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Vol. 41, No. 8 - August 2010
In his book, From Tyndale to Madison (B&H Publishing, 2007), Michael Farris refers to the personal debate between John Calvin and Michael Servetus. In fact, he devotes an entire chapter (“Defending a Doctrine, Killing a Man,” chapter 8) to religious liberty, or the lack of it, in Calvin’s Geneva, because whether we like it or not, “Geneva, Switzerland, played a vital role in the development of English and American concepts of religious liberty” (Farris, 81). However, it is not John Calvin’s ideas on religious liberty Farris underscores, but those of an associate of Calvin, Sebastian Castellio, who took a pivotal stand for religious liberty, placing his own life in jeopardy by doing so. Indeed, Castellio had to use the pseudonym “Martin Bellius” to avoid arrest. This was because “when it came to the liberty of the individual to worship God as he wished - in Geneva or elsewhere - Calvin was an adamant opponent in both theory and practice” (Farris, 82). Farris explains:
Calvin did not face pagans who forthrightly called for the worship of foreign gods; rather, his concern was with professing Christians who dared to hold a doctrine he found to be heretical. He told his Geneva congregation, “There is a man that goes about to pervert the truth through fond devotion; and to turn it into untruth: the same man ought to die” - along with idolaters, blasphemers, Muslims, and other deviant individuals [from John Strype, Memorials of the Most Reverend Father in God, 1694, 144; see Early English Books Online].
Vol. 41, No. 71978 ? July 2010
Gary E. Gilley would n
ot say that everyone in a seeker-sensitive or market-driven church is not a Christian, but he does say, “...for all the bluster and commotion, very little is actually happening, especially if you define disciples as those whose lives have been changed by Christ” (Gilley, This Little Church Had None: A Church in Search of the Truth, Evangelical Press, 2010, 23-24). If this sounds cruel and judgmental, perhaps it is, but it is mild compared to what other evangelical observers are saying, not only about seeker-sensitive churches, but evangelicalism in general. There is no question but that many evangelicals are concerned about what they observe taking place today in their local churches.
Many of these authors echo basically the same things Gilley does. For example, in the latter portion of his forthcoming book, Evangelicalism: What Is It and Is It Worth Keeping? (Crossway, November 30, 2010), D. A. Carson critiques Mark Noll’s book, Is the Reformation Over? An Evangelical Assessment of Contemporary Roman Catholicism (Baker Academic, 2008). Carson argues the issues that gave rise to the Protestant Reformation are still not settled.
Vol. 41, No. 6 June 2010
Relatively few Christians today have what might be termed a high “biblical and theological I.Q.” Many believers regularly read the Bible, but few take the time or make the effort to really study the Bible, using basic Bible study tools such as a Bible dictionary and concordance. Even fewer tend to engage in any serious biblical and theological research, even in the context of writing a research paper for a Bible class in a Christian college. The major reason for this is such an effort entails at least browsing through quite a few books, and then carefully reading a sizeable chunk of those books, all the while taking notes and discovering the titles of yet other books which the diligent student will also want to consult and weigh the perspectives of the authors.
Some people tend to think professors and academics who lived centuries ago, long before our current information age, an age in which if one wants to know whether a certain book is available for purchase, all he or she has to do is go towww.amazon.com and key in the title or author, and through the modern technology of the Internet find an amazing collection - the equivalent of Books In Print - accessible in just a few clicks. Not having the kind of data we have at our fingertips today, the assumption is our ancestors were simply not even as intelligent as a modern fifth grader.
Vol. 41, No. 5 - May 2010
One of the most crucial questions facing believers is whether or not there remains in the heart of the person who has come to a saving faith in Christ an inward corruption, inclination or “bent” toward sin. How we answer this question is affected by, but also affects, our understanding of the biblical doctrines of justification and regeneration, as well as the biblical teaching on sanctification and the possibility or degree of holiness God expects of us as believers in this life. Also playing a key role in how we answer this question is our understanding of the biblical teaching on the doctrine of sin.
In an article which appeared in the Wesleyan Theological Journal (Vol. 1, Spring 1966) Leo Cox wrote a review on “Sin in Believers.” Cox sought to “analyze” some of the discussions on this subject found in a handful of books and journal articles at that point in time. His first of three major points in his article was stated this way:
Sinfulness in the believer must be distinguished from the state of sinfulness existent in the unbeliever. It is possible to place the standard of the regenerate life so high that only entirely sanctified people can live it, or allow it to fall so low that believers are “miserable sinners still.” It is very important that clarity be attained at this point (Cox, “Sin in Believers,” Wesleyan Theological Journal, Vol. 1, Spring 1966, 27).
Vol. 41, No. 4 - April 2010
For many years there has been debate among evangelicals as to the orthodoxy of the “Local Church” movement of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee. Watchman Fellowship, an organization which monitors cults, occultists, and other groups involved in alternative spirituality, states that the “Local Church” movement is a controversial movement which began in China in the early 1920s by Ni To-sheng (Watchman Nee). There was much growth, but controversy developed during the leadership of the group’s second leader, the late Witness Lee, who moved to America in 1962 and established the ministry’s publishing arm, Living Stream ministry. Among the theological issues drawing criti cism from evangelical believers are the Local Church’s use of the term “mingling” to describe the relationship between God and believers, specifically, the idea that Christians become both divine and human like Jesus. Some evangelicals have also charged the Local Church compromises the doctrine of the Trinity by confusing the persons of the Holy Spirit and the Son in a way similar to modalism (see Watchman Expositor, Index, at http://www.watchman.org/cat95htm#L).
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