In 2011 I attended incognito the Evangelical Theological Society meeting in San Francisco, and listened to Robert P. George in a session entitled, “Ethics in an Age of Relativism.”  He described students in general in today’s colleges and universities as selectively relativistic.  They become very absolute usually only when they judge a personal offense.  They know you’ve offended them.

As an example, love has an objective meaning that proceeds from scripture.  It doesn’t mean acceptance or toleration, yet that’s the definition most accept today.  “Love is acceptance” gets 115,000 results when you google it.  Many call this “unconditional love” (21 million results) about which someone wrote:

The practical extension of the theories of unconditional love is a permissive attitude and a morally nonrestrictive atmosphere.

I’ve read several say that millennials don’t want to be judged.  They don’t want to be preached to or told what to do.  A fifth of Americans claim to be religiously unaffiliated, according to a 2012 Pew Research Center survey, which categorizes them as “nones.”  Millennials are less devout than any other age bracket polled and describe Christianity as “hypocritical” and “judgmental.”  Both those words are common for millennials.

Hypocrisy of any kind is ironic for someone who doesn’t want to be judged, doesn’t want you to be judgmental.  Hypocrisy requires a standard.  No one can be a hypocrite when there is no standard, unless he is selective.  They apply hypocrisy to you because you have a standard.  They then feel entitled to have no standard because you have violated your own, meaning that it doesn’t matter to keep it.  They have a standard of which they are only sure when they are offended.

Judgment is an important aspect of actual Christianity, so this is where selective relativism enters.  They want to be accepted based on who they want to be and what they want to do without judgment.  That is the new love.  They can’t be “authentic” if they can’t live exactly how they feel without recrimination.  This isn’t love.

Love as we know it today originated from the Bible.  As it began to be used in English discourse after the translation of the Bible into English, love took on a biblical meaning, because that’s where the idea came from.  It maintained biblical parameters, until words started taking on new meanings to adapt to the inclinations or views of the reader.  Usage of the word “love” then changed.

A millennial might tell you that you don’t love him, but he doesn’t mean biblical love when he says love.  Today fellow millennials know what the other means.  When he says you don’t love him, he means you are judging him and you aren’t accepting or tolerating his behavior.  This is the “unconditional love.”  In fact, if you do love him, actually love him, you can’t tolerate or accept all of his behavior.

Love that proceeds from scripture, the only actual love, is of God, like John wrote in 1 John 4:7, “love is of God,” which is one of the first verses we had our children learn.  Love is an attribute of God.  He defines love, which is why John also wrote, “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 18).  If something clashes with God, it can’t be love.

Love assumes standards, because something that violates the standards of God is not love.  The ten commandments, which are standards, are reduced in the Old and New Testaments to two standards, love God and love your neighbor.  You aren’t loving God when you disobey and dishonor Him, and you aren’t loving your neighbor when you are disobeying and dishonoring God.  God explains what it is to love your neighbor.

In the love chapter, Paul writes that “love rejoiceth not in iniquity” (1 Corinthians 13:6).  Consider these two verses:

Proverbs 3:12, “For whom the LORD loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.”
Hebrews 12:6, “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.”

that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.

Whenever I get to a slavery passage when teaching the Bible, I like to talk about slavery.  I taught Ephesians this year in our school and I had to talk about it in Ephesians 6:5-9.  I couldn’t just say, let’s talk about the employer-employee relationship, since it starts with slaves being obedient to their masters in verse 5.

Slavery is actually a big part of the Bible.  In the New Testament, the noun form of “slave” (doulos) occurs 127 times, and its verb form occurs 25.  Scripture doesn’t hide the fact of slavery.  It’s right there again and again.

This week Nike, the shoe company, canceled its Betsy Ross Flag Sneaker, which had a rendition of the flag of the original thirteen states on its heel.  Colin Kaepernick, who works for Nike, objected.  Vox, a site sympathetic to him, reported:

This early version of the flag, he argued, is pulled from the era of slavery and doesn’t warrant celebration.

Many are predicting sales of Nike will increase based upon this decision.  July 4th and this story got me thinking again about slavery.

Neither Jesus or Paul tried to stop slavery.  Did they approve of it?  Both did.

Slavery in the Bible isn’t an overly complicated issue, but I want to give what I believe are the cliffs notes on it.  It’s worth understanding, because there is good and bad here.

