The Rock-paper-scissors of Apologetics

So I tried another round of Catholic apologetics and yet again I'm discovering that the Catholic apologetic falls completely apart in the face of typical Baptist counter arguments. On the other hand I can't help but notice how quickly your more traditional Protestants, with a poorly thought out position on sola scriptura get tied in knots by the Catholic apologetic.

So I've come up with this theory based that apologetics have a big circle similar to rock-paper-scissors.

• Catholic apologetics tie Calvinism in knots.
• Calvinism biblically refutes Arminian credobaptists.
• Arminian credobaptists doesn't let Catholic apologetics get off the ground.  

Most modern Catholic apologetics came from the continent, they aren't American and don't deal with the sorts of claims that a Baptist would make. I've tried again and again to see if Catholics have refutations to basic Baptist theology and so far it appears they don't.

There really are about 5 principle arguments in Catholic apologetic.

1. Sola scriptura is not taught in the bible, in fact the bible teaches a historic church.
2. Protestants have to accept tradition on the question of canon and quite often on creed.  
3. The Reformation failed to produce a robust orthodoxy.  That is sola scriptura doesn't produce a unified belief and any basis for a true church i.e. the "there are hundreds of Protestant denominations..."  
4. The key arguments some reformers had with the Catholic church: physical presence,  Marian rites, infant baptism, special authority of bishops/pope go back very early.  So the apostasy could not have been near the time of the reformation.   
5. Church authority is non-severable, the church cannot fall into apostasy.  The  gates of hell shall not prevail....    

To see how these arguments work consider them against, say a  Presbyterian.  The Presbyterian wants to tie himself tightly to historic Christianity.  He doesn't want to put himself in the same boat as fundamentalists, Mormons and Adventists.  So he ends up having to argue all sorts of subtle and disprovable theories. He wants there to be some absolute sense in which he is Christian and a Jehovah's Witnesses is not even though the Jehovah's Witnesses is at least as committed to an accurate read of scripture.  Which means he has to grant historic creeds authority, but the creeds are far later than many other doctrines he would reject and he's off to the races of slitting his own throat.  

The Baptist response to those arguments is easy.  In order:

1. References to the church in the bible only apply to a local church.  There is no further entity, thus no broad ecclesiology.   The only church Jesus founded was the Jerusalem church, the one church he destroyed, to prevent the idolatry of tying a material church to God.  
2. Baptists reject the idea that canon comes from tradition.  Rather they believe God raises up a bible for his faithful in their languages.  So for example, the Wulfila, the Gothic bible, doesn't have the book of Acts yet most Baptists believe the Wulfila to have been the legitimate scriptures for that community.  
3. Baptists believe in a regenerate church.  There will never be a broadly believed orthodoxy. 
4. They grant that the errant theology was early, but because they aren't tied to any churches beyond the 1st century they are able to clearly look at the history and see the origins accurately.  Baptists, believe that the apostasy started early, almost always by the 2nd century.     The Reformation didn't reconstruct the church, the Protestant churches are just as bad, rather it created the room for further reform.   
5. Many Baptists do believe that the Catholic church fell into a deep apostasy.  They often believe in a faithful remnant existing inside or outside the church and quite often a restoration in the last 500 years.  

The big difference is that the Baptist makes no claim to be in a qualitatively different situation than the Adventist or Jehovah's Witnesses; they believe themselves to be in a quantitatively different situation.   Salvation comes from asking for Jesus's intercession.  What exact level of understanding is needed, is unclear.  

I suspect ultimately this is a short term phenomena, mostly having to do with English speakers and the internet.  Most of the internet Catholics spend their time debating the internet Protestant apologists that are reformed, James White types.  So this analysis may already be dead in the Spanish speaking community.  In Latin America the real battle is between Pentecostalism and Western Rite Catholicism, the traditional apologetic won't work for the reasons above.  Pentecostals also believe in "Landmarism-lite".  

So... my question to the internet is... does anyone know what's happening in the Latin American apologetics community?  What's happening in Spanish?  

