Christians against civil partnerships and gay marriage. - The Petition Site

Christians against civil partnerships and gay marriage. - The Petition Site

aztexan: Christianity: The Intelligible Axiom

Contrary to the unity commended by Scripture, the World Council, the National Council of Churches, and the Blake-Pike proposals envisage denominational mergers without any significant doctrinal agreement. This is consistent with their anti-intellectualism which leaves them no Gospel.  --Gordon H. Clark



The following excerpt from Gordon H. Clark's Christian Philosophy was posted on AZTexan's blog. I hope he will forgive me for borrowing this without asking. But Evangelical ecumenicalism is as bad as any of the liberal ecumenical movements. In other words, the National Association of Evangelicals has led to all sorts of theological errors.  The National Association of Evangelicals is as full of errors as any "liberal" ecumenical organization.

 Here is the quote from Dr. Clark:

 ... The whole attempt to disparage knowledge and logic, whether the attempt be that of the contemporary liberals or that of the anti-intellectual pietists, is clearly contradictory to Scripture.

The Scripture places a noticeable emphasis on knowledge. In Ephesians 1:17-18 the Apostle prays that "God may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in divine knowledge, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened." 1 John 5:20 says, "We know that the Son of God is come and has given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true." The same apostle records the words of our Lord, "This is life eternal, that they might know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." 1 Corinthians 15:34 gives a warning against ignorance: "Awake to righteousness and sin not, for some have no knowledge of God."

The Old Testament too commends knowledge. The stated purpose of the Proverbs of Solomon was to give subtlety to the simple and knowledge to young men. The fear of the Lord is the beginning or chief part of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction. And there are many other exhortations to knowledge.

To refer to a matter of contemporary interest and to illustrate how intellectualism or a respect for knowledge entails practical conclusions that contrast sharply with other types of religion, we may note that the ecumenical unity approved by the New Testament is unity of doctrine and knowledge. There is no great command to establish organizational unions, but we read with some frequence, "I beseech you that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment" (1 Corinthians 1:10). Or, again, "Fulfill my joy, that you be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind" (Phillipians 2:2). Contrary to the unity commended by Scripture, the World Council, the National Council of Churches, and the Blake-Pike proposals envisage denominational mergers without any significant doctrinal agreement. This is consistent with their anti-intellectualism which leaves them no Gospel.

In addition to these Neo-orthodox groups, the pietists with their claims to individual guidance and additional revelations, and the saccharine devotional writers who malign dead orthodoxy and cold intellectualism, also exhibit a fundamental misunderstanding of Christianity when they draw their sharp distinction between the head and the heart. The head, for them, represents knowledge and dry theology; the heart is all the exciting emotionalism of hillbilly evangelism. But in Scripture there is no contrast whatever between head and heart. The view is a strictly modern innovation that conflicts with Biblical psychology and reflects a wrong notion of true religion. Depreciation of understanding, knowledge, reason, and logic not only stimulates an evil ecumenism but also leads to serious errors in theology, errors concerning human nature, sin, and therefore errors concerning the way of salvation.

Religion, or to speak clearly, the Christian religion is not an affair of the emotions, at least no more so than politics and economics are, but fundamentally an acceptance of an intelligible message.

The acceptance of this message is offered as a first principle, an axiom or postulate on which a superstructure of knowledge can be erected.... -

Gordon H. Clark From the lecture entitled "The Axiom of Revelation" Christian Philosophy (Works vol. 4). 318f.

Click here to see the original post:  aztexan: Christianity: The Intelligible Axiom

The President & The Prophet: Obama’s Unusual Encounter with Eric Metaxas - By Mark Joseph - The Corner - National Review Online

My remarks following are based on an article linked by the Aquila Report. As reported by Mark Joseph, President Obama was taken to task for his theological relativism on the issue of world religions and for his view that abortion is a viable choice for women with unwanted pregnancies. The speaker was Eric Metaxas. Unfortunately, the theologically liberal idea is that all religions have a core moralism that coincides. Basically, President Obama's theology is one that teaches that doctrine or special revelation is irrelevant as long as we all keep God's law. After all, we're all basically just good people.

Unfortunately, both Joseph and Metaxas have merely presented an Evangelical pietism that is as focused on a common moralism as that of the theological liberals. Evangelical pietists, although standing on the principle that Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation, diminish doctrine to a minimalism that is not that far removed from modernism and religious pluralism. Evangelicals and Catholics Together, the Manhattan Declaration, and other such documents are good examples of this. In fact, Joseph implies that "good" Roman Catholics are in because they believe in Jesus Christ and because they oppose abortion. Apparently, Joseph is unaware of the official Roman Catholic doctrine of implicit faith in other religions and that these other religions are not necessarily a cause for losing one's soul.

The short response here is that civil religion is as liberal and latitudinarian in some respects as the blatant religious pluralism and latitudinarianism of President of Obama. In the end, what unites Roman Catholics and Evangelicals is not a common doctrine of Jesus Christ and the cross, a common doctrine of Scripture, or a common doctrine of justification and the sacraments. What unites Roman Catholics and Evangelicals, according to Metaxas and Joseph is they are good Christians who uphold God's moral law which opposes the murder of the unborn. Of course abortion is infanticide. But how opposing murder makes one a Christian is a mystery. Many atheists and agnostics oppose abortion but that does not make them Christians.

What is problematic with this article is that it assumes Metaxas is some kind of prophet who foresaw the future. It does not require a divine revelation of the future to predict what President Obama might have been preparing to say at a prayer breakfast. Obama's background is in the liberal, mainline United Churches of Christ, a denomination that was once Reformed and Calvinist. Unfortunately, subjective pietism leads to this same loss of doctrinal and confessional standards--as any idiot can see when Protestants think Roman Catholicism is somehow akin to biblical Christianity and confessional Reformed theology. As the Westminster divines rightly saw in 1645, the pope is an anti-christ and the Roman Catholic Church is a synagogue of satan. Without realizing it Metaxas and Joseph are as liberal as Obama himself. Irony of ironies! Maybe Eric Metaxas ought to stick to Veggie Tales since his critique of Obama's theology is based on an anti-intellectualist perspective and a false Evangelical unity.

Click here to read the full article: The President & The Prophet: Obama’s Unusual Encounter with Eric Metaxas - By Mark Joseph - The Corner - National Review Online

Is President Barack Obama Using the Democratic Principle of Freedom of Religion to Promote Islam and Theological Liberalism?

“We have to make sure that we don't start turning on each other,” Obama said at his first full press conference since May. “And I will do everything that I can as long as I'm president of the United States to remind the American people that we are one nation under God. And we may call that God different names, but we remain one nation.”  President Barack Obama

Looks Mr. Obama thinks that all religions lead to God?  If so, that's religious liberalism.  It is one thing to say that everyone has a right to freedom of religion.  It is quite another thing to say that Muslims, Roman Catholics, Mormons, Buddhists and various other false religions all worship the same God that born again Christians worship.  There is only one God and His name is not Allah.