Before you read this post, since I don’t come in usually until Monday, please go to Thomas Ross’s new website.  Thomas Ross is a rare scholar.  He’s far more written than almost anyone already, except for maybe a very few, in all of fundamentalism.  I would put him up against any young (or even older) scholar on the “left” (he’s not competing, this is me talking).  He won’t get recognition as such because he recommends the King James Version.  Being a Charismatic or hobnobbing with them won’t likely hurt you, but the King James Version will.

Lance Armstrong used unsavory means to win seven Tour De France bike races.  He admitted it this week to Oprah with much fanfare across the world.  My question:  who cares how you got there, as long as you won the race, got the victory, received the accolades in the end?  Armstrong gets hammered again and again for this.  They were races.  On bicycles.  In France.  He was a bad example.  He’s terrible for kids.  He went outside of the written guidelines to reach his goal.

Evangelicalism and fundamentalism (fundagelicalism) yawn.  The end justifying the means has become a regular feature of fundagelicalism.  The Bible didn’t work.  It wasn’t practical.  So new measures were invented, that required some “tweaking” to the accompanying theology.  This is the norm in evangelicalism and fundamentalism.  Yawn.

Lance Armstrong was a bike racer.  Churches are the direct domain of God.  Jesus Heads the church.  Pragmatism is rampant in churches all over.  That’s not news almost anywhere.  That’s only offensive to God.  It really matters to Him.  Churches go outside of the God-ordained means all the time to reach their goals.  People expect it.  If you aren’t cheatin’, then you must not be tryin’.  Churches have been fudging the biblical model for awhile to get what they want.  If you’re not doing this, you must not be very smart.

The Tour De France has its own followers with its own interest group.  There are some very avid bike race fans.  They really keep track of all of it.  And then there are sports fanatics, who know about almost every sport, including cycling.  Lance Armstrong was so good that he transcended the sport.  Obviously he wasn’t so good, but he got good by using the inordinate means to get there.  He’ll still be very famous, even if he took dope to do it.  The biggest names in the various circles of evangelicalism and fundamentalism go outside of biblical methods to get their results.  The results are what got them their fame.  They got their results using inordinate means, those not ordained by God.  It’s all over the place in fundamentalism and evangelicalism.  They don’t follow the example of Jesus and the Apostles to attain success.  Not only will they not be punished for this, but they have been and will likely continue to be rewarded.

Are people going to attack the governors of bike racing for catching Armstrong?  Some might.  Probably not many will.  It feels good now to go after him, to strip him of his awards.  People who expose the extra scriptural methods of churches and their leaders will be more unpopular because of it.  In other words, the wrong people get punished and will be punished.

Very few will be upset at how evangelicals and fundamentalists got to where they are.  They won’t care.  It doesn’t matter to people like even bike racing does.  People will justify it because it isn’t important enough for people to get upset about.  And it’s easy to get away with.  There’s no “governing board.”  Those who might govern it are the biggest names, who would just go along for the ride.  And rules for bike racing mean something.  Whether you follow what God says in His Word exactly doesn’t mean much anymore, actually very little.  It’s not a game.  But it’s treated worse than a game.  That’s why how people succeeded in evangelicalism and fundamentalism doesn’t matter very much.  It’s if you won, not how you won.  And if you didn’t use biblical means, not only will you not get in trouble, but you’ll be praised for it.  Bike racing doesn’t like someone using a wrong means of success.  Churches and church leaders praise you and emulate you if you do.

What am I talking about?  If you don’t know, I want to explain.  I can’t say everything, because it would be a book.  It’s widespread.  It’s rampant.  It’s the norm.  Not cheating is the exception.  It’s so normal to go outside the Bible that the exception is now biblical only methodology.  If you are not using some other means than biblical means to attain success, then you are now someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing.  You need at least a seminar or two or three to straighten you out.

All through Scripture, operating different than what God said, even though not against what He said, is judged by God in a severe way.  He doesn’t always kill people for it, but the examples show how bad it is.  These are major events through the Old Testament, and pivotal.   Cain’s offering.  Nadab and Abihu’s different recipe of incense.  Carrying the ark on a cart.  David’s numbering of the people.  Something all of those have in common is that none of them were forbidden in the Bible, but were different than how God said it.  These are Finney’s new measures.  In 1 Corinthians 1-2, Paul said the method needed to be what God said to do.  If not, God wouldn’t get the glory, which was the point.  All of this says that we judge these innovations in methodology as actual violations.

Churches and their leaders decided that the Bible doesn’t “work.”  Churches can’t train their own pastors, so parachurch colleges are invented.  Going out to evangelize doesn’t work, so inviting them in, luring them in is concocted.  Concerts.  Gimmicks.  Big days.  Pop music.  Games.  Carnivals.  Buildings shaped like theaters.  Fun for the youth culture.  A more convenient doctrine and practice.  A huge range of acceptable beliefs and practices.

