On the Death of James Dobson (1936-2025)

A friend recently wrote to me asking if I had heard about the death of James Dobson. I told him I heard it break over the news while I was at work, and I trembled. I was reminded of the same thing happening to me back in 2007 when Jerry Falwell died. Once again, I thought of Matthew 7 and 2 Timothy 3 - and the theme of deceiving and being deceived.

Evangelical Materialism and the Functional Denial of Scriptural Authority

I have often talked about the Materialist assumption at work in our culture. It is just assumed that everything that exists has some kind of scientific or physiological explanation. I heard a BBC reporter talking about the Scopes Trial and the 'teaching' of evolution. He corrected himself with the 'science of evolution' - implying that science is factual and based on actual things that can be verified while teaching is just theoretical or philosophical and thus subjective in a way 'science' is not. The poor lost man doesn't understand that science - especially as it's being understood in a Materialist framework is just as philosophically rooted and dependent as any other religious system.

Kuyper and Schilder on Eschatology and Culture

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/article/beginning-at-the-end-of-all-things/

The theology and thought of Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) is riddled with contradictions. On the one hand contemporary Dominionists wishing to posit a monistic view of society will quote Kuyper's famous dictum : 'There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!'

It's a pretty bold statement suggesting the boundaries of the Kingdom are all encompassing and there can be no room for dissent.

Attending Church in America - the Day after Trump Bombed Iran

Attending church this Sunday, I was struck once again by the different approaches and understandings as to what we're doing there, who are we, and why do we gather?

One of Satan's Ministers in the Pulpit on Memorial Day

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/remember-to-remember-part-1/id1433823311?i=1000710247721

SermonAudio blocks anyone who is deemed 'woke' or who embraces too robust a view of works or sacraments. They are guardians of orthodoxy or so they deem - but then they allow this kind of heretical filth. Scudder's sermons receive no sanction or censorship.

Samuel Davies: A Colonial Era Hero, Presbyterian Patriot, and Christ-hater

https://americanreformer.org/2024/07/samuel-davies-colonial-presbyterian-patriot/

My eye was drawn to the locales mentioned in the opening paragraph. They are well known to me as my family has made a point of visiting these places for historical reference - and they're not too far away from where we live.

Samuel Davies (1723-1761) is also a name well known to me from my days spent in OP and PCA circles. He is a titan in American Presbyterianism but to be honest I hadn't give Samuel Davies a lot of thought in quite a few years. So by this point I was hooked and decided to read the article.

What is Good Art? Dominionist Aesthetics versus the Detachment-Discernment Ethos of New Testament Pilgrim Christianity (I)

https://g3min.org/art-that-accords-with-sound-doctrine/

This G3 article represents yet another attempt to formulate a Christian theology of art. It's clear enough that since the Scriptures don't speak to this - and verses have to be grasped at, the exercise is not one of doctrinal elaboration but philosophy cast in theological terms.

20 July 1944, Franklin Graham, and the Manipulation of Providence

Eighty years ago today a bomb exploded at the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia killing four men. The intended target, Adolf Hitler survived by a hair's breadth - as by a miracle. Operation Valkyrie, the plot to assassinate the Führer and overthrow his regime had failed.

Evangelicalism's Outsourced Worldview

Some time ago I heard someone discussing the 'outsourcing' of a great deal of Evangelical thinking and it has stayed with me. It's another interesting way of framing what has happened.

Confessional Presbyterianism: A System of Syncretism, Tradition, and Bureaucracy

https://theaquilareport.com/second-thoughts-about-the-proposed-witness-overtures/

We've just passed General Assembly season in the Presbyterian world and thus there's a lot of talk about polity, discipline, and procedure and yet as this article demonstrates, most of it is off-base and has little if anything to do with actual New Testament polity, but is instead rooted in tradition and what amounts to a functional rejection of Scriptural Sufficiency.

Myths Concerning Second Temple Judaism

Having recently finished Gerard Russell's Heirs of Forgotten Kingdoms (Basic Books, 2014) I found myself once again irritated and put off by popular but erroneous narratives concerning Second Temple Judaism.

Inbox: A Psychology Follow-up (I)

This piece is in response to the 16 August 2022 piece entitled Secular Psychology and the Denial of Scriptural Authority found here:

https://proto-protestantism.blogspot.com/2022/08/secular-psychology-and-denial-of.html

I was asked to clarify and expand upon some of the ways Evangelicalism has been compromised by modern psychology and feminism. These questions could easily fill up a multi-volume series but I'll touch on just a few points.