One, slavery itself is acceptable to God.  Two, slavery is regulated in the Bible by God and violating His regulations is sinning against Him.  Three, ending slavery isn’t a target for the church, even as it wasn’t for Jesus and Paul.

Those three points are hard for the modern American mind.  The institution of slavery doesn’t exist in the United States any more, but as seen in the Nike controversy above and others like it, it’s still an issue.  Thinking about slavery in a biblical way is of the greatest value.

I want to start with the regulations.  Kidnapping is wrong, so capturing someone and making him a slave is a violation (Exodus 21:16).  That would prohibit a slave trade and involuntary slavery.  Having a racial component to slavery is wrong, because the Bible teaches against racial superiority.  Everyone is equal in essence in the sight of God.  All the other regulations of slavery would fit the regulations in scripture for how anyone treats another human being.

A lot of the society of Jesus and Paul violated scripture.  The mission of the church superseded stopping what was wrong in the culture.  The focus was the permanent perfection of everything under the reign of Jesus Christ.  The priority is the kingdom of the Lord over all temporal, short-term human institutions.  The nature of change is important in scripture.  For a Christian, the successful long term changes of a society or culture depend on belief of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The world doesn’t understand the last point.  Nothing could be more important to the world than its seventy to one hundred year lifespan on earth.  However, not to God.  Jesus or Paul don’t attempt to upheave social institutions, which include marriage and government.

If you are slave, be the best slave for Jesus Christ.  If you are wife to an unsaved husband, be the best wife for Jesus Christ.  If you are in an oppressive government, be the best citizen of the state for Jesus Christ.  The Bible treats this life like the short life that it is.  I don’t assume that living according to scripture won’t turn the world into the best possible place even in the short term.    The permanent though should not be sacrificed on the altar of the immediate.

The Bible teaches that Christians have their identities in Jesus Christ.  They are not  a Jew or Gentile, but they are a Christian.  They are not male or female.  They are a Christian.  They are not bond or free, but Christians.  That brings me back to the first point.

The Bible teaches slavery.  Believers are slaves of Jesus Christ.  Every person is a slave to something or someone.  Paul said you were either a slave of sin or a slave of righteousness — you are either one or the other and not both at the same time.

The hierarchy of slavery isn’t wrong.  An earthly master isn’t better than his slave, but he has authority over him.  All men are created equal, like Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence.  Submission to someone in authority over you doesn’t mean he is better than you.  His position is greater even as God the Father is greater than God the Son.

The kind of slavery before the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation and the series of constitutional amendments ratified after the Civil War doesn’t exist any more in the United States.  Maybe that history of slavery is still a concern to unbelievers, but it shouldn’t matter to a Christian.  The slavery issue is a distraction from what the real problem is.  Christians shouldn’t cooperate with that distraction as they so often do today, so that they will appear to be “woke.”

Anyone who rejects the gospel of Jesus Christ will go to Hell.  Hell will be worse for everyone than any other form of slavery that exists on earth.  Rescuing people from sin and Hell must far outweigh any other cause.  Nothing is worse.

There are things worse than slavery that violate biblical regulation of slavery.  If we can’t be more concerned about those things over the slavery issue, then our values are truly perverse.

 In one sense, everyone is owned by God as a submissive slave, or as a rebel against, following his own way.   On the other hand, believers are voluntarily slaves of Jesus Christ.   Believers do not do well to cooperate with a general dislike of the concept of slavery.   We want to encourage slavery to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  If someone doesn’t acquiesce to the Lordship of Christ, he’ll be a slave anyway to the world, the flesh, and the devil and meet a damnable end.

In the first half of Acts 6 Stephen along with seven others was chosen to service the Grecian widows of the Jerusalem church.  In the second half of Acts 6, the focus stays alone on Stephen with his courageous gospel disputations in the Hellenistic Jewish synagogues.  He is charged with blasphemy by them, which then gains the attention of the Sanhedrin.  When he is called before that august council in Acts 7:1, Caiaphas asks him a question about the charges of the synagogue leadership:  “Are these things so?”  The rest of the mammoth chapter records Stephen’s answer to the high priest’s question.

