A Brief History of some early Christeological Heresies

 

‘Christeological’ refers to the theology of Christ. As early as the 1st century, numerous heresies arose concerning the identity and nature of Christ. The challenge of answering the heretics forced the church to develop a formalised Christeological theology. The theology they developed is still normative today and has given us a language with which to more easily talk about the second person of the God-head.

The first controversy arose when certain people began denying that Jesus had a material body. This was known as the heresy of Docetism.

Are members of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches Christians?

   
A reader wrote the following question to me back in December:

Most Reformed believers tend to write off most Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians as unsaved, but there is starting to be a rise (as you no doubt know) of thought from the Federal Vision that Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox should be considered Christian, based on their baptism. What are your thoughts on what the evangelical view of RCs and EOs should be? Do you think their sacramental system encourages nominalism?

Those are some really good questions. If you don't mind, I am not going to address the question of nominalism right now and instead focus on your other question. Should Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox be considered Christians based on their baptisms?

Conversion experiences?

A reader wrote the following question to me:

In your blog post about "The Presbyterian Doctrine of Covenant Children," you said that the traditional Reformed view of children of believers is that they are already in covenant with God and should be raised and nurtured so that they grow up not knowing a time when they did not love God, have sorrow for sin, faith in Christ, etc. I've noticed that in modern evangelicalism there is a tendency to put a great deal of emphasis on the necessity of "personal conversion" and "making a decision." There is somewhat of the same thing in Reformed circles (especially Reformed Baptist circles), where children of believers are encouraged to "seek salvation" and get under conviction of sin, and may not be converted until some point in their teen years--in keeping with Edwards views about seeking salvation. How do you view this emphasis on having a personal conversion experience in light of the Reformed view of covenant children?

Good question. The short answer is that I am against the emphasis on children of believers having to have a conversion experience.

Standing against evil

"Sometimes standing against evil is more important than defeating it. The greatest heroes stand because it is right to do so not because they believe they will walk away with their lives. Such selfless courage is a victory in itself." Nate Wilson

Links to articles on Thought Police

 

Thought Police Muscle up in Britain 

 

Thought Control in American Society 

 

Thought Reform 101 

Thought Police article in HTML

Thought Control

 

Banned in Britain

 

 Is that liberalism?

 

Lord Waddington on British Thought Control

 

Free Speech in Europe 

 

Big Brother Britain

 

Musings on England

 

The Orwellian Legacy of Tony Blair

 

The Retreat of Reason

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Review of Banned in Britain by Michael Savage

On 5 May 2009, the American talk show host Michael Savage woke up around 7:00 AM and turned on his computer to check the news.

Imagine Mr. Savage’s surprise when, scanning the headlines, he read: “RADIO HOST MICHAEL SAVAGE BANNED FROM UK FOR ‘EXTREME VIEWS’.

Following a link to the Independent, Mr. Savage saw an article titled, ‘Named and Shamed: The 16 Barred from the UK.” Looking at the profiles on the other 15 individuals who were listed alongside of himself (all notorious murderers, terrorist and rapists) Savage wondered what he had done to induce the Home Office to include his name on their blacklist.

Winston Churchill on free speech and socialism

  

"No socialist government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp, or violently worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance. And this would nip opinion in the bud; it would stop criticism as it reared its head, and it would gather all the power ot the supreme party and the party leaders, rising like stately pinnacles above their vast bureaucracies of Civil servants, no longer servants and no longer civil."

Click here to read my political column in the Spokane Libertarian Examiner

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Blog books I’m reading to my children at the moment or have recently finished reading to them

A conservative approach to environmentalism

Journey inside a cell

  
Timothy and I just watched this fascinating video of what happens inside a cell. Absolutely stunning. I can't even wrap my mind around how amazing this is.

Is that liberalism?

'Tis the Majority
In this, as All, prevail –
Assent, and you are sane –
Demur, you’re straightway dangerous –
And handled with a Chain –

Emily Dickinson

I am currently reading Michael Savage's book Banned in Britain: Beating the Liberal Blacklist. Among his numerous insights is that liberalism has undergone a subtle shift from the 1960s. "I remember the 1960s" he writes,

when true liberals used to say, "I may disagree with you but I would fight to the death your right to say it." When have you last heard a liberal say, "Oh I may disagree with conservative talk radio, but I would fight to the death their right to say what they believe in"? I don't hear that anymore. What instead I hear is, "I think it's time to pass a standard...to bring accountability to the airwaves." That was stated earlier this year by left wing Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Is that liberalism?

