Justin Taylor's Blog, page 264

Does Calvinism Make God a "Moral Monster"?

Michael Horton, author of the new book For Calvinism, responds to Roger Olson's charge that Calvinism's logical leads to God being a "moral monster" indistinguishable from the devil.

Any view that makes God the author of sin does indeed turn the object of our worship into a moral monster.

However, any deity who merely stands around reluctantly permitting horrible things for which he has no greater purpose in view, is equally reprehensible.

In the one, God is sovereign but not good; in the latter, God is neither.

Once you acknowledge that God foreknows a sinful act and chooses to allow it (however reluctantly) when he could have chosen not to, the only consolation is that God never would have allowed it unless he had already determined why he would permit it and how he has decided to overcome it for his glory and our good.

Mercifully, Scripture does reveal that God does exactly that. Roger agrees that God "chose to allow" suffering and sin (72). The Calvinist says that God chose to allow them for a reason. It's permitting rather than creating, but it's permission with a purpose. Permission without purpose makes God a "moral monster" indeed.

You can read the whole post here.

How God Defines Evil

Isaiah 55:1—

Come, everyone who thirsts,

come to the waters;

and he who has no money,

come, buy and eat!

John 7:37-38—

Jesus stood up and cried out, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'"

John 4:13-14—

Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

Jeremiah 2:13—

My people have committed two evils:

they have forsaken me,

the fountain of living waters,

and hewed out cisterns for themselves,

broken cisterns that can hold no water.

Just As I Am

Dads, Disabilities, and Doctrine

From Chris Nelson, talking to his young son Joe about his other son Andrew, who has very significant disabilities:

"Daddy?"

"Yeah, Joe?"

"Why did God make Andrew's brain work different?"

That profound question was lobbed my way by a four-year-old theologian who happens to be my middle son, as I sought to shake the cobwebs from my Monday-morning-mind while cleaning up the lower half of my 10-year-old son after a particularly explosive situation.

Joe is getting to the age where he understands that Andrew isn't like "normal" kids.  He's different.  God made him that way.  And God is good.  And Joe wants to know why God, a good God, made Andrew the way that He did.

"Well, Joe, the Bible teaches us that God chooses the foolish things of the world to shame the wise."

That's the first thought that popped into my mind.

"And I don't know all the answers, but sometimes God does things to teach us things about ourselves, to show us our sin."

Perhaps it was poetic that I was cleaning up feces at the time.

"What's sin?"

"Sin is when we do and think and say bad things.  Those things come out of the bad in our hearts.  Sin is always against God.  But you know what?  God loves us and sent Jesus to pay for our sin so we could be forgiven and we could be God's friend."

"Oh.  Daddy?"

"Yeah, Joe?"

"Do we have any yogurt?"

"Yeah, Joe."

May God keep raising up dads like this!

God. With. Us.

This spoken-word from the album Comfort & Joy is very much worth 5 minutes of your day.

The Morning I Heard the Voice of God

The beginning of a post from John Piper written a few years ago…

Let me tell you about a most wonderful experience I had early Monday morning, March 19, 2007, a little after six o'clock. God actually spoke to me. There is no doubt that it was God. I heard the words in my head just as clearly as when a memory of a conversation passes across your consciousness. The words were in English, but they had about them an absolutely self-authenticating ring of truth. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that God still speaks today.

I couldn't sleep for some reason. I was at Shalom House in northern Minnesota on a staff couples' retreat. It was about five thirty in the morning. I lay there wondering if I should get up or wait till I got sleepy again. In his mercy, God moved me out of bed. It was mostly dark, but I managed to find my clothing, got dressed, grabbed my briefcase, and slipped out of the room without waking up Noël. In the main room below, it was totally quiet. No one else seemed to be up. So I sat down on a couch in the corner to pray.

