I have been reluctant to delve into the controversial issue of homosexuality. But recently I came across the blog of Misty Irons, the wife of the defrocked Lee Irons, formerly a minister with the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. On Misty's website she had a link to this radio interview she gave to a gay radio network: Misty's interview with Gay Christian Network Radio. This is particularly interesting because at the beginning of the program the two gay announcers joke back and forth about "bringing toys" to the show, presumably sex toys. I was embarrassed for Misty Irons, who "claims" to be an Evangelical and Reformed Christian.
What was particularly disturbing about this interview were the reasons she gave for her "conversion" to the gay rights movement. It is ironic that gay "evangelism" and personal experience were the reasons for her conversion. You'll hear that at about the 5-8 minute mark in the interview.
This is another good reason why I am a Clarkian and a Scripturalist in general. Experience and personal testimonies are not a test of truth. Scripture is the only source for an authoritative, infallible and inerrant revelation from God. Personal testimonies do not qualify as a justification for disagreeing with God's written Word. Everyone can identify with the sadness of someone dying. Misty was "witnessing" to two gay men and one died from AIDS. She then began to read gay "coming out" testimonies. So she concludes from that gays and lesbians did not "choose" to be gay and they had these feelings from an early age, etc., etc., etc. But is there any way to know if their testimonies are self-fulfilling prophecies or rationally justifiable? Dr. Gordon H. Clark rightly criticized empiricism as a philosophy; he also said that empirical science is always false. So if that is true, how can we trust conversion stories of anyone, including Christians?
The bottom line here is that saving faith is assenting to known biblical propositions. There must be some basic knowledge of the law and gospel and the cross in order for a conversion to the Reformed and Christian faith to occur. After conversion there must be a process of growth in the knowledge of Scripture and the propositions recorded there.
So if Scripture proposes that those who are homosexuals are yet unconverted, then we must agree with Scripture (Leviticus 18:22, 27; Romans 1:18-32; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11). Basically, what Misty Irons did was to reject Scripture and the authority of God's Word in favor of testimonials of those who have been hardened in their sins and, from all outward appearances, turned over to a reprobate mind (Romans 1:28 KJV; Cf. Romans 8:7 KJV). In short, most homosexuals are likely to have been reprobated from before the foundation of the world. The likelihood of their future regeneration is not good, especially since the world and liberal Christianity tells them that their sin is not really a sin after all. Simply because the reprobate person is unable to repent is not an excuse for their rebellion and that is true of every reprobate whether they be homosexual or straight, Muslim or Buddhist. Total inability is Reformed theology 101. That Misty Irons does not get this is a telling indictment of her disingenuous claim to be Reformed in her personal assent to Christian doctrine as it is outlined in the Westminster Standards. The Reformed confessions are not infallible but they are binding doctrinal statements which draw their most certain warrant from Holy Scripture.
What is even more alarming is that there are hints that Mike Horton might agree with the gay rights movement in the civic or worldly realm since he draws an absolute separation between church and the world. (See: Same-Sex Marriage Makes a Lot of Sense). Maybe Horton has forgotten that the church is called to preach the law and the gospel to everyone, including the state and the nation at large? The church is never to sacrifice the preaching of God's whole counsel in the Bible, not even for the sake of tolerance and the democratic principle of separation of church and state. Someone's morality will be legislated. Why would the Christian lie down and let the communists and the atheists and the gay rights movement erode the freedom of religion which our Christian forefathers fought so hard to obtain? Make no mistake about it. There is no neutral ground. You will either love God or you will love the world. Whoever loves the world is not of God:
"If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. (John 15:19 NKJV)
Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. (1 John 2:15 NKJV)
Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. (1 John 3:1 NKJV)
In fairness, someone has pointed out to me that Dr. R. Scott Clark has publicly disagreed with the legalization and normalization of gay marriage in the civic or worldly kingdom: R. Scott Clark on Civil Law Against Gay Marriage
Ironically, Dr. R. S. Clark thinks that I have to guess at his position or do google searches rather than just take him at his word when he makes absolute assertions about the separation of church and state--as if a democratic principle translates into a propositional truth drawn from Holy Scripture? He also takes a potshot at Scripturalism:
It’s not that it is difficult to find out what I have written on this subject but apparently it’s too difficult for at least one person, who ironically thinks he knows what God knows (which would include the proposition “R. Scott Clark is opposed to homosexual marriage”) the way God knows it but apparently he doesn’t know how to search the archives of the HB. Funny thing that. One would think that intersection between the divine and human intellects would cover basic internet searches but I guess not.