_________

See also:

• A direct Baptist / Catholic debate: Campbell / Purcell debate.
• In terms of addressing the argument of government, which is the core of the Neumann apologetic: Mell's book on church government and  Savage's book on church government. More books of this type can be found on the Baptist History Homepage.
• Remember Lot's Wife, an example of the Baptist apologetic in response to an article lementing the disunity of the reformation.  
• For a Baptist understanding of church history an easy to read and famous presentation to familiarize yourself with the Baptist mindset is Ellen White's Conflict of the Ages Volume 5 The Great Controversy. For material about the early church, Acts of the apostles (Vol 4) which discusses the early church. Especially her last few chapters of this volume address Catholic claims.  As an aside these books are well written and a good read so, this would be where I'd start. 
• A short introduction which contrast baptist theology with liturgical churches: Why be Baptist.

How the denominations see each other

Got this indirectly from Thomas the Doubter's blog,  Think it is a great example of a picture is worth 1000 words.

C. J. Mahaney stepping down

I've posted twice before regarding SGM Sovereign Grace Ministries which was a look at structural problems in their discipline process and Sovereign Grace Ministries' use of demotivational methods which was a particular abusive technique they made heavy use of which was a distinctive. The leader of SGM C. J. Mahaney is stepping down. Note on his blog, note from the board, leaked documents regarding the dispute.  C.J. heads up Together for the Gospel, and is bringing in his friends from that organization to guide him during his stepping down.

I'd like to congratulate the people at the various SGM blogs: SGM Survivors, SGM Refuge, Spiritual Tyranny, Wartburg Watch, SGM Uncensored .  Mahaney has been a major leader in the whole New Calvinism movement.  So far the issues being discussed are internal problems regarding Mahaney creating problems with other pastors, rather than the more widespread  longstanding pattern of abuse of membership.  Its the authoritarian culture that's the problem, Mahaney, as dictators go is not unusually bad.  Part of being a dictator is terrorizing or at least intimidating those around you, that's the job.  If you don't like the behavior don't create authoritarian structures that necessitate it.

So the doctrinal and structural problems remain.  But what has changed is the problems are being widely talked about on the web.  When Joshua Harris rereleased Boy meets Girl the fact that 2 of the couples in his previous edition were getting divorced was public knowledge.  Stories about church facilitated sexual abuses have leaked.  Stories about embezzlement have leaked.  Stories about wrongful terminations, ruined marriages, and how miserable so many women are in SGM have leaked.   SGM is not able to act in secrecy anymore and the blogs above, and several others that were active over the last few years are responsible.

I don't have much to say other than this was an important step in people banding together to try and prevent the sorts of rampant abuses in authoritarian churches.  And the offer I made to Josh Harris 3 years ago remains open.  If SGM wants to start trying to build structures to stop abuses rather than to facilitate them I'd love to engage in constructive conversation.


____

Post Script (Feb 2, 2012)

It appears that way these allegations were handled was to create a biased board that investigated it and exonerate C.J. Mahaney.  The results are still not published, but the underlying facts to present Mahaney as having threatened someone to keep them silent years ago.   I'm not sure what is going to ever get published but I'll update here as more information becomes available:

• Response to SGM panal report from Larry Tomczak

____
See also:

• Al Mohler dismisses documents regarding Mahaney and abuse.  

Baptize young, before leaving the house

Mike Dever made an interesting point about Baptism:

Oh, a lot of things. I mean, spiritually, people’s affluence, people wanting to be served, consumers moving to urban areas where churches are close enough to where they compete for members, pastors not being taught this. I’m sure any real abuses that happen, and, of course, there were, anytime sinners like you and me are involved, any time abuses happen in church discipline, I’m sure those were repeated endlessly. And so I’m sure those stories would have been used against practicing it at all, because to practice it at all would have been in some way to have been involved in some kind of abuse of it. Now, I’m sure it’s just a combination of things like that. Also I think the theology changed and churches became more and more man-centered. I think people more and more misunderstood what it really meant to be converted. I think our evangelistic practices watered down the gospel. I think we started taking responses very quickly. We started baptizing people at a much younger age.


