Fear and Trembling

In response to the recent shooting in Aurora, Colorado , John Stonestreet over at Breakpoint does a good job of quickly addressing the problem of evil at this post. Evil is both a problem for academic philosophers who wrestle with God’s existence and a problem for individuals who wrestle with the pain and suffering they endure.   The two groups overlap (what academic philosopher has lived a life untouched by evil), but I have little patience for the academic problem.   Many times when someone brings up a specific example of evil that he feels invalidates God’s existence, he admits that he is not personally trying to eliminate the very suffering he finds so repugnant.   It is difficult for me to respect that.   In addition, as Stonestreet points out in his article, a person who uses the problem of evil as a philosophical argument must provide a rationale for the existence of evil.   In a materialistic world, what gives a person the right to say someth...

My last two posts have discussed antinomianism.   This one will help to point Christians to the one Person who can provide assurance of salvation in view of their remaining sin. Assurance is Christian ‘shorthand’ for the knowledge that one will be in heaven when he / she dies.   I have treated the subject of assurance of salvation in otherposts .   This post will ‘plough some of the same ground.’   From John Calvin: The consciences of believers, in seeking assurance of their justification before God, should rise above and advance beyond the law, forgetting all law righteousness…For there the question is not how we may become righteous but how, being unrighteous and unworthy, we may be reckoned righteous. If consciences wish to attain any certainty in this matter, they ought to give no place to the law. Nor can anyone rightly infer from this that the law is superfluous for believers, since it does not stop teaching and exhorting and urging them to good, eve...

My last post discussed antinomianism.   The heresy of antinomianism teaches that true Christians do not necessarily perform good works.   This post deals with some of the logical out-workings of antinomianism.   True Christians will show their commitment to Christ in lives marked by good works.   What are we to make of the oft quoted surveys of George Barna and others that show   Christians are just as likely to divorce as non-Christians, nine percent of Christians tithe (give ten percent of their income as the Bible commands), 80% of those who take pledges to wait for marriage are sexually active outside marriage in the next seven years, and 20% of Christians do not think premarital sex is wrong?       Is it true that commitment to Christ makes no difference in a person’s life?   (Statistics as quoted in Finally Alive by John Piper, p. 13)   Keep in mind that Barna and others define Christians based on what they say they ...

Antinomianism, crassly stated, is the idea that a person can be a Christian without doing good works.   It is a separation of good works from true Christian profession.   Sometimes called “easy believism,” the idea of antinomianism is common in some Christian circles today. I have treated the necessity of good works in the life of a Christian in a post called “Faith + Works” on this blog.   In that post, I discussed John H. Gerstner’ s approach to antinomianism.   Gerstner teaches that people must necessarily do good works if they are Christians.   Those works do not earn them salvation, but they must be present in Christian’s lives.   Martin Luther, the great protestant reformer, first used the term “antinomian.”   Luther wrote, “Anyone who does not do good works in this manner is an unbeliever…Thus, it is just as impossible to separate faith and works as it is to separate heat and light from fire!” (“ Holiness Wars: Antinomianism in Church H...