Lance Armstrong won.  These churches are winning.  Why should anyone complain if it works?

Almost all, if not all, of your leading churches, most well-known churches, have made some, if not many, of the pragmatic changes to be successful.  They’ve added dope to the biblical methods, since those don’t work any more.  They have nothing on Lance Armstrong.

I think the word “cult” gets thrown around too easily, but I’m still using it in this series (part one, part two).   I’m not saying “cult,” but “cult-like tendency.”  Cults don’t have history on their side.   They find a new teaching and practice that contradicts historical doctrine and application.  If there is to be a change in what Christians believe and do, it should be accompanied first, if not alone, with serious exegesis of Scripture.   When I say that fundamentalism and evangelicalism have a cult-like tendency, I’m suggesting this feature, the neglect or ignorance orthodox, historical theology.  I’m not saying, however, that fundamentalists and evangelicals don’t consider historical doctrine and practice at all.  They do, but they are selective in this, which is also what one witnesses in cults.

Biblical, spiritual matters should be considering first whether it is what God wants, what He said, not what will be popular, “help” with the size of the church or the organization.  The world will clash with the church in a greater, more severe way on certain doctrines and practices, highlighting the difference, the contrast between the church and the world.  A major teaching in the Bible is the suffering of the church.  Jesus said the world would hate His people, like the world hated Him.  1 Peter is a book that teaches the calling to suffer.  A tendency of churches, however, and professing believers, is to try to avoid suffering.  It’s natural, but it must be resisted.  A church should just keep walking the right path in doctrine and practice, despite the hostility of the world.  Pragmatic compromises with the world will not help.  They might look like they help in the short term, but they are not honoring to God when they move away from God.  Again, this is all about God, so His honor must stay in the forefront.

Little suffering will occur for a church because they use the King James Version with its underlying received text.  Some will happen, mainly in the nature of being marginalized as kooks or quacks with no proof from the accusers.  There will be those who will not attend a church if a modern version is not used.  It’s been programmed in now after years of propaganda.  I know modern version advocates will say the opposite occurs too with people who reject modern versions for the King James, especially in certain areas of the country.  That tide is turning or has turned now.  The point I’ve made on this is that the church has believed in the perfect preservation of Scripture and that has been forsaken by fundamentalism and evangelicalism, ignoring historical doctrine to do so.  That is a cult-like tendency, to leave the historical doctrine of the preservation of Scripture because of science.  We are seeing the same trend with 6 day literal creationism for views compatible with evolution.  Leaving the orthodox understanding of Genesis based upon worldly thinking is cult-like.  Fundamentalists have not taken this turn on Genesis, but they have moved on the text of Scripture based upon similar “scientific” principles.

A major turn in fundamentalism and evangelicalism away from historical application of Scripture, the practice of God’s Word, has been on the so-called cultural issues.  The historical understanding of Deuteronomy 22:5 among Christians has been practiced as men wearing pants and women wearing skirts or dresses.  Historically, true believers have believed that the disobedience of this passage in this way made the violators an abomination to God.  That was the position that Christians took, all of them.   As the culture of the world began to move away from this Christian influence, Christians stood against the world, but over a longer period of time, Christians too have shifted on it, until there is little to no difference between the church and the world in this practice.  In fact, now professing Christians actually attack, mock, and ridicule the historical Christian position and practice on gender distinctiveness in dress as much as or more than the world itself does.

The change in practice on dress did not start with study of the Bible or exegesis.  It started with accommodation to the world and then acceptance of the world’s practice.  Christians were no longer obeying Deuteronomy 22:5.  Some interpretational differences came later as fundamentalists and evangelicals attempted to justify their lack of practice.

Understand that accompanying the disobedience of Deuteronomy 22:5 has come the variation in the roles of men and women and the rise of homosexuality.  They are related issues.  First came the God-ordained symbolism of men wearing pants and women wearing skirts and dresses, and then once the symbol was rejected, the roles themselves have moved to the worldly thinking as well.  New arguments arose against male headship and female submission, changing the historical beliefs of Christians.  And this is related to the creation issue, since God created the roles of men and women, and He wanted those differences designed into the external symbolism of dress.  This is clear in Deuteronomy 22:5 and 1 Corinthians 11:3-16.

From my perspective, the arguments against the man wearing pants and the woman wearing skirts and dresses, are weak and ridiculous.  They are not trying to follow what the Bible says, just looking for a way out in order to fit in with the world.  The issue has become political more than exegetical.  You take a position that will allow you to fit in with more people.  There is no history with it.  The people will not refer to positions Christians have taken.  They will not talk about how Christians have interpreted the passages.  They don’t want to do that.  They know what it means.  Instead, they  just take pot shots at those who continue believing and practicing the biblical and historical way.  This is a cult-like tendency.  It is illustrated with the rebellion on the dress issue, but it is happening in many of the cultural issues.   The world is turning the church upside down.

