by on 9.28.11 13 Comments

is a modalist a Christian?

First, what is modalism?

Modalism maintains that there is one God who manifests Himself successively as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit but who is not contemporaneously all three. [Believer's Study Bible, electronic ed. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1997), Glossary.]

The ESV Study Bible expands on this with this paragraph:

One of the most fundamental ways to misunderstand the Trinity is tritheism, which overemphasizes the distinction between the persons of the Trinity and ends up with three gods. This view neglects the oneness of the natures of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. At the other end of the spectrum is the heresy of modalism (also known as Sabellianism, named after its earliest proponent, Sabellius, 3rd century), which loses the distinctions between the persons and claims that God is only one person. In this view, the appearance of the three persons is merely three modes of existence of the one God. For instance, God reveals himself as Father when he is creating and giving the law, as Son in redemption, and as Spirit in the church age. A contemporary version of modalism is found in the teaching of Oneness Pentecostalism. [Crossway Bibles, The ESV Study Bible (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2008), 2514-15.]

Sabellius, the man usually credited as the earliest proponent of the view was excommunicated by the Bishop of Alexandria in 260 or 261. The Sabellians appealed to Rome (the church in Rome played an early leading role, but there was as yet no papacy). In 262, the Bishop of Rome held a council and condemned Sabellius and his modalism along with tri-theism and subordinationism (an early variant of what would become Arianism).

False doctrines like modalism were condemned by the church in the third and fourth centuries. That settles the question, right?

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Filed Under: Bauder, Dever, Doran, Driscoll, Issues, James MacDonald, Personalities, Separation
by on 8.30.11 14 Comments

when is a link not a link?

A friend of mine posted an article to which I objected. I objected privately, so I’m not going to post a link. We had a brief and I think courteous exchange of views. But the whole discussion gets me thinking about the whole paradigm shift that the new media is. That is, I think we are still getting used to the internet (or, as one of my hockey bloggers calls it, “the AlGore”).

It is common practice in the blogosphere to link to other blogs or articles online. This is part of the ‘netiquette’ of blogging, especially when you are writing a contrary opinion. The link provides context, your readers can go to your online ‘opponent’ to see what they said in context in order to decide whether they will agree with you or him or neither.

It is also common practice to link to news items of interest with a brief comment suggesting why the link was interesting to you.

I have occasionally linked to Christianity Today when I see articles of interest there, or when I wish to take issue with something said there. Some of my fellow fundamentalists have commented when I have done that without much of a disclaimer. I guess I don’t think a disclaimer is all that necessary when I am critiquing an article. It is pretty clear that I am not agreeing!  (Does anyone think I am ambiguous when I disagree?) And I don’t think a disclaimer is always necessary when I am just passing along a link to say: look at this, it’s interesting.

But what if I was writing an article listing a whole host of sites as “good resources for church planting” or “good resources for spiritual growth” or “good resources for theology”?

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Filed Under: Blogosphere, Evangelicalism, Fundamentalism, Separation
by on 8.25.11 1 Comment

more hilarity from a spammer

Got a spam e-mail from someone claiming to be doing social work in North Korea and also claiming I had been in contact with them in the past. Then it closed with this disclaimer:

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE – This e-mail transmission, and any documents, files or previous e-mail messages attached to it may contain information that is confidential or legally privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, or a person responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that you must not read this transmission and that any disclosure, copying, printing, distribution or use of any of the information contained in or attached to this transmission is STRICTLY PROHIBITED. If you have received this transmission in error, please immediately notify the sender by telephone or return e-mail and delete the original transmission and its attachments without reading or saving in any manner. Thank you.

Please note:

1. This disclaimer comes at the END of the message, after I’ve already read it.

2. It tells me that if I am not the intended recipient, I am prohibited from reading it.

What does this tell you about the intelligence level of the average spammer? Genii?? I think not!

don_sig2

P. S. I plan to get to some serious blogging soon. I know it’s been a bit light lately.

Filed Under: Fun and games
by on 8.24.11 3 Comments

maybe you’ve seen this one

BREAKING NEWS: The epicenter of the quake has been pinpointed to a graveyard outside of DC, where all our Founding Fathers just rolled over in their graves due to current leadership in Washington.

A friend of mine posted this on Facebook, I  thought it was funny, so am passing it along.

don_sig2

Filed Under: Fun and games
by on 8.16.11 7 Comments

54 hair-width’s of change

In my life time, that’s how much the radius of the earth has changed, according to NASA.

The scientists estimated the average change in Earth’s radius to be 0.004 inches (0.1 millimeters) per year, or about the thickness of a human hair, a rate considered statistically insignificant.

I am sure you were waiting with bated breath for that bit of news!

I’m just wondering if that means 108 hair-widths for the diameter??

don_sig2

Filed Under: General Interest, Science, Space
by on 8.5.11 12 Comments

hippo critter?