You know, I’ve been reading a lot of Baptist biographies in the last couple of years and noting baptismal ages. And if you look at all the Baptist leaders in the nineteenth century, they were all baptized at 17, 18, 19, 20, and 21. It’s when they get out of the home, or they have their first job, that’s when they’re baptized. Baptists these days baptize children at 12, or at even 8, or younger. It’s very hard. I mean, I’ve got kids. It’s hard to look at the kids who are pretty obedient, love their parents, and want to have the approval of their parents, it’s hard to know whether or not they’re really born again. I mean, of course they’re being sincere when they tell you something, but people can be sincere and be wrong, and I think we’ve just lost a lot of that subtlety of judgment. It’s not been encouraged among the pastors in our churches.

So what is your feeling. Is it a good idea to baptize before kids leave the house or not?

Americans vs. Latins on why they changes churches

Very interesting results. For Americans here are the reasons that they dropped out of church (long term):

FACTORS	CATHOLIC RESPONSES	*PROTESTANT RESPONSES
I found other interests and activities that led me to spend less and less time on church-related activities.	39%	35%
I moved to a different community and never got involved in a new church.	25%	30%
I had specific problems with or objections to the church, its teachings, or its members.	35%	24%
My work schedule.	17%	21%
When I grew up and I started making decision on my own, I stopped going to church.	41%	19%
The church was no longer a help to me in finding the meaning and purpose of my life.	25%	15%
I felt my life-style was no longer compatible with participation in a church.	25%	12%
Because of poor health.	4%	11%
Another reason.	5%	10%
I don�t know or no answer.	4%	6%
I became divorced or separated.	7%	4%
TOTAL (multiple responses)	227%	187%

*Table ranked by Protestant Responses

On the other hand among Latin Americans (in Latin America, not in America but ethnically hispanic) the reasons were complete different:

� Deception (43%)

� Try something new (11.7%)

� To follow the Truth (11.2%)

� Because they experienced the Holy Spirit in their lives (8.9%)

� Learned to study the Bible (3.3%)

� Their previous religion was corrupt (3.3%)

� Attracted to a new form of worship (2.8%)

� For convenience (1.9%)

� The old religion was too strict (1.9%)

� The old religion was too materialistic (0.9%).

This data is from Prolades (acronym is in Spanish translated it is "he Latin American Socio-Religious Studies Program"). Original data.

10 questions on the hypostatic union

For basic information on this doctrine see the Catholic Encyclopedia article. So I was over at Bridget's blog and she had an article asking about Jesus's chromosomes and how many came from Mary. Which brings up the big topic, of the hypostatic union in general. So I figured I'd open some discussion questions. I'd love it if you post your answers, pick the closest.

All questions prior to the resurrection if you believe his body changed when it was risen:

1) As a point of information (oversimplifying) humans get drunk because our insulin system cannot divert alcohols, in particular ethanol, away from our nerve cells (see blood sugar regulation if you want details). That is to say we have an imperfect endrocrine system. Jesus starts drinking wine. Can he start feeling the effects of intoxication?

a) No, he has no imperfections his endocrine system is perfect. Ethanol has no more effect on him than any other sugar.

b) Yes, he is human. He shares all human imperfections including not regulating that sugar properly.

2) An allegoric reaction is "hypersensitivity" a situation where the body over reacts to a toxin. Can Jesus have one?

a) No, he has an inerrant body it never makes a mistake.

b) Yes, he is human and shares all human imperfections. But his body was effectively perfect during his life so he never did have one.

c) Yes he can have one and like all humans had them during the course of his life.

3) Jesus eats bad eggs with lots of salmonella, everyone around him gets sick for a week and some people die from diarrhetic dehydration. He absorbed a level of toxins which would make him sick even without the diarreia weakening him further. What happens to Jesus?

a) He is fine he cannot be affected by toxins at all unless he wills it.

b) He is gets mildly ill but has a perfect immune system which handles the toxins from the bacteria perfectly, never over or under reacting.

c) He gets very sick: fever, vomiting and even diarrhea but his body makes no big mistakes so he is no danger of the diarrhea being lethal.

d) He is fully human and his body can over react to toxins like anyone else's and it could kill him.

