from Greg Boyd’s blog

An Odd Seminar And Interesting Debate
from Christus Victor Ministries » Greg Boyd (Gregory A. Boyd) by gregboyd

Hope you all had a grand thanksgiving with family and friends.

I’d like to share something that happened last week. I was in Providence, Rhode Island participating in a seminar on divine providence at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS). The seminar was held in a large hotel ballroom and the place was packed, with people even sitting on the floor along the walls.

I’ve done a number of these seminars, but this was by far the strangest.

First, this was supposed to be a seminar on the four different models of providence usually held by evangelicals. Paul Helseth represented the “omni-causal” view (Calvinism), William Lane Craig represented the “Middle Knowledge ” view (Molinism); I represented the “open” view (Open Theism), and Ron Highfield represented “the comprehensive supervision” view.

The trouble is, no one had ever heard of the “comprehensive supervision” view! It turns out it’s the Calvinist view all over again!

When Highfield was asked how his view differed from Helseth’s, his only reply was, “I’m not comfortable with the word ‘omni-causal.” When I asked Helseth how he thought his view differed from Highfield’s, he just smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

One would have thought the seminar would have included a simple foreknowledge (classical Arminian) model of providence as the fourth view. What an odd omission!

Soon into the seminar we all learned that the moderator who put the seminar together was a very passionate Calvinist, which possibly explains the odd “doubling up” on the Calvinist perspective. But it also explains a second extremely odd aspect of this seminar.

After Paul Helseth opened the seminar with a fine paper defending the Calvinist model of providence, the moderator — whose job is to introduce speakers, field question and, most importantly, stay neutral — asked if there were any questions. After about 2 seconds — I kid you not – he said, “Okay then” and proceeded to give all of us (and I quote) “four compelling reasons why we should all strongly consider embracing the Calvinist view.” He then started to passionately preach about how the Bible “clearly” and “emphatically” teaches omni-causality!

I began to laugh involuntarily. Bill Craig turned to me and exclaimed, “This is positively bizzare!” And it was. After about one and a half minutes of this (we were all stunned into silence) an irate seminar attender finally interrupted the evangelist/moderator and said, “Do you mind if we ask the presenter a few questions?” The preacher sheepishly backed down, and a nice discussion ensued. But the comedy wasn’t over, for throughout the entire seminar this fellow would make comments and gestures of approval for all pro-Calvinist statements while shaking his head and muttering beneath his breath in response to any anti-Calvinist and/or pro-Molinist or openness comments. To be honest, I found this guys’ uncontainable passion for his views to be charming and very entertaining. But it obviously didn’t serve him well as a moderator.

On the whole, the seminar didn’t break any new ground. It may have even been a bit on the boring side. The only really interesting part of the seminar for me was when Bill Craig and I debated. (He’s always fun to spar with). Two issues are perhaps worth repeating.

* Craig defended a definition of omniscience that basically says that an omniscient being must know all true propositions as true and all false propositions as false. On this basis he holds that God knows (among other things) what all future agents will do, and what all agents would do were they in different circumstances. (This is called God’s “counterfactual” knowledge and is the main distinctive of Molinism).

Now, I completely agree with this definition of omniscience. (In contrast to Hasker, another Open Theist, who defines omniscience as the ability to “know all that can be known” — as though there are truths that can’t be known). But I asked Craig why an omniscient being wouldn’t also know the truth value of propositions asserting what might and might not take place, where “might” is considered the contradictory of “will not” and “might not” is considered the contradictory of “will”? In this view, if God knows it is true that “x might and might not do y at a certain point in time,” then God knows it is false both that “x (certainly) will” and “x (certainly) will not do y at a certain point in time.”

Craig responded by pointing out that this is not how “might” and “might not” usually function in philosophical semantics, but his left me unsatisfied. I would argue that the reason they don’t function like this in most philosophical circles is because an exhaustively settled view of the future is being presupposed.

Second, in response to my claim that the Open View presents the most exalted view of God’s wisdom, Craig and I got into a good natured debate about “whose God is smarter.” ….. Rest is here

Joseph Bottum: “The End of Advent,” at the First Things blog.

Many years ago, we made a decision to, as much as possible, speak of Advent and not of Christmas, until Christmas. I’ve never been able to hold off the Christmas music, but as much as possible we’ve stayed with that commitment.

It’s also amusing to watch my co-workers get the puzzled look when I start referring to “advent,” something some/most of the have never heard of. They often assume I’m one of the “Christmas is a Babylonian occultic festival” whack jobs, which we usually have somewhere in the gallery.

It’s really very simple: Christmas is the feast of the incarnation and the season following that event. Advent is the recognition that we need a savior and the longing for that savior to come, according to God’s promises.

Christmas is joyous, but the joy comes after weeks of waiting, watching, lamenting and calling upon God. Advent is that season of waiting; of looking for the signs and promises of the savior in the scriptures and in the world.

That distinction should save us. We think we can manufacture our own salvation by going shopping. Advent says we cannot save ourselves, that only God can save us and that in his own time and in his own way.

Christmas is the return of the pagan festivals that we Christianized; the triumph of the commercial invention of a “holiday as shopping season” to end the year. It is the pagan, secular, godless imagination creating its own world of blessed wonder by way of its own story and its own magic. Christmas has become, in many ways, as spiritually dangerous as any of the recognized belief systems that apologists spend their time dismantling.

Joseph Bottum takes on the loss of Advent in the rise of the secular Christmas in an essay that continues to demonstrate his skill and importance as a writer. While I wish that Bottum had acknowledged the rediscovery of Advent by many evangelicals and the potential of the rediscovery to introduce the Christian year as a counterbalance to the pragmatic manipulation of time at the heart of our culture, it’s still an outstanding essay.

Read Joseph Bottum: The End of Advent.

I have written about the celebration of Advent in our family with suggestions for that celebration in your family: Observing Advent and Christmas: Thoughts for the Christian Family.

I’ve also written on “The Mood of Advent.”

I hope all of this helps you get off to a good start with Advent this year.

Please pray for those that are being held hostage in India and those who are connected to the the many who have been murdered.

Pray for wisdom for our national leaders to confront Russia’s nuclear exploitation in Iran, Cuba and Venezuela.

Obama is being called on his experience(by which I mean his resolve and leadership are being immediately brought into the world mix) in the most horrific way. Time to unite and act.

Do not ask me if all religions lead to Jesus. Jesus’ way is the path of denying yourself not denying other’s their very lives.

in the last week:

SD
1. Sioux Falls
2. Vermillion
3. Watertown
4. Yankton
5. Rapid City
6. Pierre
7. Mitchell
8. Colman

THE US
1. South Dakota
2. Oklahoma
3. Texas
4. California
5. (not set)
6. North Dakota
7. Virginia
8. New York
9. Florida
10. Iowa
11. Washington
12. Pennsylvania
13. Colorado
14. Minnesota
15. Georgia
16. Wisconsin
17. Tennessee
18. Illinois
19. Indiana
20. Mississippi
21. Kansas
22. Montana
23. New Jersey
24. Kentucky
25. North Carolina
26. Massachusetts
27. Alabama
28. Missouri

Every age has its own outlook. It is especially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds… by reading old books.

– C.S. Lewis from the ‘Introduction’, St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation

Entertainment Weekly Takes Heat out of Marriage
from NewsBusters.org - Exposing Liberal Media Bias by Colleen Raezler

Marriage is not sexy.

That’s the conclusion that readers might make after examining Entertainment Weekly’s list of the “50 Sexiest Movies Ever.”

Of the 50 movies on the list, 42 center on unmarried adult relationships. Three of the relationships featured on the list occur between two women (”Kissing Jessica Stein,” “Bound,” and “Mulholland Drive”), one occurs between two men (”Yossi & Jagger”) and one is a bisexual web of past and current relationships (”Basic Instinct”).

None of the movies depicts a normal, loving married couple in an everyday situation. The three “sexy” movies on the list that did address martial sex were “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” (in which Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie play rival assassins hired to kill each other), “Don’t Look Now” (a horror movie in which the sex scene had to be trimmed to avoid an X-rating), and “300″ (a comic book movie).

And while marriage may not be sexy by Hollywood’s standards, adultery certainly is. Movies about adulterous relationships appeared on the list 14 different times, more than quadruple the number of times marriage appeared. Movies such as “The Bridges of Madison County,” “Unfaithful,” ” The Postman Always Rings Twice” (Jack Nicholson’s version), “Body Heat” and “American Gigolo” all made the list.