As I prayed and mused, suddenly it happened. God said, "Come and see what I have done." There was not the slightest doubt in my mind that these were the very words of God. In this very moment. At this very place in the twenty-first century, 2007, God was speaking to me with absolute authority and self-evidencing reality. I paused to let this sink in. There was a sweetness about it. Time seemed to matter little. God was near. He had me in his sights. He had something to say to me. When God draws near, hurry ceases. Time slows down.

I wondered what he meant by "come and see." Would he take me somewhere, like he did Paul into heaven to see what can't be spoken? Did "see" mean that I would have a vision of some great deed of God that no one has seen? I am not sure how much time elapsed between God's initial word, "Come and see what I have done," and his next words. It doesn't matter. I was being enveloped in the love of his personal communication. The God of the universe was speaking to me.

Then he said, as clearly as any words have ever come into my mind, "I am awesome in my deeds toward the children of man." My heart leaped up, "Yes, Lord! You are awesome in your deeds. Yes, to all men whether they see it or not. Yes! Now what will you show me?"

The words came again. Just as clear as before, but increasingly specific: "I turned the sea into dry land; they passed through the river on foot. There they rejoiced in me—who rules by my might forever." Suddenly I realized God was taking me back several thousand years to the time when he dried up the Red Sea and the Jordan River. I was being transported by his word back into history to those great deeds. This is what he meant by "come and see." He was transporting me back by his words to those two glorious deeds before the children of men. These were the "awesome deeds" he referred to. God himself was narrating the mighty works of God. He was doing it for me. He was doing it with words that were resounding in my own mind.

Keep reading. . . .

Folk Angel's New Christmas Album "Comfort & Joy"

"Folk Angel's latest album features 11 tracks of new arrangements of traditional Christmas carols.  Recorded at Catapult Studios, this album is Folk Angel's most mature work and features many of their friends from their artist community such as the Robbie Seay Band, Tedashii, Shane & Shane, Lauren Chandler, Michael Bleecker, Daniel Hall, and Jeff and Jourdan Johnson."

Hearing God's Whisper

Books like Dallas Willard's Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God and Bill Hybels's The Power of a Whisper: Hearing God, Having the Guts to Respond and Henry and Richard Blackaby's Hearing God's Voice continue to popularize the idea that a true relationship of intimacy with God requires ongoing private and personal revelations as a normative part of the Christian life.

In the latest issues of Greg Koukl—who is not a cessationist—looks carefully at the biblical texts offered in defense of this idea. He writes:

Virtually everyone seems to be "hearing from God" in some fashion these days—pastors, writers, worship leaders, even the regular folks at our weekly Bible studies—so the basic idea must be right.

But is it? Must I "hear the voice of God" in order to know what He wants from me. . .  Is this what Jesus meant by, "My sheep hear My voice," or what Paul meant by being "led by the Spirit"? And what if I hear nothing but silence when I listen? Does this say something about my spiritual well-being? Am I living a substandard Christian life if I don't have a hot-line to God? . . .

In my mind, there's only one way to address such questions. They cannot be answered by appealing to personal experiences, but only by appealing carefully to the text. What does Scripture teach.

See Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. You can access all of the issues .

How Does a Biblical-Theological Worldview Define Non-Christian Religions?

A very careful definition worthy of a lot of reflection:

Non-Christian religions are sovereignly directed, variegated and dynamic human idolatrous distortions of divine revelation behind which evidence demonic deception.

Being antithetically against yet practically dependent upon the truth of the Christian worldview, non-Christian religions are 'subversively fulfilled' in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

—Daniel Strange, "Perilous Exchange, Precious Good News: A Reformed 'Subversive Fulfillment' Interpretation of Other Religions," in Only One Way? Three Christian Responses on the Uniqueness of Christ in a Religiously Plural World, by Gavin D'Costa, Paul Knitter, Daniel Strange (SCM, 2011).

New Sojourn Christmas Album

A Child Is Born by Sojourn

You can also purchase it at Amazon.