4) Jesus is doing some carpentry. He has to figure out how much wood to use and has to multiply in his head. Can he get the problem wrong?

a) No, he is inerrant.

b) Yes, he could err in theory but not in practice since he is perfectly careful.

c) Yes, he could err both in theory and in practice but he never does during the course of his life.

d) He has missed some problems before and arrived at errant multiplications. That is not a matter of essentials and is part of being human.

5) While he is doing the carpentry it is a hot day and normal carpenter would be getting tired. His buddy working next to him is getting sloppy from exhaustion and heat. What's happening to Jesus?

a) He is a unaffected by heat or exhaustion.

b) He feels tired but he does perfect work.

c) He is fully human and gets tired too, creating some off center boards.

6) A piece of skin falls off his hand and hits the ground. In terms of DNA

a) 0 of the chromosomes are Mary's, he is fully human but not biologically descended from her.

b) 23 of the chromosomes are Mary's she is fully his mother. The other 23 don't correspond to any existing human.

c) All 46 are from Mary. God did not have sex with Mary and thus couldn't provide genetic material, she provided all of it.

7) Human DNA has thousands of replications errors. Jesus'

a) Is perfect, no bad strings all.

b) Has 23 perfect chromosomes and is a perfect copy of Mary's for the other 23 she has no genetic defects and thus he doesn't.

c) Has 23 perfect chromosomes and is at best a perfect copy of Mary's for the other 23; she has genetic defects and thus he does too.

d) Jesus is fully human and has genetic defects on all 46.

8) Jesus sits down to a game of Latrunculi (sort of like chess 2000 years ago in the Roman Empire). He is playing the best Latrunculi player in the Galilee. What happens?

a) Jesus instantly see the perfect move and makes it. He doesn't even think in error. (A perfect move would be the move that a supercomputer cluster might arrive at after several weeks of computation).

b) Jesus has to think to arrive at the perfect moves, though he makes no imperfect moves.

c) Jesus plays within human boundaries, but within those boundaries perfectly. So he plays as well as the best player ever and wins after a hard struggle.

d) Jesus plays OK, and OK is not nearly good enough against this guy and he loses badly.

9) Jesus sees a really hot girl. Can he experience lust?

a) No, the sexiest human is no more tempting than the sexiest termite.

b) No, his mind is perfectly holy. By training, grace and discipline his body has the same level of reaction as a dead body would.

c) Yes, but it only lasts for a fraction of a second. He can be tempted but he doesn't give into the temptation and instantly moves his mind on to another thought.

d) Yes, he had to fully experience temptation. He experiences his mind going back over and over again but he never gives in.

10) Short answer question. Would any of these answers be different before the baptism by John and if so which ones?

See also:

• blogogetics article on the hypostatic union.

Calvin's 500th birthday

Well I wasn't ready for a big post on Calvinism today. I probably should have been. Calvin is going to have a very good 500th birthday. 20 years ago Arminianism was still the rage and Calvinism quite out of fashion, the fashion has completely shifted. As we have approached the 500th Calvin and TULIP have made a come back. Individually I've never been able to get over the basic problem that I can't believe myself to be morally responsible for anything I have no control over. So:

If I am born in a state of Total depravity my rejection of God is not an immoral act. If election is Unconditional then God is the one doing the choosing not man. The morality of choosing or not choosing sits entirely with him not the creation. If atonement is Limited then by preselection then the actual sacrifice is of no meaning to those outside the circle of the eternally elected. It has nothing to do with me anymore than Polish law. If grace is Irresistible then even those saved have no merit. Finally with Perseverance of the saints we remove any merit to the saved for even keeping with the program.

The whole system turns salvation into a lottery. Whether you are saved or not becomes as moral an issue as whether you have brown or blue eyes: something you had no control over, predetermined at birth that you can't change or alter. I don't and shouldn't consider brown or blue eyes a moral issue. While there is fairly good biblical support for these doctrines the net effect of going to this extreme is to rob God's redemption of any sort of morality at all. From a human perspective you are either damned or saved completely at random, like winning at craps. The answer to faith vs. lordship in this system turns out to be neither.