It’s all very well to call the young, the restless, and the reformed to maturity and discernment, but… well, just read the comments following the post.

don_sig2

Filed Under: Issues, MacArthur, Music, Personalities, Separation
by on 8.1.11 3 Comments

Machen–Christianity and Liberalism

Have you ever read this classic? I’ve heard about it all my ministry life, from the days of training at BJU til now, but, incredible as it may seem, never read the book.

I found a copy of the text online and converted it to the Kindle. I’m about half way through. I’m hoping to do some blogging about the ideas in it sometime soon (when life slows down… Hah!). In the meantime, I’d like to urge you to read it if you have never done so.

It is available online here. There is a Kindle version here, it’s 1.99 for that version. I found a free one somewhere, but it was poorly scanned, so I formatted my own from the website I linked to first.

One last item: Tim Challies just completed a group reading of Christianity and Liberalism. The blog series begins here, with links to each of the subsequent blogs at the bottom of the article. Challies is an interesting guy. He and some of his readers might be getting Machen’s point a bit, but most of them don’t seem to realize that if you are going to oppose liberalism as aggressively as Machen did, you will either be forced out as Machen was or you will realize you have to come out. You can’t take Machen’s stand and remain in fellowship with apostasy.

don_sig2

Filed Under: Issues, Liberalism
by on 7.24.11 Leave a Comment

no such thing as moral relativism

So says Paul Boghossian in the New York Times, “The Maze of Moral Relativism”. He argues instead that attempts to hold to moral relativism only turns into nihilism, surely an unsatisfactory conclusion. In the end, he says, there have to be moral absolutes. He doesn’t appear to derive this from any revelation, but merely from logic. His column is interesting, regardless whether you agree or disagree with is conclusions.

Relativism about morality has come to play an increasingly important role in contemporary culture.  To many thoughtful people, and especially to those who are unwilling to derive their morality from a religion, it appears unavoidable.  Where would absolute facts about right and wrong come from, they reason, if there is no supreme being to decree them? We should reject moral absolutes, even as we keep our moral convictions, allowing that there can be right and wrong relative to this or that moral code, but no right and wrong per se.

And

The argument is significant because it shows that we should not rush to give up on absolute moral facts, mysterious as they can sometimes seem, for the world might seem even more mysterious without any normative vocabulary whatsoever.

don_sig2

Filed Under: General Interest, Philosophy
by on 7.22.11 2 Comments

typing oot fast

Do you ever find that your typing gets a little garbled, your fingers get ahead of your mind and the result is a mess?

One typo I do all the time is “ot” when I mean “to”. I think this happens because I am frequently typing NT and OT for the Testaments. This used to drive me crazy. I hate lifting my hand from the keyboard to fix this with spell-check so I created a Word macro to fix this on the fly.

Here it is:

Sub FixOT()
‘
‘ FixOT Macro
‘ Macro recorded 1/1/99 by Donald C S Johnson
‘
    Selection.MoveLeft Unit:=wdWord, Count:=1
    Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1, Extend:=wdExtend
    Selection.Cut
    Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1
    Selection.Paste
    Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1
End Sub

I have this Macro attached to the keyboard shortcut “Ctrl-Shift-O”. It only works when you are one space past the typo… “ot “ (just before the second quote in the example.

And… I find that my fingers sometimes zip along and type “si” for “is” and “eb” for “be” and “yb” for “by” and any number of other dumb typing errors. My little macro gets used a lot.

If only it could fix all my typos… I still have plenty in the big words too!

It’s something like the way I talk. One of my friends used to say, “My tongue gets tangled around my eye-teeth and I can’t see what I’m saying.”

I don’t know if this of any interest to anyone, but it’s Friday and I have been making these typos a lot this week!

don_sig2

Filed Under: Computer, General Interest
by on 7.20.11 Leave a Comment

Choir of Creation – Ps 148

We are nearing the end of our study of the Psalms. Just two more to go! Tonight’s offering was Ps 148, a beautifully crafted psalm, full of powerful thoughts concerning God and his relationship to his people. As I presented the material, I felt a little ‘flat’, not as engaged as I had anticipated in the study. As I was thinking the process over, I thought that this was one psalm that could have used some visual aids and perhaps a bit different style. I alternate between a preaching style and a ‘Question/Answer’ style for the Psalms. (The Q & A style is also known as “read my mind”, since I seem to come up with incredibly obscure questions. I need to learn how to write leading questions!)

Psalm 148 is called the Choir of Creation by Derek Kidner, one of the supreme commentators on the Psalms. His little work is just outstanding and has taught me an incredible amount about Hebrew poetry and how to pick out the features of the psalms, not to mention keen insights into each individual psalm.

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Filed Under: Bible Study, Devotions, Worship
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