The accusation against Stephen was blasphemy and he turns that on its head against his accusers.  The English word “blasphemy” transliterates the Greek noun, blasphemia.  BDAG says that it is “speech that denigrates or defames, reviling, denigration, disrespect, slander,” and in particular denigates or degrades God.  The Hebrew word that translates “blaspheme” means essentially the same.  Very often blasphemy is associated with taking the name of the Lord God in vain, breaking the third of the ten commandments, which is blasphemy.

In Acts 6:11, Stephen is accused to have spoken blasphemous words against Moses and against God.  Part of what Stephen is doing in Acts 7 is defending himself, but he does it in a cohesive manner so as to prove that his accusers were the ones guilty of blasphemy.  He uses the entire Old Testament to prove the apostasy of Israel and its leaders.  Blasphemy and apostasy come together, but what is it?

Key to understanding the sermon of Stephen in Acts 7 is in the conclusion to it in verses 51-53:

51 Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye. 52 Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers: 53 Who have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it.

This is the theme of Stephen’s presentation.  His audience, he says, always resists the Holy Spirit, as their forefathers did.  They did that by persecuting the prophets, ending in the slaying of the Just One, Jesus, so having received the law, they have not kept it.

Stephen’s present accusers and their forefathers denigrated God, blasphemy, by not hearing or heeding the voice of God through His spokesmen.  They denigrated them all the way up to the greatest spokesman of and for God, the Lord Jesus Christ.  This is something Jesus also had proven to them while He preached during His ministry.

What I’m writing here reinforces a theme I’ve been asserting in recent posts here on apostasy, authority, and heresy.  In his epistle about apostasy in 2 Peter, Peter equates the apostasy with the despising of government and speaking evil of dignities, and in Jude’s epistle also about apostasy, “despise dominion.”  “Despising,” “speaking evil,” and again “despise” are to “denigrate” or “defame.”

A person, including a professing Christian or Israelite, can imagine or fancy himself respectful of God.  He has formed or fashioned his god in his imagination into one who accepts his lifestyle.  This is what Jude calls ‘turning the grace of God into lasciviousness.’  Meanwhile, this person defames actual God by denigrating God’s representative human authorities that this person cannot morph into what he wants.

The denigration of the human authority is what Stephen specifies to evince blasphemy of God.  When Jesus came, He was God in human flesh.  They couldn’t get away with this separation of God from human authority.  Jesus was human.  They had to deal with something concrete with which they were unable to pass off through their fancies and mere imagination.  Here was God before them.  Who was it before?

Well, according to Stephen, before it was first Joseph.  Yes, Joseph.  The last fifteen chapters of Genesis  areabout Joseph.  Stephen said about Joseph, “God was with him.”  I looked into who else that was said about in the New Testament.  One time.  Acts 10:38.  It was said about Jesus by Peter.  Joseph and Jesus.  God was with them.

The parallel for Stephen among the Patriarchs were the twelve tribes, the sons of Jacob, who envied Joseph.  This related to lust, another theme for Peter in 2 Peter and Jude in Jude.  They weren’t getting what they wanted and Joseph was in the way.  What they wanted wasn’t what God wanted and God was with Joseph.

At the end of Genesis, Joseph says God meant it for good (Gen 50:20).  That didn’t relieve the responsibility of the twelve, according to Stephen.  They were opposing God nonetheless, like whom?  Like Judas for one, another apostate, whom Stephen’s accusers used to betray Christ.

There are thousands and thousands of millennials today, who feel justified in changing their own views about God, because of their problem with human authority, maybe a parent or a pastor.  The human authority is the one saying, no, and punishing them when they do wrong.  They want their way.  Instead of succumbing to the human authority, whom God is with, whether they like it or not, they speak evil of it and despise it, while thinking they are loving God.  This is blasphemy.  They are blaspheming God by blaspheming, denigrating and defaming human authority.  I know about this personally and painfully.  They are not loving God, because this is how God works — through people, human authority.  They have merely shaped a new god in their minds who rejects their human authority — like Joseph’s brothers.  Their new god, who isn’t actual God, agrees with them, and actual God, Who speaks through human authority, doesn’t agree with them.  They are blaspheming Him.

Stephen moves on from there, but that’s how he makes his case in Acts 7.  It would be good for you to understand that.

Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan Creed, A. D. 325/381 

(with Filioque) on the holy Trinity

(sung to the tune of “Of the Father’s Heart Begotten”)

Speaking of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, Humphrey Carpenter writes in J. R. R. Tolkien:  A Biography (Boston:  Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977):

[H]is [Tolkien’s] choice of clothes in middle age was also the sign of a dislike of dandyism.  This he shared with C. S. Lewis.  Neither could abide any manner of affectation in dress, which seemed to them to smack of the unmasculine and hence of the objectionable. . . .  [F]undamentally both men had the same attitude to their appearance, an attitude that was shared by many of their contemporaries.  This preference for plain masculine clothing was in part perhaps a reaction to the excessive dandyism and implied homosexuality of the ‘aesthetes’, who had first made their mark on Oxford in the age of Wilde and whose successors lingered on in the nineteen-twenties and early thirties, affecting delicate shades of garment and ambiguous nuances of manner.  Theirs was a way of life of which Tolkien and the majority of his friends would have none; hence their almost exaggerated  preference for tweed jackets, flannel trousers, nondescript ties, solid brown shoes that were built for country walks, dull-coloured raincoats and hats, and short hair.

As I read that, I thought, “This couldn’t be written today.”  No one would even say it, let alone in such a matter of fact manner and that was in 1977, which was my sophomore year in high school.  What else does the quotation say?

There is masculine dress.  There is effeminate dress.  People can know and know what masculine and effeminate dress are.

Regarding “dandyism,” read the Wikipedia article on “dandy,” but in that article, Albert Camus said in L’Homme révolté (1951) that:

The dandy creates his own unity by aesthetic means. But it is an aesthetic of negation. “To live and die before a mirror”: that according to Baudelaire, was the dandy’s slogan. It is indeed a coherent slogan. The dandy is, by occupation, always in opposition. He can only exist by defiance. Up to now, man derived his coherence from the Creator. But from the moment that he consecrates his rupture from Him, he finds himself delivered over to the fleeting moment, to the passing days, and to wasted sensibility. Therefore he must take himself in hand. The dandy rallies his forces and creates a unity for himself by the very violence of his refusal. Profligate, like all people without a rule of life, he is only coherent as an actor. But an actor implies a public; the dandy can only play a part by setting himself up in opposition. He can only be sure of his own existence by finding it in the expression of others’ faces. Other people are his mirror. A mirror that quickly becomes clouded, it’s true, since human capacity for attention is limited. It must be ceaselessly stimulated, spurred on by provocation. The dandy, therefore, is always compelled to astonish. Singularity is his vocation, excess his way to perfection. Perpetually incomplete, always on the fringe of things, he compels others to create him, while denying their values. He plays at life because he is unable to live it.

More “men” (of actual biological gender, but perhaps only to varying degrees in practice) than ever are dandies.  No Christian should be a dandy and this at one time was the normal way for a Christian to think, because the opposition to dandyism matches with what scripture teaches about manhood.

When I think the word “dandy,” I also remember, Yankee Doodle Dandy, the revolutionary war song.  So what’s that all about?  It’s not good, which is why it was a popular American song, singing about the British in a derogatory way.  It was a song of defiance from the Americans.  Here are two paragraphs from Wikipedia, that seem to be accurate:

The term Doodle first appeared in English in the early seventeenth century and is thought to be derived from the Low German dudel, meaning “playing music badly”, or Dödel, meaning “fool” or “simpleton”. The Macaroni wig was an extreme fashion in the 1770s and became slang for being a fop.  Dandies were men who placed particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and leisure hobbies. A self-made dandy was a British middle-class man who impersonated an aristocratic lifestyle. They notably wore silk strip cloth, stuck feathers in their hats, and carried two pocket watches with chains—”one to tell what time it was and the other to tell what time it was not”. 

The macaroni wig was an example of such Rococo dandy fashion, popular in elite circles in Western Europe and much mocked in the London press. The term macaroni was used to describe a fashionable man who dressed and spoke in an outlandishly affected and effeminate manner. The term pejoratively referred to a man who “exceeded the ordinary bounds of fashion” in terms of clothes, fastidious eating, and gambling.

Some men, professing again to be men without showing the quality, it seems, would rather be a dandy than be a daddy.  They are still playing around with clothes like little girls did with paper dolls when I was a child.  I’m reminded of what the Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13:11:  “when I became a man, I put away childish things.”  It’s worse than just childish to be a dandy.