The faith was once and for all delivered.  Some will depart from the faith, not all. The gates of Hell will not prevail.  Certain doctrine could be better explained or better defended, but at this point, it shouldn’t be new.   Cults are characterized by having the new teaching, you know, like Jesus came to North America, and that’s what He meant when He said ‘He had other sheep that were not of this fold.’

Some might think or say, “What about dispensationalism, that’s new?”  No, it isn’t new.  It’s just an explanation for premillennialism, which is biblical and has been believed in the past.

In part one, I explained that evangelicalism and fundamentalism (E & F) have a tendency now to change things and create new doctrines to adapt to the new world and its philosophies.  I think I’m being nice in calling it a tendency.   E & F should be called for what they do, but they’ve got willing accomplices.   In the first edition of this series, I talked about the changes in bibliology that have been accepted.  This post will just accentuate the first one, with hopes of getting to new examples in the future, based on a post that was written recently by Dan Wallace at his blog, entitled, Fifteen Myths about Bible Translation.

King James Version supporters must get under Wallace’s skin, because 8 of his “myths” relate to King James Onlyism (numbers 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11).  I should probably write a whole post just answering the myths about the myths, but I’m going to deal with only one of his list here, because it fits this series and what I wrote about in the first offering, and that is his number 11:

11.    Essential doctrines are in jeopardy in modern translations. Actually, no doctrine essential for salvation is affected by translations, modern or ancient—unless done by a particular cult for its own purposes. For example, those Englishmen who signed the Westminster Confession of Faith in the seventeenth century were using the KJV, yet it is still a normative doctrinal statement that millions of Protestants sign today even though they use modern translations.

His first statement is rather loaded, with its “no doctrine essential for salvation,” implying and admitting that doctrines do change, just not ones essential to salvation.  This is untrue in major fashion.  Doctrine is affected.  We have a whole chapter on that in our book Thou Shalt Keep Them (See Order Buttons on Right).  Many doctrines, including the doctrine of salvation, are changed by the introduction of the changes in the new versions.  However, I’m not talking about that in this post—I just thought it needed to be pointed out.

Wallace is attempting to make some kind of a historical point in the second sentence in a very subtle way.  If you read the first section of the WCF on Scripture, you’ll have a hard time finding exactly that to which Wallace refers.  Where in that statement is a point made about doctrines being what’s important to have preserved in a new translation?  I can’t find it anywhere.  You’ve got various concepts in there, that if pieced together just like Wallace wants them, you could read his point into the WCF.  The point he’s making though is not in fact in there anywhere.

You would have to piece it together like the following.  In Roman numeral VII. of the section on Scripture, the divines wrote that the Bible will be able to be understood at least as it pertains to salvation.  Since what was a priority for plain meaning and understanding is the doctrine of salvation, then all that matters in word alterations is if you still have the doctrine of salvation.  Other doctrinal changes in a translation do not contradict the WCF.  Therefore, somehow modern translation supporters can sign off on all the doctrine of this section of the WCF, even if they don’t believe Scripture has been preserved word-for-word even to the extent that they really think that certain doctrines, exclusive of salvation, have been changed.

Here’s another flow of his argument.  The Westminster divines used the KJV.   The Westminster divines taught something in the WCF about the preservation of Scripture.  People who sign the WCF today use modern versions.  Therefore, the Westminster divines and those who sign it today believe the same way on the preservation of Scripture.  They wouldn’t have signed off on it if it meant something that would forbid them from accepting a modern version!!

Wallace presents a very weird way to approach historical doctrine.  Your goal in historical theology is to understand what the historical figures were writing.  You don’t get an understanding of what they were writing by studying the people who agree with them today.  You understand what they meant by looking at other writings that they wrote in their day.  This is also how we are to interpret the constitution as a historical document. We want to know original intent, not read into it what people today want it to mean.  That is a form of liberalism, that takes a loose constructionist view.

So would the historical bibliology of the Westminster divines result in the acceptance of modern versions, if they were available to them in that day?  No.  Of course not.  They wouldn’t want to change Scripture.  They believed that they had received all the Words.  The WCF teaches perfect preservation of Scripture in the language in which it was written.  That doesn’t parallel with believing in more than one and varied bibles, which have different words from a different textual source.

