Does Endtimes Theology Matter?

FBI launches raids on Christian militia group which is 'preparing for battle against an Anti-Christ'

For comparison, see Antichrist: The Biblical View

The Great Commission Demands Theological Study

Many fundamentalists draw a false dichotomy between "saving souls" and sound doctrine. I am often asked how many people I have won to Christ with my strict adherence to biblical doctrine, as if somehow doctrine is a deterent to evangelism. Robert Reymond shows that the Great Commission itself demands theological study:

"After determining for his church the pattern and end of all theology, the glorified Christ commissioned his church to disciple the nations, baptizing and teaching his followers to obey everything that he had commanded them (Matt. 28:18-20). The Great Commission then places upon the church specific intellectual demands. There is the evangelistic demand to contextualize without compromise the gospel proclamation in order to meet the needs of every generation and culture. There is the didactic demand to correlate the manifold data of Scripture in our minds and to apply this knowledge to all phases of our thinking and conduct. And there is the apologetic demand to justify the existence of Christianity as the revealed religion of God and to protect its message from adulteration and distortion (see Tit. 1:9). Theology has risen in the life of the church in response to these concrete demands of the Great Commission. The theological enterprise serves then the Great Commission as it seeks to explicate in a logical and coherent manner for men everywhere the truth God has revealed in Holy Scripture about himself and the world he has created." - Robert Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, Introduction xxviii)

Book Review: Getting Off The Niceness Treadmill

By Carol Noren Johnson

"For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ." (Galatians 1:10)"

Such is the great gulf between "niceness" and "godliness", a necessary distinction that Carol Noren Johnson can relate to. In "Getting Off The Niceness Treadmill", Carol (NewKidontheBlogg) shares her life's journey that began in Portland, Oregon in a Christian family. Like many Christians, Carol learned that Christian girls are supposed to be "nice", a lesson that made her subject to being a pawn for many self-serving acquaintances along her life's path. "Niceness", she writes, "is not always biblical kindness, but an ego need, or, in my case, a habit from early training". Carol relates how her "addiction" to niceness made her a pushover for many, especially during her years as a widow. Her combination of loneliness and "need to be needed" allowed room mates and relatives to take advantage of her, junk up her property, use her as a chauffeur, and play to her "Christian" sympathies while embezzling and stealing money for drug use.

Carol traces her own addiction to niceness back to her teenage years, from a desire to please her loving yet strict Swedish grandmother to her later guilt trip over not providing the grandchildren that her mother desired.

"Please others! Because of my mother's and grandmother's rules, I began to reason that pleasing is the way to live. Be nice, do nice, so it will be easy for everyone and everyone will like me. I didn't realize that people don't have to like me. I didn't realize that I don't even have to begin to please everyone. Yes, we should respect our parents, but we must realize that they may never be pleased entirely. The script I was to live was prepared and would be a problematic journey for me." (p. 15)

Niceness can really become a problem for Christians in regards to church activities, a fact that I can relate to. Churches aren't immune to taking advantage of those who "need to be needed" in order to fulfill perceived needs in their ministry. Conventional wisdom has it that Christians who care for the ministry of the church should always say yes to the leadership of the church, up and until the time when the services are no longer needed. When Carol lost her church position without any explanation, she was asked to tell no one in order to avoid a church split. While it may have been the right thing for her to do out of respect for the Church of Jesus Christ, such an approach caused Carol much emotional pain and anguish that would last for years. (p. 21)

As a result, Carol moved away from California out of a need to "regain psychological health", and began to attend Michigan State University in order to obtain her PhD in Educational Systems Development. There she faced many obstacles as a student trying to make ends meet via odd jobs, battling loneliness, financial struggles, and health problems. Yet through God's providence, it is also where she met her first husband Don, whose knowledge in pastoral counseling helped her "work through the hurt" that she felt. (p. 24)

Carol's life is evident of the fact that doctrine does matter, and she elaborates in Chapters 6 and 7 on how sound doctrine helped her to arrive at a proper "perspective on good works, obligation, reciprocation, and the glory of God". (p. 47) Carol's "niceness" was in fact a combination of self-obsession and a works-based worldview instead of self-denial and a God-centered worldview. Too many Christians unfortunately see doctrine as purely an academic or theological matter, with no real practical use (other than to cause division in the church). But it was Carol's introduction to the Reformed doctrines of Sovereign Grace and Providence that began her migration off of the niceness treadmill. Mainstream evangelicalism, at some level, puts an emphasis on man's works, and that emphasis can only lead to either pride (a denial of the depths of ones sinfulness) or dispair (realizing that we can never do enough good works). Returning the focus to the finished work of Jesus Christ, however, can free us from the need to be needed, and thus give us the ability to walk in the good works that God has ordained for us, without becoming addicted to being nice. Sound doctrine teaches us that, as Christians, we are called into the fellowship of Christ's sufferings. The fact that all the we face in life has been ordained by a sovereign and loving God enables us to face hardships, even if those hardships are caused by others.