Join Tolkien and Lewis.  Reject dandyism.

Apostates deny the Lord who bought them (2 Peter 2:1).  Their problem with Jesus is His sovereign lordship, that is, they don’t want Him in charge.  Why?  Their lust.  They want what they want, and only what He wants when it’s what they want.  On earth in real time, however, they don’t clash with Jesus.  Their conflict is with human authorities.

Wikipedia lists what social media is, and I looked, because getting that accurate might be important to someone with a strong support for social media, so I don’t mind representing it with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.  I know it’s more, but those suit the discussion.

And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.

Part One   Part Two

Since Peter commands “abstain from fleshly lust” in 1 Peter 2:11, a believer can know what “fleshly lust” is.  Someone can’t abstain from something he can’t ascertain.  God doesn’t have a word that is indecipherable.  God wants us to know it and do it.

In the first two parts, we have established that “fleshly lust” isn’t synonymous with a particular sin, but it is in itself sin.  It also leads to further other sins.  Someone should abstain from fleshly lust itself as sin, but also abstain for the sake of other sins.

“Fleshly lust,” however, must be identified.  The command to abstain from fleshly lust must be applied.  What I’m writing here is that people are not applying it because they can’t, but because they won’t — it is deliberate, convenient ineptitude at applying the lust passages of scripture.

The lust passages need to be applied in a number of different areas, but I’m applying it especially where I am not seeing it applied.  The convenience is that people, who very often call themselves Christians, want to keep their pet lusts.  They want to be a Christian, but they also want their lust.  Are they saved people?  Maybe not, and they should be concerned about that.  Peter deals with this in 2 Peter, himself concerned about false professions related to lust, to help give assurance to true Christians and not false ones.  The chief differentiating factor is lust, the false ones operating on lust and not true faith.

Lust Passages Applied to Music

Lust for professing Christians surfaces in their music and entertainment with the infatuation with pop culture.   A better adjective to use to describe either the music or entertainment, when it is characterized by lust, is carnal.  Carnal music violates the lust passages of scripture.  It is not abstaining from fleshly lust and what is it?

It is the seductive soft rock rhythm, the sensual scooping and sliding voice technique, and the non-resolving chord cadence.  It has a sensuous effect, stylistic intimacy with such techniques as sliding, flipping, crooning, scooping, delayed vibrato, and intimate use of the microphone.  It has the rock beat, achieved by beat syncopation, a rock feel with a highly syncopated rhythmic pattern, which promotes sensual body movements.  It brings a compulsion to move the body.   It is the boogie and the blues rhythm, jazzy, dance rhythm.

What I’m describing is popular music, the music of which the world approves.  It is worldly.  It is carnal.  It is fleshly.  It is profane.  It is rock, rap, blues, jazz, hip-hop, and country western.  It isn’t for a Christian, because Christians are to abstain from fleshly lust.  It is sin of itself and it will lead to sin, essentially dialing a Christian into functioning on a fleshly plane.

I’m not saying the previous paragraph is the best representation of what I’m talking about, but I think it is enough to understand what I’m talking about.  Someone can just hear it.  This does not represent God.  It violates the lust passages.  It is fleshly lust.

Sure, the Bible doesn’t say “no” to rock, country, hip-hop, over syncopation, sliding, scooping, and everything else I used and described that is like that.  The lust passages must be applied.  What I’m writing is applying them.  I don’t think it is difficult to do.  People who keep lusting and don’t want to stop won’t like the application, but that doesn’t mean the application isn’t true.  Churches and church leaders that apply those passages need to keep doing it, despite the opposition.  God is the judge, not the pandering churches and the people to whom they pander.

Lust Passages Applied to Entertainment

I don’t think it is as hard to apply lust passages to entertainment.  Christians will violate most lust passages by participation with almost all modern or popular entertainment in the world today.  A lot of carnal music is used in entertainment just to start.  That already prohibits the entertainment.  However, it is more than that.

Immodesty, nudity, sex, and foul language disobey lust passages.  That makes up most entertainment.  Today I read professing Christians who advertise all the foul entertainment they are watching, including something like Game of Thrones.  Someone is not watching Game of Thrones or anything like it or even much better than it and obeying what scripture prohibits in lust for a Christian.