Just because men both use modern versions and sign off on the WCF doesn’t mean that the use of modern versions is buttressed by the WCF.  Reading into the WCF something that isn’t even there is the way that doctrine is altered.  This is the cultic tendency I was talking about.  If the WCF doesn’t even mean what Wallace says, that’s OK.  If you sign off on it, even though you don’t even believe it, he’s saying that it now counts as meaning the same thing as you believe.  It’s magical.  That’s the leap we’ve got to take to believe Wallace.  It’s too big a leap for me.  It really should be too big a leap for anyone with a cerebrum.  There is no ladder that will span the chasm Wallace wants us to cross.

Before I get to my post, I reiterate that I’m going to do a series before the election on how I’m going to vote and why.  Bobby Mitchell’s good church in Brunswick, ME has a new website, thought I’d share that with you.  He’s got lots of good stuff to read and listen to. I noticed he had this sermon posted that I preached at a preaching conference at Mt. Zion Baptist Church in St. Claire, MO this last April.  It could be helpful.  Now to the post.

The Greeks rejected bodily resurrection and their thinking prevailed throughout their society.  The members of the church at Corinth were under the influence of Greek philosophy.  Saying that you believed in bodily resurrection would make you a laughing stock in the trade unions, threatening your employment, so the Corinthian church members were denying the resurrection.   Paul wrote to correct this error in 1 Corinthians 15 and the key verse of the chapter is v. 12:

Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?

This verse comes at the end of the first three arguments against the Corinthian denial of bodily resurrection and restates the theme of those arguments.  Why were they denying bodily resurrection when they all believed that Jesus had risen bodily from the dead, that the Old Testament said it (“Scripture”), and that there was proof that He had in fact risen bodily?  And they had to believe that or Paul wouldn’t be writing to them, because they wouldn’t be saved, and, therefore, members of the church there.  He was writing to people who had believed in bodily resurrection when he was in Corinth earlier for eighteen months.  The first thing he preached to them, and they all believed, was the bodily resurrection, as Paul expresses in vv. 1-4:

1 Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; 2 By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. 3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; 4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures

The first thing that Paul preached to them was that Christ died, was buried, and that He rose bodily.  The very first thing when he came into Corinth!

OK.  That’s how the words “first of all” fit into the context of chapter 15.  For hundreds of years, the English speaking people read “first of all,” and thought, “first in order.”  That’s the normal meaning of the Greek word protois.  It can also mean “first in importance,” but that is a much rarer meaning and it doesn’t fit naturally into this context.  The way it fits into the context is that the first thing they believed was the bodily resurrection.   They all had to believe that in order to be saved, so why is it such a big deal to believe in your own bodily resurrection, since you already believed that first?!?

That’s how Calvin himself took it in his commentary, that it came first of all, “as it is wont to be with a foundation in the erecting of a house.”  The foundation goes down first in order, as would the gospel message to people who were not yet saved.   Lange says that “his meaning is. . . .  that gospel which I preached unto you at the beginning.”  He references Chrysostom as saying, “in the order of time.”  If there is a sense of importance at all, it is explained as foundational teaching.  The two words en protois, translated, “first of all,” can mean “among the first,” that is, “among the first things that I delivered unto you.”  Spurgeon wrote in his exposition:

That is the whole of the gospel. He who perfectly understands that, understands the first principles; he has commenced aright. This is the starting point if we wish to learn the truth.

Exactly.  Thomas Charles Edwards in 1886 wrote concerning en protois (“first of all”):

[N]ot “among’ the chief doctrines,” nor “from the first,” but “among the things to be stated first.” The facts are the foundation, the ” prima fidei capita.”

Tyndale in the first English translation of the New Testament, started verse 3 with “So first of all.”  In Plato’s Republic, which preceded chronologically the New Testament, he used these exact two words, en protois, to speak of the psyche as being among the first things that came into being.  His theology was wrong, but he showed that en protois was used as “first in order,” not “in importance.”  Chrysostom, who penned a commentary on Corinthians in his lifetime (347-407), wrote the following:

But what is this, “For I delivered unto you first of all? ” for that is his word. “In the beginning, not now.”

Alright.  “First of all” doesn’t read “first importance.”  It isn’t how Plato used it.  It isn’t how Tyndale translated it.  It isn’t how the earliest commentary reference reads it.  It isn’t how a majority of Christians read it for hundreds of years from the King James Version.

Today’s evangelicals and fundamentalists have taken en protois and this new meaning of “of first importance” and used it as a basis for ranking doctrines.  They changed the translation and meaning of en protois in the modern versions.  I read it recently used in a discussion, to defend a doctrinal reductionism as a basis for separating only over very minimal beliefs, certain fundamentals.  In my opinion, the one with the most influence over this thinking is the author of Exegetical Fallacies himself, D. A. Carson, who as a head of the Gospel Coalition asserts en protois as a basis for making the gospel the essential for fellowship.  Paul meant nothing of the kind with what he wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:3.