Calvin himself built a nightmare police state (see Calvin the totalitarian) that collapsed because of his petty jealousy, intolerance and inability to address the human condition as it really exists and not as he theorized it should exist (see Anne Le Fert (Questionable Excommunication part 2)).

His current followers have created the most dishonest translation of the bible in a generation to back their views. I've celebrating 21 years on the internet, and when I compare the religious dialogue today to what existed on places like soc.religion.bible, or talk.misc.christian 21 years ago there is no question that a culture of intolerance exists today that did not exist then. Virtually every bible blogger has been banned from one board or another, there is a casual culture of "I don't like that view so I won't allow it to be expressed" that the moderators 2 decades ago (equivalent of blog owners) would have seen as outright anti-American. In society at large the new Calvinism hasn't had a chance to have much impact. But the traditional arminian baptists were firmly in the camp of Roger Williams (founder of Rhode Island) and believed that religion in America (at the time the colonies) should be always consensual. Today ideas like Christian reconstructionism, which argue that the state should enforce religious codes get their legitimacy among Protestants from Calvinism (though the Catholic Church suffers from a similar confusion). The fact that I'm having to write posts like Why not to keep going on with discipline after a member leaves is a direct reflection of a general rejection of Williams core idea that religion is something freely entered into between a person and their god. The very defense that Machen presented at his trial involved Christian liberty from Church taxes (see Excommunication of Gresham Machen for details) and would be rejected by the very churches he has founded today.

The mechanism by which this casual intolerance has spread is the the idea and ideology of presuppositional apologetics, and this has led to this breakdown in communication that existed 2 decades ago. While presuppositional apologetics are fully consistent with TULIP, they create a situation in which one of the parties believes the other is simply not worth discoursing with. The "unelected" are in an permanent irreparable state of delusion. Refutations of Reformed popular ideas don't need to be considered because they are true by presupposition. Counter arguments are satanic, because they contradict these presuppositions. Counter evidence is dismissed because it challenges the sufficiency of scripture. And on and on and on. Under this model dialogue becomes impossible.

It is from the reformed camp that the Patriarchy and complementarian movements are arising, creating a biblical mandate for the causal sexism of the 19th century (see defense against patriarchy part 6).

So on his 500th birthday I'd like to congratulate Calvin on making fashionable once again the absolutely worst aspects of European religion. There is no question that Calvin is one of the great theologians and biblical thinkers of all time. It is unfortunate that his short comings and not his strengths are what we are today confronted with.

A defense of Driscoll to the left

This is an unusual post for me. Normally this blog attacks Patriarchy and Complementarianism. My opinion hasn't shifted on that. This blog has ended up being very critical of Conservative Reformed Christianity, and my opinion on that has shifted in the last 2 years in a very negative direction. When I started I thought the problems were much less frequent and much less deep than I do today.

So why write a defense of Mark Driscoll? Well because a great many of the problems in conservative reformed Christianity are countered by Driscoll. He separates off the bible from a whole range of political and social conservative positions and presents a new vision for what evangelical Christianity could look like. In other words he achieves the goal of the emerging church movement even though he no longer associates himself with it. It is the missional core which I think puts him in a totally different category than the Josh Harris, John MacArthur, R.C. Sproul.... clan.

Quite simply the core idea of the neo-evangelical movement founded by Harold Ockenga was to separate Christian theology from Christian culture as a matter of working principle. A good example which is less controversial today was Moody's belief that there was no need to change the dietary habits of Eastern European converts, "The great commission is not a command to convert the world to Anglo-Saxonism". If one considers neo-evangelicalism to be a legitimate endeavor, that is disagrees with fundamentalism and liberalism that such a separation is impossible then it is hard to see what Driscoll is doing as being inconsistent with the absolute core goal of the neo-evangelical movement.

Without directly implicating MacArthur, Driscoll distinguishes between missionaries who study culture and fundamentalists who try to avoid culture.

