Posts

Showing posts from January, 2010

B.B. Warfield on how heresy happens

I was reading BB Warfield researching another topic. I came across a very good chapter that touches on apologetic method that is called "Heresy and Concession." (672, Selected Shorter ) It describes how the world comes at us very confident, never admitting its views are "opinion" or asking us to use the "touchstone" of the Word of God for input. Rather it calls its views scholarship, prestige, and right. But we must always be confident upon the Word of God. We must realize the definition of heresy that Warfield, that classic preacher and teacher, said: "the very essence of 'heresy' is that the modes of thought and tenets originating elsewhere than in the Scriptures of God are given decisive weight when they clash with the teachings of God's Word, and those are followed to the neglect or modification or rejection of these." (677, Selected Shorter ) He says that apologetics (defense of the faith) often takes the attitude that we "s

DA Carson's Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church

Well, I have pressed ahead through Carson's Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church. It is a worthwhile read. I highly recommend it. Basically what Carson does is bring biblical considerations to bear, biblical themes, that don't fit in the framework of the major "hard postmodernists" books or articles. If we are to take Scripture as our authority, then there has to be a change, we need to go with what God has revealed rather than culture. Carson is right. He approaches two authors, one major US postmodern-emergent author and one from the United Kingdom. And then examines their beliefs so as to show that they don't match major biblical themes. He then has sections of Scripture where he lists things like knowing and certainty from the Bible, and shows how overwhelming these ideas are. Scripture portrays us with the ability to know for certain on doctrines of Christian truth. Whereas some (some, not all!) authors in the emerging church tend to abandon absolute