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Martyred for the Gospel

Martyred for the Gospel
The burning of Tharchbishop of Cant. D. Tho. Cranmer in the town dich at Oxford, with his hand first thrust into the fyre, wherwith he subscribed before. [Click on the picture to see Cranmer's last words.]

Daily Bible Verse

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Postmodernism Trumps Creation: Girl Scouts troops disband after chapter says it will allow transgendered 7-year-old  - New York Daily News

Leaders of three troops of Girl Scouts quit their posts and disbanded the troops after the organization’s Colorado chapter said it would allow a transgendered 7-year-old to join.
The troop leaders, all affiliated with a Christian school in Louisiana, resigned in protest of the Colorado chapter’s decision to allow participation from any child who identifies as a girl, The Christian Post reported.
Controversy erupted when Felisha Archuleta tried to enroll her son, Bobby Montoya, who identifies as a girl, in a Girl Scouts troop in Denver.  Click here to read the story:  Troops Disband



Is it a surprise to anyone who is a Bible believing Christian that modern man thinks everything is optional, including a person's biological and physical body?  The post-Enlightenment rebellion against reason has reached a new low where nothing is certain, not even one's gender.  Gender, like reality, is merely an illusion of the mind to be changed at will or molded like a ball of wax.  After all, it is feelings that really matter, not facts.

It is this same sort of thinking that guides modern theology, which essentially denies that special revelation can exist except in subjective analogies and relativistic "factual" myths.  Michael Horton's new systematic theology is proof enough of that.  For Horton the Bible is not doctrinal or propositional unless it happens to be convenient for whatever point he wants to make.  Not even the Reformed confessions are about propositional truth for Horton.  Rather it's all an inspiring drama where the believer "feels" God analogically, though nothing univocally true exists.  Truth is ultimately relative and the God who reveals Himself remains hidden.  (See Part One:  Review of The Christian Faith.  See addendum below).

Carried over into the main culture not even science can determine what is obvious to the rest of us.  A baby born with certain biological and physical characteristics, including chromosomes, is not the test of gender.  Rather gender is simply a matter of psychological predetermination.  Or is it?  Now, it would seem, gender is more a matter of choice on the part of a person rather than a matter of God's established creation.  In the beginning God created Adam and Eve as male and female, husband and wife (Genesis 1:1, 26, 27; 2:7, 20-25; 5:1; Matthew 19:4; Mark 10:6)  What we see being pushed as the politically correct propaganda of the day is that individual liberty trumps biblical truth, special revelation and even natural revelation.  Even empirical science must bow to the idol of psychological "feelings" and "emotions" rather than objective truth.

Gordon H. Clark was prophetic when he said that science is only trustworthy in what it can produce practically.  Basically, empirical science is influenced by the subjective presuppositions of those who practice it.  Combine that with postmodernism and it is not hard to see why a postmodern culture defines reality via psychology and sociological presuppositions.  Empiricism, psychology, sociology and every other modern "science" basically sees what it has presupposed it wants to find.  This is why Clark began with Scripture as the ultimate basis for absolute truth in every other area of life.  With the special revelation of God in Holy Scripture all other "sciences" devolve into irrationalism--including Cornelius Van Til's theology of analogy.  Michael Horton's irrational tome, The Christian Faith is just more evidence that theology has become identical with existentialism and psychological feelings rather than propositional truth or absolute truth.  It's all relative.  Or is it?

The culture war is not over.  In fact, it has expanded.  The liberal left and the socialist agenda has taken the game to a new level.  Apparently the game plan is to divide and conquer, take no prisoners.  Sadly even so-called Christian churches, seminaries and leaders have sold out to this same agenda.  It seems to me that Mike Horton is more on the side of the enemy than defending the truth of Scripture, the law/gospel distinction, and propositional truth.


 Girl Scouts troops disband after chapter says it will allow transgendered 7-year-old  - New York Daily News

Addendum:  Horton reveals his prejudice in the postmodernism direction with statements that are explicitly Barthian:

As with all of the divine attributes, it is crucial to avoid two extremes, both of which presuppose a univocal rather than an analogical view of the relation in comparisons between God and human beings.  On one hand, the biblical testimony to a living history with a living God in a covenant with genuine interaction resists all Stoic and Platonic conceptions of a nonrelational and nonpersonal One.  In the unfolding drama there are suits and countersuits, witnesses and counterwitnesses, and God is presented as repenting, relenting, and responding to creatures.  On the other hand, we must always bear in mind that in revealing himself God hides himself.  God explicitly forbids univocal comparisons (Numbers 23:19; 1 Samuel 15:29; Isaiah 44:8, 9; 46:4; Hosea 11:9).   Michael Horton. The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims On the Way. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), p. 240.

The idea that God "hides" himself even in special revelation comes from the theology of the neo-orthodox theologian, Karl Barth, and not from confessional and Reformed theology.  If there is no univocal truth but only analogies and comparisons that at no point coincide with God's words, thoughts, or absolute truth then the door is wide open to the sort of equivocation we see in the transgender movement.

Charlie

3 comments:

Marsha said...

Ack! That is awful.
By the way, good to see another reformed blog on board!

Charlie J. Ray said...

Thank-you, Miss Marsha. May God grant you His peace and comfort through the Holy Scriptures and the seal of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 5:1, 2; Ephesians 1:13, 14).

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Charlie

Charlie J. Ray said...

BTW, your understanding of change as part of God's providence is encouraging:

Through difficult times, God has given me much comfort and encouragement. He is still teaching me and changing me through difficult circumstances and changes in my life. For a long time I was thinking in terms of coping with what God has allowed into my life. However, God has changed my perspective from merely coping with things to embracing the changes in my life. The difference is this: When I merely cope with what is happening, it is all on the physical level, my own sheer will power to manage. However, when I embrace the changes that have come, I go beyond what I see to the unseen through faith and draw on the strength God offers me. I see difficulties and change in my life as an opportunity for growth instead of something to simply cope with. Genesis 41:52 For God hath caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction.

Ultimately, God is in absolute control of all that happens both good and bad. (Isaiah 45:7; Amos 3:6; Proverbs 21:1; Proverbs 16:33). If God foreknows something will happen--including moral evil--it follows that He determined it without doing violence to the will of the creature. (Isaiah 46:10; Romans 9:11-13; 9:17-21).

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