"Fundamentalism is really losing the war, and I think it is in part responsible for the rise of what we know as the more liberal end of the emerging church," Driscoll says. "Because a lot of what is fueling the left end of the emerging church is fatigue with hardcore fundamentalism that throws rocks at culture. But culture is the house that people live in, and it just seems really mean to keep throwing rocks at somebody's house." (Christianity today article on Driscoll)

Driscoll built his ministry on 4 points.

1. The Church is primarily middle aged and female. In particular men 22-25 are the least likely to go to church. This is very bad.
2. Thus the church needs an outreach to young men.
3. However, the reason young men are not attracted to the church is a systematic problem with the way church is usually conducted. So churches that want to break from this mold need to "do church" with a very different flavor.
4. In particular what is needed is a to build churches that are theologically orthodox but culturally young and masculine.

One can watch the video the Church needs dudes to hear Driscoll reconstruct this argument in his own words. And if you look at the Acts29 churches I think his objective has been achieved. The core defense of Driscoll from within a neo-evangelical framework is whether people agree with these 4 points or not.

The first question is, is it bad that church is primarily female? Do we need an outreach to young men, and is acceptable to change the character of churches so that they become young men friendly; that is "affirming" of their gender and their identity?

I'd assume most neo-evangelicals would answer this question that yes it is bad. Christianity seeks converts of both sexes and if churches are some way systematically failing to reach you men that should be addressed. Driscoll himself makes an interesting argument that not only is it bad from an evangelical standpoint but leads to lack of aggression and creativity.

As he puts it "the church is run by nice soft 'chickified' church boys". Church attire in his opinion is very effeminate for example men's clothing in pastels. In his opinion the decor in most churches is effeminate and the music is emotionally charged and effeminate. This sort of environment is hostile to to aggressive young men. That is exactly the sorts of young men who are likely to be entrepreneurs. That is a marketing strategy targeted at women in their 40s will be unsuccessful with men in their 20s. So all of these aspects need to change in a church targeting young (20s) single men who are college educated and innovative (aggressive). All those aspects changed, further Driscoll developed a preaching style that he modeled on Chris Rock, a communicator who is able to effectively communicate with young men.

In terms of longer term goals, Driscoll believes that if that aggressive men are involved when young then they will marry and bring in their families so that this style of outreach is not self limiting. Moreover he sees this failure as being why evangelical Christianity is shrinking. In Driscoll's view Church planting is primarily a matter of natural talent followed by training. Most churches choose men who lack the correct natural talent and then apply an aggressive training program. The reason they do this is that most churches can't handle young entrepreneurial men. These men are the ones who are likely to question leadership, are thus seen as "trouble makers" and driven away. But in Driscoll's view, if you want innovative churches you need this sort of man.

Finally, Driscoll believes that the church environment is unbiblical. He cites David, Paul, John the Baptist, as being the sort of man he has trouble picturing "wearing sweater vests singing love songs to Jesus".

I'd also conclude by addressing the issue of Driscoll on sex. In my opinion where Driscoll has been most often attacked is for saying uncomfortable truths about male sexuality. His comments on things like middle aged weight gain, lack of oral sex or lack of frequent sex as being causes of adultery are politically incorrect and true. The question for the left wing critics is can a preacher honestly address women on the issue of male sexuality or do we need to keep pretending that sexual boredom and adultery are uncorrelated events?

See also:

• Freedom4captives A pro women's blog that contains the sort of arguments addressed in this post
• MacArthur v. Driscoll addresses the right wing criticism.

MacArthur v. Driscoll

I had figured this issue was going to die down but it seems that's its going into the fifth round or so. Essentially the question here is whether it is acceptable for a preacher to speak naturally on sexual topics or not. In other words can you as a Christian minister discuss sex the same way you would discuss auto repair or is hemming and hawing and being vague a requirement.

Since this charge is being led by MacArthur I think it makes sense to start by quoting him. All of the quotes come from a series of 4 sermons that MacArthur gave on Driscoll entitled "The Rape of Solomon's Song" (Part1 Part2 Part3 Part4)

[Y]ou can[not] make a biblical case for Christians to embrace worldly fads—especially when those fads are diametrically at odds with the wholesome speech, pure mind, and chaste behavior that God calls us to display. At its core, this is about ideology. No matter how culture changes, the truth never does. But the more the church accommodates the baser elements of the culture, the more she will inevitably compromise her message. We must not betray our words through our actions; we must be in the world but not of it. . . . . It's vital that you not send one message about the importance of sound doctrine and a totally different message about the importance of sound speech and irreproachable pure-mindedness.