A new philosophy, an unscriptural one, uses 1 Corinthians 15:3 as to justify it.  Here Paul was wanting to stop the denial of bodily resurrection and instead he’s pushed into teaching doctrinal minimalism.  “First importance” has become the cry of the alliances, the coalitions, the ecumenists, all those who wish to disregard everything but a few doctrines in order to get together and get along.

Hi, I fully intend on completing the series on ‘luring them in’ (as well as every other series that I haven’t completed—remind me of the ones I haven’t finished), but today I interrupt completely that series by working on another series.  Why?  I usually figure out what to write while I’m jogging, and this one crossed my mind while running this morning.   You also may be wondering why “part five,” when I’ve only written parts one and two.  Reason:  There are at least one and probably two in between this one in logical order after the first two.  I never finished what I was writing about Romans 9.  For those new to this:  part one and part two.

I’ve said that I want to be a Calvinist.  It’s true, if Calvinism is true.  A book I’m reading now is by a Calvinist, someone who believes that regeneration precedes faith (which not all Calvinists believe), and the book is about salvation.   The one before that had several chapters written by a Calvinist, writing about the points of Calvin.  When I read those books, I’m open to being a Calvinist.  Not just open.  I want to be one.  But it doesn’t work with me.  Perhaps this occurs because I had studied my Bible a long time before I ever read about Calvinism, so what I already know the Bible says keeps getting in the way of what Calvinists write.

Since the Bible is the only authority, we should get our doctrine from the Bible.  If you were dropped a Bible on a deserted island and had to come up with your doctrine just from the Bible, you wouldn’t have come up with Calvinism.  Calvinism doesn’t pass the test for me.  I know they say it does for them and that’s the reason they believe it, but I don’t believe them. I don’t want to hurt their feelings.  It’s just that I think that the only way you become Calvinist is by reading Calvinists.  After having read Calvinists and beginning to exist on the inside of that Calvinist barrel, everything begins to look like the inside of the barrel.

It’s ironic, but Calvinists manipulate the sovereignty of God.  God is sovereign.  He is.  But Calvinists argue and write as though they are sovereign over His sovereignty.  We can’t let God be sovereign.  He just is.   But in beliefs, we should also allow Him to be sovereign.  Since He is sovereign, we should let what He says about His own sovereignty actually be His sovereignty, not fiddle with it.

As sovereign as God is, which also involves His wisdom, power, and love, He can preserve His Word and He can preserve my soul.  Many Calvinists today see God has sovereignty over their souls, but not over His Word.  They are eclectic textual critics, hoping to still find God’s Words.  They’re the ones who choose.  Of course, He chooses them before the foundation of the world, unconditionally and they can’t resist receiving Him, but many of them believe and teach that God couldn’t or just didn’t fulfill what He said He would do with His Words.  That unwillingness to believe what God said He would do, but then to believe things that Scripture doesn’t say, based on their own logic, is where God isn’t God any more to the Calvinist.  They’ve claimed sovereignty over the doctrine of preservation of Scripture.  And then there are all the out-and-out Calvinists, who say that salvation is all about God, monergism and all that, but then they are the biggest proponents of many various new measures, humanly derived, for church growth, as if it really did depend on their ingenuity.   This is where I say that I’m more Calvinist than Calvinists are.  But I digress.

When Calvinists lay out their system and plug the verses in, they can make them make sense, if that were all you were left with.  But as they read in their context, they don’t have to mean what a Calvinist says they mean.  They will only mean that if Calvinism itself were true.  As we’ve done with the rest of this series so far, let me reveal what I’m talking about with Scripture.  The verses are what keep me from being a Calvinist anyway.

In Luke 13:23, because of how things were going in Jesus’ ministry, someone asked him, “Are there few that be saved?”  If the Calvinistic view of total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, and irresistible grace were true, Jesus should say, “There are few because God chose only a few and Christ died for just a few.  Men are dead and they are unable to respond unless God first regenerates them to believe.”  But Jesus didn’t.  He made it sound like few were saved because men weren’t striving (agonizing) to enter the narrow gate (v. 24).   If He wanted men to strive, all He needed to do was to regenerate a few more to do so.  And how much actual striving is necessary when grace is irresistible.  No resistance doesn’t sound like striving.  This is just an example of how what Jesus says clashes with a Calvinistic view of salvation.

There is a lot I like about the Calvinistic system.  Parts of it are really nice, and when you read its theologians and preachers, they write some good material, but the system itself is badly flawed.  Let me give you another one.

Dead men are, well, dead.  As dead as someone in a casket, they can’t respond.  Since spiritual death is total inability, then I would assume that these dead men could not suppress the truth.  The way it reads in the King James Version in Romans 1:18 is that these dead men “hold fast the truth in unrighteousness.”  The understanding of “hold fast” is that they hold the truth away from themselves in their unrighteousness.  They suppress the truth.  How is God’s wrath justified against these unrighteous?  Well, they have suppressed the truth.  These dead men know the truth.  There is even an inclination toward believing it, or else how could they suppress it?  And God’s wrath against them is for what reason?  Because God didn’t choose them?  Because God didn’t regenerate them?  If God’s grace was involved, then it was unsuppressable, right?  Wrong.  One would understand that God’s wrath was vindicated by the fact that people who knew God, had sufficient knowledge to be saved, were thinking about the truth, suppressed it out of rebellion.

And lastly for this edition of “Why I’m Not a Calvinist” I bring you to Jesus parable of the sower in Matthew 13.  Why does Jesus give such a drawn out, intricate, detailed explanation for why it is that people don’t believe, don’t receive Him, if the simple answer is that He didn’t choose them to be saved?  I would be fine with that answer if it were true.  I would believe God to be just in condemning whoever He wanted.  Since God defines what is true and good, how could I question Him if He simply crafted people for the sole purpose of damnation?  I wouldn’t.  But Jesus doesn’t give that as an explanation.  What He says is that people don’t bring forth fruit, that is, they aren’t saved, because of their lack of reception of the seed for various reasons different for different people.   Two of the reasons people don’t receive the seed, the saving message of the gospel, is because they either approach it too superficially (rocky soil) or because they are too interested in the world or riches (thorny ground).  That’s too much of an answer if the real answer was that God had predetermined some to salvation and others to damnation.

The points of Calvinism don’t glorify God more than how He wants to be glorified.  God doesn’t get glorified more by misrepresentations of Himself.  I contend that Calvinism has become (of course only hypothetically or in a Calvinistic thought experiment) sovereign over God’s sovereignty.  I want actual sovereignty, not a made-up kind that poses as glorifying God more.  Salvation is of the Lord.  That, I have no doubt.  It can’t be more “of the Lord” than the Lord Himself makes it.

Marriage has been a major national news story for all the wrong reasons, so I offer you some good news with a  recent book by Scott Markle, God’s Wisdom for Marriage & the Home for the Glory of the Lord (GWFMATH), 34 chapters, 446 pages, with a Scripture index.  Scott will not attempt to impress you with the clever writing style of some worldly evangelical.   He sets your table with meat and potatoes, a full course of helpful heaps of exegetical platefuls, all depending on the Word of God for the recipe.  Each chapter builds on the former to provide a very complete manual for a God-glorifying Christian marriage.

Although there may be different levels of authority and submission between the roles of the husband and wife within the marriage and home, there is no superiority or inferiority between them spiritually or naturally in the sight of the Lord their God.

Several weeks ago I was listening to an audio interview (2/20/12) of Kevin Bauder by Scott Oakland, who produces his own online show, called Reformed Cast.  Oakland was asking Bauder about his contribution to the book, The Spectrum of Evangelicalism.  At only the 12:30 mark of the interview, Oakland asks Bauder to comment on how King James Onlyism (KJVO) worked its way into the movement of fundamentalism.  He had segued to that part of the conversation from a discussion of inerrancy.  Bauder said that inerrancy was important to the gospel, because it relates to trust in God—if someone can’t trust the Bible, which is God’s Word, because there are errors in it, then he can’t trust God.  From there, Oakland went to KJVO, which to me is interesting.  Perhaps it was subconscious with Oakland, because KJVO does relate to the doctrine of inerrancy.  God said He would preserve every Word.  Can we trust that God did what He said He would do?

Kevin Bauder says that the KJVO position (at about the 13:20 mark) “actually started out in Seventh Day Adventism.”   That is a lie.  I’m guessing Bauder would defend himself by saying that the modern day KJVO movement started with a Seventh Day Adventism book by Benjamin Wilkinson in 1930.  This is straight from the James White playbook.  However, it is a lie.  Then he says that David Otis Fuller, a fundamentalist pastor from Grand Rapids, MI, took those ideas from Seventh Day Adventism and began to propagate them in fundamentalism.  That’s all I’m going to report of what Bauder said, but it is something that needs to be put on the shelf once and for all.  Either Bauder is so ill-informed as to be ignorant, which is hard to believe, or it is a blatant and bold-faced lie that he is espousing.

David Daniell in his The Bible in English (p. 619) writes the following.  Of course, he is writing with a particular bias against the KJV.

By the end of the 1760s, another view was appearing, one that itself became a myth, supported by carefully manufactured other myths. This was the birth of ‘AVolatry’, the elevation of KJV to such heights of inspiration as to be virtually divine and untouchable. From 1769, effectively, there grew the notion that KJV was peculiarly, divinely, inspired. To bolster the supposition it was announced that this translation had been especially venerated from the moment in 1611 that it appeared.

