Greetings!
Peace, mercy, and grace be with you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Happy April! We remain thankful for your interest and support. We hope all is well with you.
Sunday, April 07, 2024
The Voice 14.14: Guilt By Association
The first week series on logical fallacies continues with one of which I know I have been often guilty, and I have to wonder how much of our faith and argumentation are really based upon it: guilt by association.
I get it: “that’s denominational” easily becomes shorthand for what is normally a more elaborate argument regarding the origins of a given belief or practice. But the problems with this approach remain legion: nothing is inherently right or wrong because a denomination does it, and it remains possible to uphold what is actually error or part of an over-reaction and commend what really has denominational origins as “truth” while slandering and condemning what is really truth as being “denominational.”
Beyond that is the problematic use of the term “denominational,” which captured a moment in time regarding the practice of the Christian religion ca. 1650-1950 and considering it normative. These days “denominationalism” is in steep decline, although the doctrines and practices for which we find no authority in Scripture remain prevalent. Our conversations look more and more like “inside baseball” which seem as a foreign dialect to anyone not associated with churches of Christ.
Yet even all of this presumes good faith argumentation and some actual, substantive association between a given doctrine/practice and a denomination. As evidenced in the article’s discussion about “Neo-Calvinism,” sometimes brethren hear of someone teaching something with which they disagree or are made uncomfortable and then immediately try to slap some denominational label on it even if said label is beyond a stretch. So it was with what some brethren a generation ago decided to deem “Neo-Calvinism,” which has nothing to do with either historic Augustinian Calvinism or Kuyperian Neo-Calvinism, and requires an essentially Pelagian understanding of grace and free will to even justify any remote association between a more robust emphasis on grace with Calvinism. They also decided to lump those who were encouraging a more ecumenical and Gospel-saturated perspective with said “Neo-Calvinism.”
And so we today now get to argue about this warped and distorted characterization of “Neo-Calvinism” as opposed to any of the substantive issues, and that’s exactly the problem with this guilt by association and the logical fallacy therein: it should never be about demonizing a given set of ideas, beliefs, or even people by negative associations, but about addressing the actual, substantive arguments, and meeting them with that which God has made known in Christ through the Spirit. Have concerns about what someone is preaching regarding grace? Address it by the Scriptures, not some distorted, warped, and fallacious characterization. Think it has something to do with Calvinism? Make the argument based on actual, historic Calvinism. If the Scriptures nor historical analysis justify your argument, then reconsider your argument.
I’ve seen far too many brethren fall into some type of Pelagianism, Gnosticism, etc. because they were really (over-)reacting to the distortions of Calvinism, certain aspects of what Jehovah’s Witnesses teach, and the like. In no aspect will you come to a knowledge of the truth merely by resisting error. One has to come to a knowledge of the truth so he or she might be able to better understand how such truth has been warped and distorted in multiple directions for all kinds of reasons.
The Letter of James | James 2:1-9
Our Sunday morning Bible study continues in the Letter of James with James 2:1-9. In the podcast linked above we grapple with our understanding of what it means to not show prejudice or partiality while James simultaneously affirms God’s preferential concern for the poor.
Perhaps what we believe “showing no prejudice” represents actually has a sordid “colorblind” past, the legacy of segregationism and white supremacy. The question comes into greater focus with loving our neighbor as ourselves: am I really called to treat my poor neighbor and my rich neighbor in the exact same way to love them, or does loving each of them require a different kind of approach?
Maybe there is something to that equity over equality thing.
West LA Christian Club | The Pericope Adulterae | John 7:53-8:11
This week the West LA Christian club enjoyed a luncheon since it is spring break; our previous study in John 7:53-8:11, the pericope adulterae or the story of Jesus and the adulterous woman, was nevertheless posted.
In it we attempt to affirm both how the text does not belong at this point in the narrative, was most likely written by someone other than John, and inserted here because it was hard to figure out a better place for it, while also affirming the story as an authentic, genuine memory of something Jesus did while in Jerusalem. In terms of temporal context, placement in the Luke 21 narrative would have made better sense; but theologically and thematically it does resonate with many of the things affirmed in the Gospel of John.
We should not let the complicated textual critical history of the pericope distract us from the power of its message and as a warning about our zeal for justice and righteousness lest we be found to become an accuser and judge, and not as humble servants of the Judge and Lord Jesus Christ.
Lesson: Crucified With Christ | Galatians 2:1-21 | Paul’s Letter to the Galatians
Outline | Podcast | Conversation
Our exploration into Paul’s letter to the Galatians continues.
There’s a lot going on here: the affirmation of the proclamation of the same Gospel to the circumcised and the uncircumcised; justification by faith and not works of the Law; being crucified with Christ, not losing one’s identity, but having it redeemed and becoming the best possible versions of ourselves.
Yet I urge significant consideration and meditation upon how James, Peter, and John, of all the themes in the Gospel, decided to additionally encourage Paul to remember the poor, and how such was, in fact, the very thing Paul was eager to do. I’m not sure such would have been what we would have encouraged in terms of greater emphasis; likewise, I am not sure how many of us would be honestly able to say, with Paul, that remembering the poor was the very thing we proved eager to do.
Abraham looked up and saw behind him a ram caught in the bushes by its horns. So he went over and got the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son (Genesis 22:13).
This week’s image comes from the British Museum and its Mesopotamian collection. It is the famous “Ram in the Thicket,” which the British Museum says is actually a goat in a bush or tree trying to find food.
It was discovered by Sir Leonard Woolley in the Royal Tombs of Ur during his excavations in that part of modern-day Iraq in the late 1920s. It is dated to around 2600 BCE, or over 500 years before the days of Abraham.
As with almost all things in the British Museum, it’s there and can be seen, but part of a large room with an overwhelming number of objects which makes it difficult to appreciate any of them. The infamous Ea-Nasir tablet is in this or an adjoining room, and in the midst of everything else I did not sufficiently notice or appreciate it. If you know, you know.
Book Review
It’s now the most populous country in the world and well poised to make a significant impact on the world of the 21st century. But what is India all about?
In India: A History (affiliate link), John Keay attempts to lay out what we can know about the history of subcontinental Asia.
The whole enterprise remains fraught with difficulties. How to define “India” is one of them: the British raj was about the only time the whole subcontinent was under a single authority. The author goes with a “greater India” and lays out the history of the whole subcontinent: modern day Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh.
Another challenge is historical records: we might imagine there would be all kinds of records of exploits, but if they ever existed, most have been lost. We prove dependent on a few historical inscriptions which have been preserved as well as archaeological discoveries and myths and legends. And, of course, Indian history is fraught with all kinds of issues in terms of Hindu nationalism.
The author well negotiates these difficulties to present as thorough as a history of the subcontinent as is practicable. He describes what we know about the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC), the entrance of the “aryans” of the Vedas, what can be known about the development of various kingdoms in the first millennium BCE, the Buddha and the development of Buddhism, the Maurya period, interaction with the West, the Gupta period, the various kingdoms in the period immediately after the Guptas in the first millennium CE, and then the long interactions/engagements/wars between various Muslim powers and native Indian kingdoms, all of which lead up to the Mughals and the British Raj.
The history can take on much more details with the Mughals, the British, and the subcontinent after Partition.
This book is quite useful in order to better understand why the subcontinent is as it is and how its societies and cultures have developed. Highly recommended.
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May the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirits.
Ethan