Mark Driscoll’s response to that admonition and the things he has said since have only magnified my concern.

Mark did indeed express regret a few years ago over the reputation his tongue has earned him. Yet no substantive change is observable.

The first misconception some have regarding this debate is that this is new for MacArthur based on a particular television appearance. So I'd just counter this by noting that MacArthur has been arguing this case against Driscoll for years. For example he attacked Driscoll "vulgarity" in his "Grunge Christianity" article. And I have heard claims this is personal, and I don't think it is personal. Over the years MacArthur has attacked so many different people on some many different ideological grounds with these sorts of campaigns there is no reason to believe that this is merely a cover. His followers have broadly attacked Missional Christianity as per the image to the left.

What I really see though as the base underlying cause is not vulgarity, but rather postmodernism. In The Truth War: Fighting for Certainty in an Age of Deception MacArthur also attacked Driscoll as the cursing pastor. But the big issue in this book is epistemological. Driscoll is philosophically postmodernist while completely orthodox in his theology. Driscoll argues that Christian have a responsibility to engage the last 200 years of epistemology in an effective way. MacArthur in a book on epistemology displays a shocking ignorance of the topic. That is in many ways a replay of the classic question of Galileo, "Does the bible teach what moves the heavens or how the heavens move" just applied to another sphere of human inquiry.

With that preface lets hit the 4 issues in this debate

1. Legitimacy of cursing, or vulgarity.
2. Legitimacy of expositional preaching on poetry.
3. Legitimacy of expositional preachong on the Song of Songs in particular.
4. General attack on postmodernism.

First with respect to the first charge I'm not sure Driscoll is actually guilty a sin here. Here is the latest joke that everyone is in a tizzy about. What I should mention though is you'll rarely see the actual joke. Where I come from a statement of charges should be specific, not vague. If Driscoll is to be disciplined for "jokes" the specific jokes should be listed with citations of where they came from. OK here goes:

Question: What does the bible say about masturbation

Answer: Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might (Ecc 9:10)

OK, were you shocked? Not did you feel like you are supposed to be shocked; were you actually shocked? My guess is no, that joke is tame. The sort of joke that anyone who understands it isn't going to be shocked by. I can't even imagine anyone being aroused by it, which is core to the definition of obscenity, so I'd immediately dismiss any claims about this joke being obscene. Now I think the reason the joke isn't repeated is because it is so borderline, far better to say "I can't repeat the obscene joke on my site...." and convict Driscoll without even a complete statement of the charges. The fact is that this joke is so far from obscene that television censors had no problem with it during daytime. If MacArthur (who preaches in Hollywood) thinks that is an obscene joke there are about 5 of the country's top comedy clubs within 10 miles of his church, where he can find out how off base he is.

Now "corse jesting" is prohibited by Eph 5:4, as is "silly talk". Even if I were to grant that MacArthur has gone a lifetime without making a course joke, I'd say he's the pot calling the kettle black when it comes to this verse given the mountain of sillyness that comes out of him. So the question is do we want to remove pastors from office for Eph 5:4 violations and if so which ones would remain standing at the end?

So having dismissed obscenity lets move on to the second charge Driscoll's interpretation of the Song of Songs. First off, Driscoll has a dedicated site on Song of Songs, Peasant princess, where you can see for yourself he does a good job doing a very standard poetical deconstruction of a love poem. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary you wouldn't hear in any high school literature class taking apart a poem with lots of metaphor and allegory. The interpretation itself is not particularly unusual either, it is standard fare that you would find in most good commentaries. Adele Reinhartz opens his analysis with “The Song of Songs is the bible’s only extensive discourse on human, erotic love.” The idea that this erotic treatment is some innovation of Driscoll's is nonsense. Driscoll presents the material well but in a very direct way.