Here’s a quote from a religious journal, the Herald of Gospel Liberty, in 1912 (p. 196), far before the Seventh Day Adventist book to which Bauder refers:

We are thinking now of a letter we received a few days ago a most sincere Christian who attacks the use of any other than the King James Version on the ground that this version was as he declares authorized by God. This conception of the King James Version is more or less general in many communities.  They attach to it a God endued sanctity and authority different from other versions and hence they look with much suspicion upon all other versions and upon those folks who prefer other versions.

That was in 1912.   A family Bible printed in 1873, The New Devotional and Explanatory Pictorial Family Bible, published by The National Publishing Company, writes on pp. 10-11:

We are very sure that the results of all such investigations will be to heighten confidence in the present version, and fill the heart with unfeigned gratitude to God, for that blessed book which we now enjoy, and which, for nearly two centuries and a half, has been pouring its light and consolation wherever the English tongue is spoken. Let science toil, and diligence labor . . . let literature hold up her torch, and cast all possible light upon the sacred text, but we must and ever shall deprecate any wanton attacks upon our received version–any gratuitous attempts to supersede it by a new and different translation. It is the Bible which are godly fathers have read, and over which they have wept and prayed. It is the good old English Bible, with which are associated all our earliest recollections of religion. As such let it go down unchanged to the latest posterity.

A Rosicrucian Fellowship in 1911 made this criticism:

There is a large number of people in this country who insist that the English text of the King James version is absolutely correct from cover to cover as though the Bible bad been originally written in English and the King James version were a certified copy of the original manuscript.

Obviously the ideas of KJVO have been around for a long time.  But where did they come from?  They came from the doctrine of one Bible, which is found in the Westminster Confession of Faith and the London Baptist Confession.  The idea that there is more than one Bible is really the new belief.  It began to make way for textual criticism in the late 1800s.  If Words will not pass away and jots and tittles will not pass away, then surely the one Bible that God inspired, He also would preserve.

The panel discussion for the 2011 Word of Truth Conference on Ecclesiastical Separation is now available to play or download at our conference website.   You may now read the post.

For church growth, do you think it would be better to follow Scripture or silence?  When I say silence, I’m talking about something about which the Bible says nothing.  Usually the argument goes like this:  “the Bible doesn’t say it’s wrong to give candy as an incentive for church attendance.”  Since the Bible says nothing about giving out candy to motivate church attendance, then it is permissible to do that.  This is called “silence equals permission.”  Does biblical silence equal permission though?

The term “abuse” has caught my attention.  The way that it has been borrowed as a propaganda weapon had me wondering about its history.  Ironically, “abuse” has been abused.

First, the English word is in the King James Version, so it goes back in the English at least to 1611.  The English word first appears in 1 Samuel 31:4 and the Hebrew word is pronounced aw-lal.  This first usage is when Saul asks his armor bearer to thrust him through with his sword and “abuse” him (parallel in 1 Chronicles 10:4, same story, same Hebrew word, same English translation).  The Hebrew verb in the hithpael, which is how it is used there, means: “to deal wantonly or ruthlessly.”  Of course, the particular abuse is to be impaled with a sword—not our typical idea of abuse.  We wouldn’t even use the term “abuse” for that.  But aw-lal is found quite a few times before 1 Samuel 31:4, which is how we would understand a word, how the Hebrew word itself is used.  It seems so far that the understanding of “abuse” is related to motive.  Someone wants to hurt or harm someone.  It isn’t for his good at all, and in this case, it is the death of Saul.

Aw-lal is used for the first time in Exodus 10:2, and in the hithpael, translated “I have wrought,” speaking of what God did in His plagues on Egypt.  He “abused” Egypt.  How God treated Egypt is different than how he treated His own people when He chastised them.  God punished Egypt toward its destruction.

Another early usage of aw-lal is in Numbers 22:29, when Balaam says that his donkey is mocking him.  The word translated “mock” is aw-lal.  Balaam is receiving verbal abuse from a donkey.

Aw-lal is used again in Judges 19:25 and again translated “abused,” which in this case describes the horrific treatment of the mean of Gibeah against the unnamed concubine.  What happened there is called “abuse” in English and is again the Hebrew aw-lal.  Not ironically the dealing of those men who did this to the concubine is called aw-lal, translated “they gleaned” (in the poel), in Judges 20:45.

In the King James Version, only aw-lal is translated “abuse,” and only the two times of 1 Samuel 31:4 and 1 Chronicles 10:4, parallel passages.

In the New Testament, the Greek verb translated “abuse” (katachraomai) is found only twice, both used by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians (7:31, 9:18).  In both cases, “abuse” is taking something that is good and then perverting it for wrong purposes.  That seems to fit with the etymological understanding of the English word, abuse being a wrong use of something.  The Greek word is compound, chraomai meaning “to use,” and kata meaning here “against, over against, or opposite,” together “to use the opposite of its intended purpose.”  In the first usage, Paul uses the word for a misuse of the world and the second a misuse of the gospel.  Abusing the world would be to have the world be something more important than it is and misusing the gospel would be to have it being something less important than it is.