The last I checked, R. Scott Clark has not written anything that would be considered the fully inspired, infallible, and inerrant words of God? Be that as it may, I guess I am supposed to look for the truth of RSC's views like finding a needle in haystack while Clark sits back and smirks about his true position? The fact is R. S. Clark has said that homosexuality is wrong in the church. But given the apostasy of Lee Irons and his wife, Misty, who both utilize the two kingdoms theology to justify supporting the gay/lesbian/transgender lobby in the political realm--ironic because the two kingdoms view advocates not getting involved in leftist or rightwing "politics"--one has to legitimately ask where Westminster Seminary, California and R. S. Clark stand on this issue.
I guess it is prying into the secret being of God to ask legitimate questions publicly? Furthermore, it is a violation of the 9th commandment to ask where a seminary professor stands on the issues? This is how liberalism gains a foothold. Dissimulators duck, dodge and hide their true views on hot button issues. Dr. Bruce Waltke is now a neo-orthodox theologian who supports theistic evolution. How long will it be before others come out of the closet?
Furthermore, I would love to hear Dr. R. Scott Clark explain how Scripture violates the creature/Creator distinction? If God knows all truth, then surely He knows everything that we know? And if we know anything that is true, surely God knows that same truth? If God doesn't know anything we know, then He must not be omniscient? Would Dr. R. Scott Clark like to explain how we can know anything that is true if God does not know the same truths that He has revealed to us? How is Scripture "prying into the secret being of God"? Given the assumption that we can know nothing God knows--not even when that knowledge is revealed in the fully inspired words of the infallible and inerrant Scriptures--then it logically follows that we know nothing. Dr. R.S. Clark is an ignorant man by his own admission since he knows nothing God has revealed. It would follow that Clark cannot say that homosexuality is a sinful predisposition and a symptom of total inability since Scripture is merely a vague analogy or reflection of an unknowable truth. R. S. Clark cannot even know if 2 + 2 = 4 since it might be true for us and not true for God. Truth is two fold, don't you know?
What is truly amazing is that a professor of church history continues to label Gordon H. Clark's apologetics as a violation of the creature/Creator distinction when in fact Dr. Gordon H. Clark's view was exonerated by a legitimate church trial in 1944:
Thus God's knowledge and man's knowledge do not “coincide at any single point” (P. 5, 3; O. 21). A proposition does not “have the same meaning for man as for God” (P. 5, 2; O. 20). Man's knowledge is “analogical to the knowledge God possesses, but it can never be identified with the knowledge” which God “possesses of the same proposition” (P. 5, 3; O. 21). “The divine knowledge as divine transcends human knowledge as human, even when that human knowledge is a knowledge communicated by God” (P. 3, 1; O. 9).“Because of his very nature as infinite and absolute the knowledge which God posseses of himself and of all things must remain a mystery which the finite mind of man cannot penetrate” (ibid.). This latter statement does not mean merely that man cannot penetrate this mystery unaided by revelation; it means that even revelation by God could not make man understand the mystery, for the preceding sentences assert that it is the nature of God that renders him incomprehensible, not the lack of a revelation about it. (From: The Answer).
If Dr. R. Scott Clark, who claims to be a professor of church history, had bothered to read the response given by the Philadelphia Presbytery of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 1944, he would have seen that the presbytery upheld Gordon H. Clark's view as not violating the ectypal/archetypal distinction since Scripture is revealed, not hidden. Dr. R. S. Clark, following the irrationalism of Van Til, insists that Scripture is unknowable truth since nothing God knows can be revealed on the creaturely level.
It is Van Tilian irrationalism that allows for making Arminianism and Calvinism compatible. After all, it would be "prying into the secret being of God" to say Arminianism is heresy. And wouldn't the theological debate about the order of the logical decrees in the infralapsarian and supralapsaraian issue be "prying" as well? Oh, but I forgot. Dr. R. S. Clark knows for sure that supralapsarianism is heresy and infralapsarianism is God's truth--analogically and relatively speaking of course.
The convenience of irrationalism is that when you're cornered with a logical inconsistency you can just say that truth is analogical and consistency escapes us at the moment. How convenient.
The bottom line here is that believers accept the axiom that Scripture is the inspired, revealed, and infallible word of God (2 Timothy 3:15-17; 2 Peter 1:19-21).
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment