we do either to the left or the right.

(Tim) Over on ClearNote Ladies Blog, our daughter, Michal Louise Crum, did a post titled, Do Women Need Less Education Than Men? If Samuel Johnson was right in his observation that you know you've hit your mark when you get a response, Michal hit the bull's eye.

At the center of her post were three questions she recommended to her readers in connection with the decision whether or not to go to college:

1. What is the purpose? What is this education preparing me for?
2. What are my motives? Am I pursuing education for the sake of education itself, a profession, money, status, the glory of God?
3. How much will it cost? Is it a wise investment of time, money, and energy? If God leads me in a different direction two years down the road, will the debt incurred prevent me from obeying God’s call?

Pretty calm, huh? It's hard to imagine these questions eliciting screeches and howls--from women who claim the Name of Christ no less. But elicit they did. May I say how much I admire the women of our congregation? If you read the comments under Michal's post, you'll better understand why. For one thing, what grace under fire!

So what about ye olde college education?

I've read all the screeches and howls, and this is by far my favorite...

Following Tim Keller, Redeemer, Metro New York and Northern California Presbyteries, as well as all the seminaries, churches, and pastors who believe in women teaching and exercising authority over men as long as it's not in the pulpit Sunday morning or voting on the discipline of a man in a session meeting, the PCA's Mission to the World e-mailed the following announcement across the world at the end of the day, yesterday:

From: (Mission to the World)
Date: September 10, 2010 10:34:32 PM GMT
To: Undisclosed recipients
Subject: New Senior Team Members!

Dear Colleagues;
 
I am pleased to announce that Jill Milton and Heidi Harrison have been appointed new members of the Senior Team for Mission to the World.  Jill has been with MTW since 1981 and has served in various capacities during that time.  In 2009 she assumed the role of Director of the newly created Resource Team Department.  Heidi has been a part of the MTW family for 17 years and has served in various roles during her time in the office.  Most recently she been the Assistant to the Coordinator in addition to her role on the Latin America/Africa Resource Team serving missionaries in Africa.  She will be adding the role of Project Coordinator for the Senior Team to her responsibilities.
 
Please join us in thanking God for Jill and Heidi.
 
In Christ,
(Mission to the World)

So here we have this unilateral announcment exhorting us to "thank God" for women getting seats at the table that sets governing policy over MTW ministries and personnel...

(Tim) At times, it seems best to promote a discussion to the main page. Readers lose track of discussions in the comments under old posts. Here's one such discussion that I'm promoting for reasons I hope are obvious.

It's my conviction that the endless mantra of grace that permeates our Evangelical/Redeemer/Westminster/Campus Crusade/R2K/Covenant world leads to us knowing little of grace because we despise God's Law and repentance.

In the midst of a discussion bearing on this matter, the historian Darryl Hart asked me to clarify what I meant when I spoke of the grace of the Law--that to preach the Law is Gospel preaching and that the Law is our Gospel schoomaster or tutor? Here I respond:

Scripture says:

Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith" (Galatians 3:24).

This is the great failure of Gospel preaching in our time, and the reason for the absence of fruit within our churches. We fail to preach the Law, instead trying to save unregenerate sinners from the indignities of repentance. We preach grace without leading souls there through the Law. We repudiate the Schoolmaster. It's the habit of pastors only to address the regenerate within the Covenant Community while outside that Community we gag preachers, leaving Gospel proclamation and conversion to Campus Crusade...

(Tim) On the subject of Joel Northrup forfeiting his state tournament wrestling match out of deference to a woman, one reader of this Baylyblog post called our readers' attention to a comment by a California high school wrestling coach on another web site. The coach's comment (No. 16) ended with this:

The Israeli army did extensive experiments in the 1960′s and 70′s trying to incorporate women into combat roles along side males, at a time when the survival of Israel was hanging in the balance. But the results were so disastrous, that they were soon abandoned. They found that men would routinely risk themselves and the units safety, and even abandon mission completion, whenever a female member of their combat unit was captured, or even injured. This protective role seemed to be so hardwired into these young men, that it was deemed impossible to “train out” of them. The Israelis determined that a boy would have to be trained from birth to disregard a foundational understanding (call it God given, or evolved) concerning the importance of women, as THE essential element in the continuum of human existence. To try and remove that understanding from the thought process of young men would result, I feel, in a world not worth occupying.

Few things are more indicative of these United States' moral and military bankruptcy than our ideological promotion of women in combat (of which women wrestlers are a sub-species), and few things are more indicative of the Reformed world's weakening commitment to the doctrines of Scripture than the PCA General Assembly AISCOWIM's split down the middle on whether or not to condemn women in combat (as well as the arguments made on the floor of GA when AISCOWIM presented its two reports). While it's true committee members talked much about the spirituality of the church, during internal debate it was always clear that...

(June 2--Please note that TypePad only displays the first hundred comments on a post by default. Comments past 100 can be displayed by clicking the "More Comments" link at the bottom of the 100th comment.)

