Discuss Theology

Dwight McKissic resigned from the board of trustees at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary on June 20. The announcement follows a series of conflicts—mostly about private prayer languages—between McKissic, seminary president Paige Patterson, and the other Southwestern board members.

Commenting on his action, McKissic stated that he refused to join the “good ole boys club” at the seminary among the southern Baptists.

In a recent speech on June 23,  in Hartford, Connecticut,  Barack Obama gave some politically enlightened comments to  the United Church of Christ Convention.  He addressed abortion, gay marriage, school prayer, intelligent design, Bible reading,  and tax cuts for the rich.  He would fit right in with some of the theological seminaries within an hour or two of his speech.  Of course, the chief objects of his scorn were the “Christian Right”.  With Jerry Falwell in heaven now, we are more ethereal [and difficult]  to demonize.  We are the “Christian Right”.  I am sure that Tony Campolo, Ron Sider and Jim Wallis appreciate his wholesale trashing.  He reminds me of many of the Evangelical Trinitarian  preachers he despises and that is: He is “almost right”.

Congratulations to Hank Hannegraaf on his work addressing dispensational eschatology from a Biblically sane position.  Hannegraaf de-bunks the idea of a coming future holocaust for Jewish people and Israel.  Unfortunately, some of the most vocal and bizarre adherants to dispensational eschatology will label him as an “anti-semite”.

I was sitting outside Calgary this a.m. and meditating on a passage out of Psalm 119, where the psalmist writes “Thy righteousness is righteous forever.”  I thought to myself, righteousness at anytime is the same.  If Luther was correct in the 1500’s he must be correct now.  If Wright is correct, then he would have been right in the 1500’s.

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Writing about historical theism in Whatever Happened to the Reformation, Wells wrote that, “The truth of the matter is that the fraying at the edges of the evangelical world has now turned into an unraveling at its center.” I believe that this could as easily be said about The New Perspective as Wells comment about open theism.

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In his commentary on Galatians, Luther wrote in his opening preface.

“Wherefore I do admonish you, especially such as shall become teachers and guiders of consciences, and also every one apart, that ye exercise yourselves continually by study, by reading, by meditation of the word, and by prayer, that in time of temptation ye may be able to instruct and comfort both your own consciences and others, and to bring them from the law to grace, from active and working righteousness, to the passive and received righteousness: and to conclude, “from Moses to Christ”.

I am not so sure that 21st century evangelical teachers would echo Luther’s admonition to teachers.

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Edmund Clowney wrote:  We misunderstand Paul if we separate in principle between the justification that is ours when we believe in Christ  and the justification to be pronounced in the day of judgment.”…Paul’s fervour for justification through Christ’s righteousness  and not our own is fervour for grace: jealousy for the love of God for the ungodly.”  [taken from Right with God, p.50., ed. D. A. Carson]

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