Four movies focused on teen sex. “Y Tu Mama Tambien,” a Mexican film about two teen boys taking a road trip with an older woman, features a scene in which the trio engages in a threesome, complete with a kiss between the two boys. “Cruel Intentions” features a kiss between two girls as well as depictions of various characters engaged in sexual activity. “Dirty Dancing” depicts sex between a teen girl and an older man. “Maurice,” set in early 20th Century England, explores homosexuality in teen boys.

EW also accompanied each movie listing with its “sexiest moment.” Not surprisingly, sex scenes were the sexiest moment in 15 of the movies listed. Interestingly though, the list makers recognized the power of language, as evidenced by conversations ranking second with eight “sexiest” moments being conversations or quips by movie characters. Included is the following exchange between Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell as ex-spouses in “His Girl Friday:”

Grant (as Walter Burns): Want my fingerprints?

Russell (as Hildy Johnson): No thanks. I’ve still got those.

Kisses were the sexiest moments in six movies and touching was sexiest in four movies while exhibitionism was sexiest in three.

EW’s movie list mirrors what’s on TV. A Parents Television Council study in 2007 found that verbal references to non-marital sex outnumbered marital references by nearly 3 to 1. For every four television scenes that depicted or implied sex between unmarried couples, only one scene showed similar scenes between married couples.

PTC President Tim Winter said following the release of the study that “many in Hollywood are actively seeking to undermine marriage by consistently showing it in a negative manner.”

As with its fictional counterparts, Entertainment Weekly’s unspoken message is that married sex is non-existent or simply a fantasy.

OK so the first two are up now:

Simplicity: Your Life Gifts

Simplicity 2: Your Spiritual Gifts

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We use nametags. For those that are looking for total anonymity go to celebrate…

AND I stand rebuked and agree with it on posting the mega-church 7-day sex stunt…

What’s Wrong With Megachurch Evangelicalism: Exhibit A
from internetmonk.com by iMonk

I removed the Seven Day Sex Challenge Post.

For those fortunate enough to pay attention, we’ve just had a seminar on what’s going on in the lead dog evangelical megachurches in America.

Criticize the pastor for one lame-brained, attention grabbing stunt, and within 24 hours, threats of every kind are in the air.

Criticize one celebrity pastor for one manipulative ploy and the angry dogs are at the gates, threatening to sue over a picture you got off the first page of google images.

Criticize one pastor for one embarrassing tactic and read comment after comment after comment that says you were denouncing the existence, ministry, congregation and mission of the church in its entirety.

In other words, dear readers, say one megachurch pastor is wrong about one thing, and the megachurch brown shirts are breaking your windows and threatening to sue you out of existence.

Criticize one tactic, and then the floodgates are open to say anything, lie without restraint and threaten the critic with impugnity.

If anyone out there can still think, consider this.

Millions of us are affected by the megachurch. It determines far, far more than what goes on in its own doors.

Thousands of pastors will now be pressured to do a “Sex Challenge.”

Millions of evangelicals are for the teaching of sexual ethics, but disagree with making the sex lives of the pastor and his wife the focus of national TV interviews.

Millions of us are concerned that the “Anything goes as long as it’s goal is to reach people” method is running evangelicalism into the wall, and on the other side of that wall is disillusionment for millions.

Thousands of young people, troubled marriages, singles, hurting spouses, widows and so on are affected by the “Sex Challenge” in ways that aren’t considered.

And yet, one criticism of one tactic brings a firestorm of rage.

We criticize our Roman Catholic friends for their belief that all questions of authority are settled by the Magisterium and the Pope.

Can a megachurch pastor be wrong? Can the tactic he uses to make his point be lame, inappropriate, embarassing and wrong?

More importantly, can one blogger say he’s wrong?

Most importantly, can someone in your church say he’s wrong?

If they do, is this what happens? Threats?

What’s wrong with evangelicalism? You’ve just seen what’s wrong, and you’ve just seen where it’s going.

Hear this: No doubt, I could take this blog space and criticize one traditional church pastor every day, and the megachurch mob would nod and say “That’s right. No desire to grow.” I could talk about lame ideas, poor planning, embarassing pulpit performances, and it would be great. Hand out the tomatoes.

But try that with an Osteen or a Young. Say Ed Young is wrong to use the Seven Day Sex Challenge as a stunt to get attention for his church.

Watch the difference. And draw the obvious conclusions.

As Josh S said, this isn’t a serious religion.

But it’s got a serious problem.