News of the inevitable

I think it was about fifteen years ago I read a throwaway line from James Jordan, something to the effect of "Does anyone really think the speed of light is an absolute?" It stuck with me, and now has been vindicated, at least apparently, by the CERN lab in Switzerland.

It's not that I have any beef against Einstein: to the extent I understand his physics (and once math is involved, I understand very little of anything), they seem a useful model for the universe in which we live. The fact I see Einstenian physics as a model, though, reveals my real beef, which is against those in the hard sciences who tend to treat their models and theories as something more final and definite, who think they are able to speak on moral and metaphysical questions on the basis of scientific research. If verified, the lasting value of the CERN laboratory results will be to remind us that all scientific models and theories, because falsifiable, are at best provisional: they stand until a contrary data point is discovered, and they are useful only so far as they are useful. And when it comes to judging the ultimate questions of human existence, which are not material but metaphysical, they are of very limited utility indeed.

Perhaps that's the sort of attitude one might expect from a pastor, who deals in final answers to metaphysical questions, answers which are in a strict sense falsifiable but in fact cannot be falsified because no contrary data points exist. However, I think my attitude is not the result of a parochial superiority complex, but instead has to do with the natures of our respective fields. Scientists are human beings attempting to describe the world around them. Preachers are human beings who declare God's description of the world he has created on the basis of what God has already and authoritatively declared in the Bible. That declaration is complete, and unlike scientific models and theories, shall never change.

The pleasures & pains of coffee

Balzac got it right, and tells you how you can too.

Now hanging in faculty lounges everywhere

And let's take a moment to salute Rick Detorie. "One Big Happy" probably won't go into eternal reruns when he dies, but while he's with us, it's a reliably upbeat strip which consistently delivers well-crafted gags. In a time like ours when newspaper editors quickly jettison solid and insightful writing in favor of predictable, cheap, and workshop-produced dreck, "One Big Happy" is a bright spot on the ever-shrinking funny pages.

The structure of Proverbs 17:26-18:3

Surprisingly enough, it's a chiasm.

A: an unjust society (17:26)

   B: how to prevent folly (17:27-28)

   B': how to cultivate folly (18:1-2)

A': a just society (18:3)

Interestingly, each verse in this text is synthetic (i.e., the second line repeats or emphasizes the point made in the first line), but the chiastic pairs are antithetic (i.e., one element contrasts with the other).

John MacArthur vs. the spirits of the Reformation

John MacArthur recently created a small kerfuffle in the Christian corner of the blogosphere with a series of posts admonishing the "Young, Restless, Reformed" crowd for what he perceives as immaturities on their part. Let us first take a moment to ask why a baptist who holds to a dispensational eschatology thinks he is any kind of an authority on what it means to be reformed. Sadly, in the parlance of the broader evangelical community, "reformed" has come to mean merely "believing God is sovereign in salvation." This is sad because at the time of the Protestant Reformation, "believing God is sovereign in salvation" only earned one the label "not a damned heretic." The most cursory glance at the classic Reformed Confessions (the Westminster Standards, the Second Helvetic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession, the Canons of Dordt, et al, etc.) would indicate "reformed," properly understood, is a label which includes a great number of things, among which, not incidentally, are the baptizing of the children of Christian parents and not holding to a dispensational eschatology.

When not-damned-heretics such as John MacArthur take upon themselves the label "reformed," they inevitably end up constraining the reformed aspects of their thinking by the baptistic ones. This is evidenced in MacArthur's post "Beer, Bohemianism, and True Christian Liberty."Actually, I sympathize with MacArthur to the extent he is put off by the desperate need of certain young evangelicals to appear hip. While at the moment that need is manifested by beer snobbery, it has existed amongst evangelicals since the founding of the American Republic, and in previous generations spawned the megachurch and, horror of horrors, the aesthetic abomination of "contemporary Christian music."

But as is almost inevitable amongst baptists who prefer abstinence, MacArthur ends up condemning our Lord himself. MacArthur writes, "It is puerile and irresponsible for any pastor to encourage the recreational use of intoxicants—especially in church-sponsored activities." (I'll not comment on that dash.) Consider the implications of MacArthur's statement in light of John 2:9-11.

When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.

If John MacArthur, rather than the beloved disciple, had written the Fourth Gospel, no doubt the interpretation of Jesus' decision to give as his first sign an encouragement to use intoxicants recreationally would have been quite different.

I can't stop John MacArthur or the young turks who've been irritating both him and me from using the label "reformed," as the First Amendment still is in force in these United States (for the time being). I can continue to wish, though, that both he and they would become truly reformed and seek to conform their doctrine and practice to the plain teaching of Scripture, rather than adding to, and ultimately contradicting, God's Word.

By way of counterpoint, consider Pa Curmudgeon, pointing out what they're serving at the house of John Knox, a bona fide Reformer.

Insert clichéd lawyer joke here

From Cardiff, Wales, courtesy of Pa Curmudgeon.