The King James Version in 1 Corinthians 6:9 uses the term “abusers,” as in “abusers of themselves with mankind,” but the Greek word is the word for homosexual.  The translators saw homosexuality as the misuse of the body God created, so it was an abuse of the body.  A lot of times the term “abuse” is used that way today with drug abuse and alcohol abuse, but they saw homosexuality as sexual abuse, which it is.

The above is essentially the usage of “abuse” in the Bible, but as well opens our eyes to what people saw as “abuse” in England in 1611 through the eyes of the King James translators.

How would one go about understanding the term “abuse” in history?  I chose to see the samples in google books, since you can view literature from the 16th century (1500s) there and take advantage of the unique search feature.

In 1590, Theodore Beza makes commentary on the Hebrew text of the Psalms, and he opens some explanation of Psalm 50 with the question:  “How long, o ye hypocrites, will ye abuse (abufe) the patience and longsuffering of God?”  This isn’t his translation, but he believed the thought was implied to us in the awesome description of God at the beginning of this psalm of David.  So in this case, it is God being abused in the lack or irreverence of the worship.

Lancelot Andrewes uses the term “abuse” (abufe) in 1593 in his An Apologie for Sundrie Proceedings by Jurisdiction Ecclesiastical.  On p. 102 he uses the verb “abuse” to describe what a judge would do when he judges a man wrongfully.  The man is being “abused.”

In 1599, you could have ordered from an English catalogue, A Treatise Concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed, including the second chapter, titled “The Gross Abuse of Matrimonial Chastity.”

One of the doctrinal statements of the Reformed church was the Second Helvetic Confession, written in 1562 and revised in 1564.  Originally in Latin, they were translated into English.  Chapter 28 is entitled, “The Goods of the Church and the Right Use of Them,” and it can be read in Philip Schaff’s The Creeds of Christendom.   The word “abuse” is used in that section to describe how men in the church misuse the material goods or money of the church.  Misuse of church funds is called “abuse.”

William Shakespeare, in 1593 in his Venus and Adonis, wrote:  “Torches are made to light, jewels to wear,
Dainties to taste, fresh beauty for the use,
Herbs for their smell, and sappy plants to bear;
Things growing to themselves are growth’s abuse.”  I’ll let his use of “abuse” explain itself, but it is how the English term was primarily used, that is, something of a particular use being used for something opposite.

In 1659 a book was written by Nicholas Clagett, The Abuse of God’s Grace, attacking the cheapening of grace by the libertines.

Richard Baxter in 1658 in a treatise on conversion wrote:  “As long as you are unconverted, you live in the continual abuse of God, and all His mercies.”

The earliest I found of the terminology of “abuse of children” is found in 1699 in the address to parliament, Lex Forcia, “to remedy the foul abuse of children at school.”  I believe that “abuse of children” was related to what was occurring with the abuse of corporal punishment in their schools as found in William Hazlitt’s Schools, School-Books, and Schoolmasters.  Certain corporal punishment as “abuse of children” is warned back as far as 1669 in England.

In 1775, Thomas Whithers calls blood-letting the “abuse of medicine.”  If George Washington had only read this in time….

As we move into the 19th century (1800s), we find more usage of “abuse of children” and we read it mainly to be what was done to children sexually.  In commentaries on the laws of England in 1874, rape of children is called “defilement” and “abuse” of children.  In a digest of reported cases from 1756 to 1870, again the term “abuse” is used to describe sexual abuse.  In the penal code of the state of California in 1877 “abuse” is again relegated to sexual abuse, but other bad treatment of children is categorized as the “endangerment of children,” which includes “moral endangerment.”  The same code also punishes Sabbath breaking, which included all labor and disturbing of the peace.

An early usage of “spanking” that I saw called “abuse of children” was in the life and work of David P. Page in 1893, a section that I think many would find of great interest, in which Page lays out some suggestions for young teachers for the right usage of corporal punishment of students.

The first case that I found of someone calling all spanking “abuse of children” was in the American Journal of Politics in 1894.  It seems today to be a mainly post-Darwin understanding of anthropology that would view all corporal punishment as abuse.  Although if you were to read An Outline of Educational Theories in England, you also do see an opposition to corporal punishment in certain post-Enlightenment, early naturalistic philosophers like John Locke, especially in his “Thoughts on Education.”  Not many picked up on what Locke was writing.

I’m not going to deal with 20th century history, because we know that the term “abuse” began to take on whole new meanings that were especially related to developments in psychology.

More to come.