Almost all television commercials violate lust passages.  Some of what appears on the sidelines of NFL football in the way of cheerleaders is prohibited by the lust passages.  Those passages do not give the application.  They don’t list specifics.  That is for Christians to do.  When they don’t, they are disobeying those passages.

Disobedience to the lust passages of scripture characterizes most of evangelicalism today and a growing, if not majority, part of fundamentalism.  Violation of the lust passages differentiates fake Chrsitianity from true Christianity.  Not conforming to what scripture teaches on lust results in churches reshaping their doctrine and practice to fit the lust.  It corrupts their worship.  In short time, they have a different God.  God doesn’t conform to lust.

Evangelicals don’t care that they disobey the lust passages of scripture.  Fundamentalists say that they aren’t sure what to do.  The passages don’t mention specifics, so they wonder how to enforce the passages.  They are intended to be applied, like most of the rest of scripture.  Not applying those passages isn’t acceptable, it is disobedience to scripture.

Anyone who reads here would know I don’t endorse or associate with someone such as Jeff Durbin, pastor and found of Apologia Church in Arizona, the Phoenix area.  James White has joined him as pastor there.  I would characterize Durbin as one of the new Calvinists, new not chronological as much as it is a different kind of Calvinism, which relates mainly to the practice or application of scripture.

Andy Stanley is one of the most influential church leaders in the world, even as his church in Georgia is the largest in the United States.  His dad is the very well known, Charles Stanley, long time also pastor of a Southern Baptist church in Georgia.  In the last year Stanley wrote a book, Irresistible, that caused a furor within evangelicalism, because of some of the major teachings of the book.  I’m not going to go into the problem here.  I’ve just read reviews.  I’ve never read the book itself, and that’s not point for this post.  My point with this paragraph was to introduce a debate between Stanley and Durbin.

There is a radio station in the UK, called Premier Christian Radio, and a program on that station in the UK called, Unbelievable.  Unbelievable is hosted by Justin Brierley, and he moderated the debate between Stanley and Durbin.  The premise of the debate on May 31, 2019 was something that Stanley had said in a sermon and then in his book, which is the title of the podcast:  Unhitching Christianity from the Old Testament?  At the time of this writing (Thursday), it had been viewed 47,128 times.  Watching the debate could be very helpful, but I want to add another disclaimer.

What Stanley asserts is wrong.  As you watch the debate, you can see Durbin undo Stanley and put to rest his position.  Stanley hardly debates.  This is a somewhat complicated issue, partly because of the false teaching that is out there.  I would not fellowship with Durbin and he uses a modern version to argue.  However, I agree with everything that Durbin says.  As far as a doctrinal position, I didn’t hear anything from Durbin that I thought was wrong, and Stanley is very, very wrong, and it would take awhile to break down all the damage that believing Stanley would do.  Durbin, however, eviscerates Stanley, using scripture to do it.  It is a helpful subject to understand, first, to understand a biblical position on apologetics, what is referred to as presuppositionalism, which was defended, and, second, to elaborate on the relationship between the Old and New Testaments.

I don’t know Durbin enough to explain how he goes off the rails with the practice of scripture.  I’m guessing, he fails at biblical application, and isn’t consistent on how his own doctrine should affect how his church grows.  He and his church are worldly.  I hadn’t heard of Durbin until I saw him with James White in the last year.  This debate showed up when I clicked on my youtube app, because it knows what kind of thing I might want to watch.  Durbin is not consistent in this application and practice of scripture, even according to what he espouses in this debate, but what he says is good, right on, and confronts Stanley very well.

Stanley and Durbin don’t discuss their view of grace, but antinomianism proceeds from Stanley’s view.  The detachment from the law leads to cheap grace, the so-called “scandalous” grace that I’ve written on a few times in recent months.  The grace of God serves like a garbage can to sin.  This itself is not saving grace.

One more thing.  What Durbin says about scripture contradicts the Durbin and White position on the preservation of scripture, and, therefore, their apologetics with Moslems, something I wrote about here in the last month in a posting of an interview of Pooyan Mehrshahi.  Presuppositional apologetics starts with what scripture says about itself to come to a conclusion on the text of scripture, what and how it was preserved.  Durbin and White, against their own defended apologetic, do not start with the authority of scripture about itself.  Like Stanley says that events are a basis of faith, Durbin and White say the same in their defense of a critical text.