Is Federal Vision theology (FV) worthy of the intense opposition Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) conservatives dignify it with? I suspect not. For a number of reasons, I suspect such opposition to FV theology in the PCA is a sign of conservative weakness rather than strength; opportunism rather than courage. But first a bit of history.

Four years ago when FV was first dealt with by the PCA at her 2007 General Assembly (GA), conservatives rallied in support of a report condemning aspects of FV theology. The report was adopted and trials of Federal Vision supporters followed, the latest of which is the upcoming trial of Peter Leithart in Pacific Northwest Presbytery. It would appear, then, that the PCA is dutifully reforming herself and the cleanup is mostly finished.

But perhaps as noteworthy as what happened within the PCA at the 2007 GA and following is what did not happen. To understand this, we must consider a pair of strange couplings that took place that year.

The 2007 General Assembly was notable, not only for its debate and subsequent vote on the FV report, but also for several mésalliances forged in the lead-up to that vote. On one side, the middle-aged lions of the Keller/Redeemer/hipster/missional party provided some support for the FV camp. On the other side, the old lions of the southern/tall-steeple/rich/broadly Reformed party provided some support for the Truly Reformed (TR) conservatives of the PCA.

When the heat of battle passed, though, both the hipster middle-aged lions and the rich old lions woke up to strange bedfellows. Neither alliance could last. Redeemer hipsters...

Hazael said, “Why does my lord weep?” Then he answered, “Because I know the evil that you will do to the sons of Israel: their strongholds you will set on fire, and their young men you will kill with the sword, and their little ones you will dash in pieces, and their women with child you will rip up.” (2 Kings 8:12)

Time and again, those who pastor souls are called by God to enter into the havoc and destruction caused by the sexual depredation of children. Sometimes it's the children themselves who initiate the sin; other times it's an older relative or some unrelated adult, both male and female. One tragic aspect of this ministry is watching how often sexualized children grow up into bondage to sexual perversion, themselves. Little boys molested by older boys or men grow up desiring men rather than women.

This simple fact needs to be forced out of the closet, into the light...

An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land: the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule on their own authority; and My people love it so! But what will you do at the end of it? (Jeremiah 5:30, 31)

You may want to dismiss it as looniness, but this assault against God's Order of Creation is rebellion against the God Who made us. It's not naive or misguided. It's evil. Attacks on God's Creation Order are all around us and we must recognize that each of them is a part of Satan's conspiracy to grease the descent to Hell.

Feminism is a Satanic conspiracy against God's Creation Order. God made Adam first, then Eve. Thus those who conspire to place woman in positions where she teaches and exercises authority over man are rebels against Almighty God. They are false prophets calling souls to Hell.

Homosexism is a Satanic conspiracy against God's Creation Order. God made Eve--not Steve--for Adam. Thus those who conspire to legalize sodomy and promote sodomitic unions are rebels against Almighty God. They are false prophets calling souls to Hell.

Veganism is a Satanic conspiracy against God's Creation Order. God created adam alone--both Adam and Eve--in His Own Image. He did not create animals in His Image. Thus those whose morality has descended to Veganism and the claim of personhood and legal standing for animals are rebels against Almighty God. They are false prophets calling souls to Hell.

Satan has conspired to paint each of these revolutions a pretty face. Feminism is a long-overdue correction of patriarchal oppression. Homsexism is a long overdue correction of homophobic oppression. Veganism is a long-overdue correction of speciest oppression.

Satan has also conspired to silence the Church of Jesus Christ... 

I don't write much about Indiana politics and government but it's caused me no small sadness to contemplate the term-limit-departure of our fiscally excellent governor a little over a year from now. Gov. Mitch Daniels will have completed his second term and will have to leave office.

If I am comforted in our loss of Mitch's magnificent fiscal leadership, my comfort comes from this: that his likely successor is a man, Representaive Mike Pence, who promises to govern with the same fiscal commitments while adding a theological framework to those commitments that promises to extend far beyond fiscal discipline, on to principles concerning many other areas of governance including the battlefields on which the destroyers of our nation and its states are focussing their revolution: sexuality, the Image of God in man, the origin and nature of sexuality and marriage decreed by our Creator in His Order of Creation, and so forth.

As you read through Daniels' penultimate State of the State Address delivered yesterday evening, you will gain a hint of why I respect him. He has been unflinching in disciplining the educationists of our state by a host of private initiatives that have finally brought competition into public education. True, he brags about over half of our state budget going to edcuation, and he seems to see higher education as an unqualified good. I disagree with both things as I disagreed with President Bush on similar matters. Mitch Daniels is not a wild-eyed enthusiast. He's a realist who really changed our state. Definitively. And reading, you'll see what difference it makes to each citizen of the state.

But there's something else I want to say, here.

Some thirty years ago, I was at the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly to oppose their denominational abortion policy. My dear Mary Lee was pregnant and, since we were in the habit of having home births, I'd called the midwest representative of the PC(USA)'s self-funded independent medical insurance plan to ask if they'd cover the cost of our midwife? It was awkward. He hemmed and hawed and said he didn't know and would have to get back to me on it...