While contemporary liberals still like to imagine themselves operating within the ideological legacy framed by such men as Hume, Locke, Diderot, Voltaire, Tocqueville, Mill and Burke, the totalitarian utopia towards which they strive and the Mccarthyism by which they would drive us there, is the antithesis to the genuine liberal values espoused by the 18th and 19th century defenders of freedom. If contemporary liberalism is marked by any defining feature, it is a dogmatic intolerance to dissent that I have elsewhere described by invoking the category of 'thought police.'
  

A parallel shift can be seen in the notion of tolerance. Tolerance used to be was understood as allowing or permitting another person’s viewpoint or values in spite of how one personally felt. Though this notion of tolerance, like any type of liberty, has obvious legal limits, it was based on the Biblical idea (not always perfectly followed by Christian societies, I should add) that we should refrain from deporting, imprisoning, executing or humiliating those whose beliefs, practices and behaviors are inferior to one’s own. Tolerance in this sense did not suggest an acceptance of that which was being tolerated, but connoted the idea of allowing something in spite of how one actually felt about it, as embodied in the quotation falsely attributed to Voltaire, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Around the middle of the last century, however, tolerance gradually ceased to be understood in the original sense as permitting that which one did not personally accept. Instead, it began to mean actually accepting ideas, values and practices that differed from one’s own. Whereas under the old notion of tolerance someone had to disagree with someone in order to tolerate, allow or put up with the different viewpoint, the new meaning of tolerance does not allow for such disagreement; rather, it asserts that a person must actually accept all values and viewpoint as being equally legitimate (the obvious exception is that we are not supposed to tolerate the older notion of tolerance, since the older notion assumed what is now an allegedly intolerant antithesis.)

This paradigm shift in the notion of tolerance and liberalism have had far reaching implications for Christians. Since it is now an act of intolerance to call anything wrong or immoral, Christians who hold to the Biblical standards, or even generic conservative views, are constantly finding themselves accused of intolerance and lumped together with terrorists, murderers and rapists. In their defense they can no longer appeal to  the values of classical liberalism since the left has abandoned its historical roots and embraced a revolutionary mentality that is antithetic to the classic defense of liberty.

It is a strange world that we live in.

Further Reading

All Thought Police Articles

Thought Control

The Retreat of Reason: Political Correctness and the Corruption of Public Debate

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Read my columns at the Charles Colson Center

Read my writings at Alfred the Great Society

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Conspiracy theories

 
I always try to avoid taking conspiracy theories too seriously, but after maybe I should think differently given that 33 conspiracy theories have actually turned out to be true.


 

On talking fish and grateful hearts

“Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!...Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”--- Philippians 4:4 & 6-7

In their collection of fairy tails, the Grimms brothers have a story about a fisherman and his wife who lived together in a small shack. One day when the husband was out fishing, he happened to catch a flounder who could talk.

The fish explained that he was really an enchanted prince and begged the fisherman to let him go. Being impressed by the occasion of a talking fish, the man gladly consented and put the fish back into the sea.

That night when the fisherman got home and told his wife Ilsebill about the strange encounter, she was indignant that he hadn’t asked the fish for anything. If he was really an enchanted prince, she explained to her husband, he would surely be able to grant wishes. The wife insisted that the following morning her husband should call for the fish and ask him to give them a nice cottage in which to live.

Being content with their small shack, the fisherman was reluctant to follow his wife’s bidding. But she insisted so forcibly that he eventually relented.

The next day on the sea, the man called up the founder and told of his wife’s request. The fish assured him that the wish had been granted, and that he would go home to find Ilsebill living in a nice cottage instead of the filthy shack.

Time to be grateful

Of all the people who have ever lived, we ought to be the most grateful.

Those living in the contemporary West have been lavished with blessings that are almost unfathomable.

Think about it: you can drive to the supermarket with a free string quartet in the back of your car (stereo). When you get home, you can have your own private messengers deliver a letter half way across the world at record speed (internet). After dinner you can relax on the couch in front of your own private drama group (television).

That is a lifestyle that not even kings could enjoy in days gone by.

So you would think that we would be the most grateful people in all of history.

But we are not. As a general observation, we are a culture of grumblers. Our technology has done many things for us, but it does not seem to have made us more content. It does not seem to have produced thankfulness in our hearts, at least not on a broad cultural level.

To counter this and stir our grumbling hearts to gratefulness (including my own grumbling heart), I will writing a series of posts on gratefulness, taken from talks I have given my family on this theme.

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