Secular Psychology and the Denial of Scriptural Authority

https://www.christianpost.com/news/churches-address-mental-health-stigma-in-the-pews.html

In some respects it's surprising that this article is even appearing at this point. This debate over whether or not Christians should embrace psychology and its assumptions is effectively over. The ship has sailed as they say. I remember the contentions over this point in the 1990's and by the early 2000's it was clear there had been a fundamental shift. We moved from hearing psychology condemned from the pulpit to pastors on Christian radio telling the audience to leave their church if psychology is called into question – because at that time there will still churches challenging this paradigm.

Inbox: Rights Based Ethics and the Evangelical Movement (II)

Understanding the hopelessly corrupt nature of the world and its vanity we can then (with Paul and the Corinthians) take comfort in being 'the little people', the 'nothings' in the eyes of the world – the types that a reprobate like Trump would call 'losers'. For no one hates Christianity and Christians more than Donald Trump. Obviously the Church doesn't understand this one bit. Led by fools they think he's an ally and an asset to the Church's cause in the world. So misled by the false shepherds and shaped more by the epistemology and values of the Right than by Scripture, they have latched on and in increasing numbers have sold their souls to this charlatan and now his lackeys and imitators.

Inbox: Rights Based Ethics and the Evangelical Movement (I)

In a recent piece I wrote concerning the Dominionist-driven Evangelical movement:

Their values are based on the pursuit of political power, ethics rooted in a system of 'rights', and economic concerns – namely profits. It is both tragic and obscene that a large majority of professed Christians have embraced such Social Darwinist ethics and utterly abandoned the religion of the New Testament. But generations of Rights-based ethics have done this and Church leaders have abdicated their responsibility to denounce this false system that is contrary to the New Testament.

I was asked to follow-up on the question of Rights-based ethics and what this has meant for the Church.

A Postmortem on Covid Postmortems (Part 1)

https://thelocalkirk.org/a-postmortem-on-covid-and-the-church/

Perhaps what I found most disappointing about this piece is that many will believe it to be well-reasoned and moderate in its tone and posture. I did not find this to be the case and in addition I found it indicative of some other disturbing trends at work within conservative Evangelical and Confessional circles.

High Place Hermeneutics – The Spirit of Balaam-Hananiah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtdPoLDl5jU

At 4:44, Jordan Hall engages in a classic syncretistic move of bait and switch. Juxtaposing the holy covenantal inheritance due to Esau and the inheritance gained and earned by American patriots who through work and war built the nation Hall has sold his soul to – he engages in a basic hermeneutical and theological fallacy and yet one well known to students of the Scripture and those who continue to watch American Evangelicalism with a wary eye.

Riddles of Fundamentalism Part 2: Epistemology, Social Context and the Charge of Anti-Modernism

Industrialisation proved traumatic for Western society. Traditions, what we might call social forms of coherence, accepted norms, standards and commonalities were modified and in many cases jettisoned. A new urban culture began to form that changed many economic, social and thus finally familial and traditional dynamics. While on the one hand this was the outcome of modern thinking and the science and technology it produced, in another sense its non-coherence and fragmentation led to a social crisis. The mechanistic view of the universe first moved God to the periphery and then abandoned Him altogether. Science and technology came into their own and created a new type of Foundationalism for the new era. The previous coherence of what we might call Enlightened Christianity, the form familiar to late colonial and early Republican America was no longer needed or viewed as valid.

Riddles of Fundamentalism: Modernist Epistemology and the Question of Biblicism Part 1

The other night I was watching the old Fess Parker version of Davy Crockett and found myself trying to explain to my kids his mannerisms and the 'can-do' and 'aw shucks' common sense of the frontiersman.

It's just a movie of course and yet there's something to be said on that topic. The old backwoods sensibility and pride in lack of sophistication is something deeply rooted in sections of American culture. It took one form in the log cabin and another in the halls of academia along the Eastern Seaboard, and yet it's something common to the American experience and its intellectual tradition.

A Pseudo-Two Kingdoms Debate

Tuininga v. Boot

http://www.ezrainstitute.ca/resource-library/debates/two-kingdoms-and-cultural-obedience

Listening to this debate was something of an exercise in frustration. It was a case of Dominionism v. Dominionism and the debaters admit as much--- that the differences are minimal. It really comes down to questions of form and expectation.