Calling for a Return to the Doctrinal Ideals and Kingdom Ethics of the First Reformation
https://caldronpool.com/the-gospel-has-many-political-implications-for-a-nation/
New Calvinist pastor Matthew Littlefield asserts that those
who believe the Church should not engage in politics are guilty of trumpeting
ignorance. He then proceeds to elaborate what he believes are the political
implications of the gospel.
As we're in the process of revisiting area churches, I had occasion to attend a rural Fundamentalist congregation about forty-five minutes from where I live. I had last visited there 3-4 years ago and the level of decline just in that relatively brief period of time was remarkable.
Returning again to the chimeric experimenters, they're tinkering with things that are beyond them. We're not materialists. There's more to life and reality than that which is merely empirical. The reality of the materialists is a reductionism of true reality and Christians shouldn't think in those terms or operate under the ethics that flow from such thinking.
The current Evangelical world is rife with scepticism
regarding modern medicine and yet some will remember a time in which the
attitude that long dominated the movement was very much pro-medicine and
pro-technological development. Whether right, wrong, or indifferent, the shift
is interesting and more should be done in examining the reasons behind it.
*updated 9 April 2022
Even the Old Testament casts doubt on the continuity reading
of Revelation 21. Ecclesiastes, a book that is so problematic for modern
Evangelicalism and Dominionism has its message spun. The end result of their
exegetical machinations is that the world is not given to vanity and corruption
even though Paul forcefully and explicitly reiterates this point in Romans 8
and elsewhere argues that this world in its state of curse is subject to
temporality. This is in contrast with the eternal (and thus ultimately true) nature
of the eschatological Kingdom. That which is temporal is impermanent. This is
not Gnosticism opposing matter or the material world or suggesting that it is
illusion. It's a state of existence resulting from the Fall of Man and the
curse God has placed on the world – not matter as matter, but this world which includes its fallen
matter subject to decay and death, a matter sundered from its spiritual
moorings as it were.
Doesn't Revelation 21 teach cultural continuity? Doesn't it teach that cultural attainments will be part of our life in heaven? Are there any historical readings of the passage that specifically refute this? Are there any commentators that argue explicitly for discontinuity in reference to this passage?
Continuity here refers to the idea that cultural progress and
attainments achieved in this age will continue into the age to come. In other
words, advances in the arts, science, philosophy, architecture and the like
will play a part in our heavenly life. Proponents of this view believe that the
productions of the great artists, particularly those that were God-honouring in
what they produced, men such as Bach and Rembrandt will be part of our life in
heaven.