So now lets get to the charge, we have notes on Driscoll's sermon with "objectionable" parts highlighted. Now there is no question this is on the level of a 7th grade sex ed class in a sermon only given to people over 18 while discussing a love poem. Is this over the line? Is deconstruction of a biblical poem a legitimate activity. Tim Challis as well as MacArthur answered this question in the negative. I think this point can be immediately dispatched by noting that the Book of Hebrews is an exposition of the poetry of Psalm 103. God cannot forbid what is commanded.

So then we have to turn to a more specific question if there is something unique about Song of Songs that prohibits it. And in general the answer comes back to sex. That is the MacArthur position is that a preacher can discuss politics, law, history, theology, the news, sports, movies.... from the pulpit without hemming and hawing but you can't say things like "when woman are sexually aroused blood flows to the inner and outer labia". To prove this is sexually specific would anyone object to the equally explicit, "when a person is having a heart attack they often feel stabbing or shooting pain down the arms". Was the heart attack comment obscene? I'd say no, it was good medical advice. And that is precisely my opinion about the first comment as well.

But this is a tricky point. And it gets to the very core with the debate regarding missional Christianity. Missional Christianity rejects Churchianity and the standards of Churchianity when it comes to behavior whether in dress, attitudes towards body modification, in speech, in layout of the church. It says that it is going to walk away from some aspects of Churchianity to be able to actually reach people who would otherwise not be reachable. The bible never commands this sort of bashfulness, it is rather part of the "Christian culture". Paul lived in a culture vastly more explicit and open regarding sexuality than our own and never prohibited living in the culture, rather he demanded the opposite outreach.

What Driscoll did speak openly about a sex act he did so the the same way one would speak about grocery shopping or driving. And I think this is what people are reacting to, it was not the sexual content of anything Driscoll said but rather his lack trepidation in discussing it. Driscoll is not embarrassed to speak openly and sex that I think that not the content is MacArthur really found distressing. I had a similar experience on this board when trying to have an adult discussion of Christian Domestic Discipline. What I found then as well as every time this topic comes up, was that Churchianity's insistence on in treating sex differently than driving on adult boards is to impose upon sex the very obscenity that people like MacArthur are supposedly objecting to.

And this finally brings us to MacArthur's general attack on postmodernism. For MacArthur postmodernism is a chance to relive his hero's battle (see Spurgeon and the Down-Grade Controversy), (and Fed Up by Johnson). For Driscoll it is an opportunity for the church to reform its literature and make itself relevant to a culture which is altering its opinion on core issues about the connection between mind and world. The ideological struggle between Driscoll and MacArthur, deserves its own post and further should be broadened . Driscoll himself asserts that the primary division he has with MacArthur is over the contextualization of gospel.

MacArthur is Reformed, were he Arminian we could ask for a clear number like, how many souls should be lost due to an unwillingness to be missional: five, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, five hundred thousand...? How many would would just be "collateral damage" and not induce a policy change and how many would make outreach worth it. Since the answer is most likely in the millions, today I think this is a worthwhile question. MacArthur cannot reach the people that the missional Christian movement meets and reaches out too. So were he and his followers successful in delegitimizing it the number who would leave or never join the faith would hopefully only be in the tens of millions over the next century. But MacArthur is reformed so essentially he can be as ineffectual as he wants in outreach, since his works have no part in people being saved. So I close with question to readers who disagree with me, what your number?

See also:

• A defense of Driscoll to the left addresses the left wing critique
• iMonk vs. centuri0n debate: Frank1, iMonk1, Frank2, iMonk2
• A discussion by Tom Ascol, Chris Poe, Phil Johnson on this topic.
• A video by John Piper about Driscoll's style
• Preaching Dirty by Phil Johnson (one of MacArthur's employees)
• Freedom 4 captives (an anti-Driscoll website) this one is to the left of Driscoll. (See post which specifically addresses the Song of Songs issues)
• A direct video response of Marc Driscoll to Phil Johnson
• An excellent summary by theological persiflage
• A similar attack by Cathy Mickels
• Relit -- books by Driscoll