"It's kind and honest to tell the truth. We put on kindness and honesty, not niceness, when we go through the process of forgiving. We forgive because He first forgave all of our unrighteousness and self-righteousness." (p.25)

Having a proper view of God and man also helps give wisdom in providing for the needs of others. The opposite of niceness is not meanness, but living a life glorifying to God through biblical kindness, meeting needs as God provides without being a pushover. Though it may sound a bit odd, Carol relates how "niceness" is often built upon the sinful foundations of self-obsession.

"My sins were bitterness and self-pity, and then I shared the "poor me" story [about my previous church experience] with selected others. I kept busy with church, reading my Bible and praying.  When I laid down self-pity, I had taken up another strategy -- give money, take people in who needed lodging, make gifts, do whatever people expect a nice Christian to do.  Would that bring peace? Not really because of the expectations that I had. Certainly it didn't bring respect. It was self-righteous humanitarian behavior. I thought that life should go well for the nice person, and this notion was crumbling all around me". (p. 61)

Through years of growth, Carol was finally delivered from her niceness addiction, and thus she was able to chart a new course with a more godly, biblical attitude.

"_The ultimate gift is that God gave His Son to take our punishment and secure our reward in heaven. "Thanks be to God for His inexpressible gift." (2 Corinthians 9:15 RSV) Our humanitarian efforts are nothing in comparison to His gift.

_God, not Carol Johnson's efforts, supplies the needs of others. Now it sounds silly, doesn't it, that I had this nurturing need to help any and all who came to me.

_Let Him guide me when I feel generous. Am I being generous for a reward or to make my life easier? Don't expect a reward in this life "knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord". (1 Corinthians 15:58)

_I can be intolerant in an age of political correctness for causes I am led to support, even if it is not nice.

_Give the gift of time and attention to others. Have front porch discussions with others." (p.43)

True Godliness is not always "nice", and there are many things that Christians should not be nice about. Chapter 8 gives a brief list of such items, and particularly focuses on Carol's work with Drunk Drivers). Unlike many of the books reviewed on Covenant Theology, "Getting Off The Niceness Treadmill" is focused primarily on a particular life application of the doctrine of God's Sovereignty, putting man's works into proper perspective. Whether you or someone you know struggles with a need to please others in order to satisfy their own self-obsession, "Getting Off The Niceness Treadmill" is a helpful resource, particularly for those who are manipulated by niceness as a need to display his or her "Christian Faith".

Published by Genie Publishing Co. 2009
109 Pages
Easy Reading
Highly Recommended
Buy It Here

Let the Dead Bury the Dead

There are two opposing schools of thought concerning evangelism. The modern pragmatist holds that it is the duty of the church to change it methods (as well as it's message) in order to meet the "felt needs" of the unsaved. There are even churches who send out questionaires asking unbelievers what it would take to get them into church. Such methods may be good for growing large churches, but that's all that they are good for. Dead people (Ephesians 2:1) are a poor judge of their own needs.

According to the Scriptures, it is the unbeliever who needs to be changed, it is the gospel that effects such change, and it is the "foolishness of preaching" that God has ordained as the means by which this gospel is spread. Try as we might, we cannot improve upon God's methods or His message.

Concern for the lost does not mean that we should capitulate to their excuses. They should serve Christ, and there is no excuse for them not to serve Christ (Romans 1:20). Every unbeliever has a self-justified reason why they don't serve Christ. For some, the church doesn't entertain them enough. For others, there are too many "hypocrites" in the church. Still others may justify their unbelief through science or philosophy. Whatever the reason, we must approach the sinner with the idea that he needs to be born of the Spirit of God, not the idea that we need to satisfy his excuses. Our Lord's response to excuses was sharp and pointed. "Let the dead bury the dead" (Matthew 8:22).

Book Review: Presuppositional Apologetics - Stated and Defended

by Greg L. Bahnsen
Edited by Joel McDurmon

"A truly Christian defense of the faith must never fail to exalt Christ as Lord over all, including argumentation and reasoning. An apologetic that builds on any other rock than Christ does not honor the greatness of divine wisdom; it is foolishly and audaciously erected on the ruinous sands of human authority".

What originally began as two chapter contribution to a collection of essays on Van Til's Reformed apologetic grew to Bahnsen's magnum opus on apologetics. However, the manuscripts of this work were lost until after Bahnsen's death in 1995, and have recently been published posthumously by a combined effort between American Vision and Covenant Media.

Part One contains three chapters. The first chapter, Introduction: God In The Dock? focuses on the necessity of the presuppositional method and exposes the insufficiency of traditional apologetics. The "charter" passage of Christian apologetics. 1 Peter 3:15, begins by telling us to "Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts...", a commandment that is unwittingly ignored by non-presuppositional methods. The chapter seems to be quite repetitive, but as such reveals Bahnsen's passion for the church at large to adopt what we know to be the truth in our apologetics, that Christ is Lord, and that the Holy Scriptures are the best evidence for that fact, since it is God's revelation to us. As such, man has no place to stand in judge of God or His Word, since his own intellectual efforts can only be meaningful in a Christian, theistic worldview. When Christians try to "prove" the Christian Faith using non-believing metaphysics, they not only give the unbeliever a free pass in defending their autonomous metaphysic, but at best they can only show that God "probably exists", hardly enough to convince the unbeliever to submit to God's authority.

Instead, Scripture tells us that all men know God, because he has plainly revealed Himself to them. (Romans 1:19). Yet unbelievers "suppress the truth in unrighteousness" (Romans 1:18). In other words, the problem that the unbeliever has isn't intellectual, it is ethical. He is commanded to submit to the revealed word of God, but instead has claimed some sort of intellectual autonomy, assuming without any reason whatsoever that the human mind is capable of meaningful thought processes outside of the creative and providential attributes of God. "Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight!" (Isaiah 5:21) What the unbeliever needs isn't simply "additional information" in regards to science, philosophy, history, etc. A good Calvinist should know better. What the unbeliever needs is a new way of thinking that relinquishes any claim to intellectual self-sufficiency. He needs to be born again. It is this innate knowledge of God which resides in fallen creatures that the apologist must appeal to, not some non-existent "neutral" stance that puts God in the Dock.

Developing a faithful apologetic is a question of ultimate authority. Does all knowledge proceed from the Sovereign Creator or the fallen creature? Bahnsen thus criticizes the basis for traditional apologetical methods because "It does not at base present the intellectual challenge of the gospel, but makes fatal concessions to the unbeliever's desire for intellectual self-sufficiency." (Bahnsen - PA, p. 13.) Bahnsen adds:

"It is futile to appeal to standards which are allegedly intelligible apart from the truth of God's Word. No fact can be understood, and no reasoning can be meaningful, apart from Christ as Creator and Redeemer of men. Scripture provides the interpretive context within which fact and logic can be intelligible and used aright."

This is a truth that all Christians believe at some level, and honor such in their proclamation of the faith. Yet we have a tendency to forget this in our apologetic task of defending that same faith.

Bahnsen closes the chapter by examining the foundation of Van Til's apologetic, showing how it drew from the disagreements between Abraham Kuyper and B.B Warfield, while avoiding the pitfalls of both.

Chapter Two, The Christian Mind and Method provides a more scriptural defense of Van Tillian apologetics, expounding Colossians 2:8 and examining Paul's apologetic approach in Lystra, Rome and Athens. In no case did Paul seek religious common ground with unbelievers, nor did he evangelize using mere "natural" revelation. Rather he appealed to their ignorance, vanity, and foolishness (p. 44). Bahnsen presents the natural antithesis between the standards of Christian knowledge and the sandy ground of human wisdom, and how Christians should never argue in a way that grants knowledge to the unbeliever.

"The Word of God should not be treated as a hypothesis to be proved by rational-empirical testing; it must never be reduced to the level of probability. It is the unquestionable Word of Christ our Lord; we must begin with its veracity and argue accordingly. It is the thinking of the rebellious sinner, not the Word of the Lord, that must be brought into question. Our defense of the faith does not work toward an honoring of Christ's lordship; it works under that lordship!" (PA, p. 27)

"...our apologetic must not call the Word of Christ into question, but must challenge the unbeliever to the impossibility of knowledge outside of Christ." (p. 28)

Scripture itself never takes the time to debate the existence of God, but rather proclaims it in a self-attesting, authoritative manner. So should we also develop an apologetic that is faithful to the true and living God of Scripture instead conceding to the "worldly wisdom" of those who cannot even account for the very tools that they used to argue against the Christian Faith. The unbeliever needs more than good arguments, or solid "evidence" based upon his own worldview. He needs what Bahnsen dubs "Redemptive Revelation", the type that Peter received in Matthew 16:16-17. He needs to be born again.

"The change from unbelief to belief is not merely a matter of degree or the addition of a few further steps in reasoning, but rather a radical change of mindset." (p. 47)

The problem that unbelievers have is that they are spiritual "schizophrenics", because they both know God and don't know God. As a result, the unbeliever is always battling against the image of the one true God that he has ingrained in him. As one created in the image of God, the unbeliever has adequate knowledge of God has Creator, and thus he is able to obtain some knowledge of his world in spite of himself. Yet "Without the Word of Christ there is no theoritical basis for logic, history, or science; so when the unbeliever fights against the gospel he is working toward ruining his very tools of destruction! His "wisdom" becomes folly." (p. 49) Thus a good and faithful apologist must presuppose the Word of God and use it as the basis for all reasoning.

Bahnsen closes the chapter by putting man in his place in terms of knowledge. When Job dared to question God, he found himself to be the one on trial (Job 40:1-8). Thus we should use the Word to judge the thought patterns of the unbeliever, not vice versa. Indeed, according to the Scriptures, a repentant faith is a prerequisite for true knowledge (2 Peter 1:5, Proverbs 1:7, Proverbs 9:10, Proverbs 15:32, Job 11:12). We should faithfully use such knowledge "to overthrow reasonings and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God" (2 Corinthians 10:3-5).

Chapter 3, Neutrality & Autonomy Relinquished examines the groundless epistemology and metaphysics of unbelief. It includes Bahnsen's doctoral thesis on Self Deception, which explains how man can both know and not know God. It is possible for man to be wrong about his own knowledge, such as "knowing" a shortcut and getting lost, or being surprised at how he is able to pass a Calculus exam. In one sense, all men know God, because they live in God's universe, and cannot even function apart from acknowledging him in some way. God the Creator is known, because He has made Himself known in Creation (Romans 1:18-22). At the same time, they do not know God as Redeemer (and ultimately as Father) unless God Himself reveals it to him (Matthew 16:17).

By rejecting the need for revelatory epistemology, the non-believer is caught in a "subjective guessing game" about what he knows. Epistemology (What do we know?) and Metaphysics (How do we decide whether we know?) are mutually interdependent, and thus we are left with begging the question on every issue unless we can appeal to an ultimate authority. Thus there is really no such thing as an "unbiased" opinion on anything, because "one cannot gain an epistemological position untainted by metaphysical commitment" (p. 81). Neutrality is impossible, because we all have an "ultimate authority". As such, the real problem that an unbeliever has with Christianity is not a lack of evidence, for he has the same evidence that the believer has. The problem is with metaphysical commitment. Bahnsen goes on to explain how epistemology and metaphysics are, in fact, moral issues (obedience or disobedience to God's Word - see Romans 1:18.)

"Whether most philosophers like it or not, Scripture assuredly tells us the way a man uses his intellect is an ethical matter (e.g., rebellion against God leads to a darkened mind). Irrespective of the way in which men respond to it, God's clear revelation is the only escape we have from the skepticism that would otherwise result from the necessity of coordinating metaphysics and epistemology, and it is this revelation that provides both the epistemic ground and metaphysical content for the foundation of all of man's intellectual endeavors."

One of the most valuable contributions that Bahnsen's arms the Christian with is the ability to pull the rug out from the atheist concerning the tools he uses to debate. He summarized Thomas Kuhn's exhibit of the non-objective character of science and Kurt Godel's demonstratration of the non-neutrality of logic itself (p. 89). Both works beg further study, and I look forward to delving into these.

By expressing the need for revelational epistemology and exposing the end result rejecting Divine revelation, Bahnsen shows that the non-believers worldview ultimately leads to relativism in knowledge, failure in relevance and justification, chaos and subjectivism in history, and an irrational and unpredictable universe which makes science impossible (pp. 98-109).

At the end of Part One, Bahnsen makes us aware of the importance of the use of language, and how this use differs between different people, especially between believers and unbelievers (pp. 117-122). To quote Van Til:

"The basic falseness of this [traditional] apologetics appears in the virtual if not actual denial of the fact that the natural man makes false assumptions...Anyone who says "I believe in God," is formally correct in his statement, but the question is what does he mean by the word God? The traditional view assumes that the natural man has a certain measure of correct thought content when he uses the word God. It is his most effective tool for suppressing the sense of the true God that he cannot fully efface from the fibres of his heart... [The traditional apologist] must tie on to some small area of thought content that the believer and the unbeliever have in common without qualification when both are self-conscious with respect to their principle. This is tantamount to saying that those who interpret a fact as dependent upon God and those who interpret the same fact as not dependent upon God have yet said something identical about that fact" (Van Til's Defense of the Faith, cited by Bahnsen on p. 117).

In Part Two, Bahnsen deals with three Christian apologists (Gordon Clark, Edward J. Carnell, & Francis Schaeffer) that he charges with not using "Consistently Applied" Presuppositional Apologetics. While Bahnsen finds much to agree with in the presuppositional statements of these men (listed at the beginning of each section), he find that, as a whole, their apologetic is inconsistent.

In evaluating Gordon Clark, Bahnsen criticizes Clarks' invalid starting point, probablism, skepticism of sense experience, and Clark's "coherence test". In terms of Clark's starting point and probablism, Bahnsen cites Clark in a statement that is clearly not presuppositional, and requires some level of intellectual autonomy.

"That religion or Christianity in particular furnishes a better method than secularism is a possibility not to be dismissed without discussion" (cited by Bahnsen, p. 142)

So how would Clark arrive as such a conclusion? By tests of "logic" and "self-consistency".

"If the Biblical doctrines are self-consistent, they have met the only legitimate test of reason. This test of logic is precisely the requirement that a set of propositions be meaningful, whether spoken by God or man (p. 151)

Not only does Clark have an invalid starting point (intellectual autonomy), but such coherence tests require omniscience. However, the fatal flaw in such tests is that, when combined with Clark's skepticism of empiricism, Christianity fails Clark's test. Read the book for one example.

One final criticism of Clark's apologetic is that his skepticism of sense experience is irrational (we learn God's Word by sense experience) as well as unbiblical, (Faith cometh by hearing).

In the end, God Himself must be presented as the necessary precondition of "logic" as well as "sense experience". Clark fails to do this on a consistent basis.


Edward J. Carnell's apologetic works suffer the same shortcomings as Clark's, with a few additional problems. Carnell denies that God's Word is self verifying, and is repleat with rationalism and contradictions (ie. asserts the mind's depravity but not it's corruption). As with Clark, Carnell has an invalid starting point:

"a man of character can believe nothing until it is established by sufficient evidences" (p. 204)

Francis Schaeffer falls into the same error. His starting point leads to a surprising statement regarding the sufficiency of God's Word in evangelism:

"There must be a pre-evangelism before evangelism is meaningful to twentieth century people... This pre-consideration falls into two areas: the first is in the area of epistemology and the second, in the area of methodology" (p. 246)

Schaeffer views science as "incomplete", but fails to challenge naturalistic presuppositions.

While all three men were effective in their own right, they have a tendency to, on occasion, assert some sort of autonomy in human knowledge as the ultimate basis for their apologetic.

The book includes two valuable appendices:

1.) The Necessity For Revelational Epistemology

2.) The Pragmatist's Rejoinder And The Christian Alternative

Not only is the book highly recommended for those who wants a better grasp of Van Til and his apologetic method, but it is a must read for any Christian in dealing with our postmodern world and needing to develop a faithful, God-Centered apologetic. The failure to recognize the antithesis that exists between the believing an unbelieving worldviews lies at the root error of traditional apologetic methods, and thus those who use those methods are forced to make fatal concessions to those worldviews.

"The traditional method...is based on the assumption that man has some measure of autonomy, that the space-time world is in some measure "contingent" and that man must create for himself his own epistemology in an ultimate sense.

"The traditional method was concessive on these basic points on which it should have demanded surrender! As such, it was always self-frustrating. The traditional method had explicitly built into it the right and ability of the natural man, apart from the work of the Spirit of God, to be the judge of the claim of the authoritative Word of God. It is man who, by means of his self-established intellectual tools, puts his "stamp of approval" on the Word of God and then, only after this grand act, does he listen to it. God's Word must first pass man's tests of good and evil, truth and falsity. But once you tell a non-Christian this, why should he be worried by anything else that you say. [sic] You have already told him that he is quite alright just the way he is! Then Scripture is not correct when it talks of "darkened minds," "wilful ignorance," "dead men," and "blind people"! With this method the correctness of the natural man's problematics is endorsed. That is all he needs to reject the Christian faith." (Cornelius Van Til - cited by Bahnsen, PA. pp. 13-14)

Published by American Vision and Covenant Media Press 2008
314 Pages
College Reading Level

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