Scientism

[From an email...]

I may have mentioned this before, but this is something that is good to know and to remember:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism

What atheists are doing these days is not recognizing that science has boundaries and is not able to speak on things outside its boundaries. The definitions in that Wikipedia article are good, but you have to read them carefully to see what they are saying.

Basically scientism is a *belief*, like a religious belief, and it puts science as the ultimate authority in all matters of enquiry including faith or anything metaphysical. This is not the role of science, and science is incapable of such a role.

Also, scientism is a *border crossing* violation in the sense of "any attempt to claim science as the only or primary source of human values (a traditional domain of ethics) or as the source of meaning and purpose (a traditional domain of religion and related worldviews)."

Also, labeling what atheists like Richard Dawkins believes as scientism "is used to criticize a totalizing view of science as if it were capable of describing all reality and knowledge, or as if it were the only true way to acquire knowledge about reality and the nature of things"

"In essence, scientism sees science as the absolute and only justifiable access to the truth."

Biological determinism is similar. I.e. saying faith is merely a function of a certain part of the physical brain, the same with love or whatever.

You can see the shallowness of this view. Inspiration becomes non-existent. These are the same people in academia who consider any classic work of literature to be a fraud and no better than a modern day romance novel or whatever.

Why are these shallow people on the march with such zeal these days? End times phenomena. The village idiots are inspired by the spirit of the devil to assert themselves... /ct

Another 'family time at the church building' place

Look at this:

http://www.redeemerchurch.ca/

Another 'church' that is nothing more than Village of Morality 'family time' worldly correctness. Look at the suits and ties. The 'See? I have a wife and a child, thus I'm a correct Christian-person!'

The faith isn't about family. It's not about dressing like you work at a Ross Perot company. "My people only wear white shirts and ties, and if they don't like it they can work somewhere else. It was good enough for me at IBM, and it's good enough for them. Now..."

For real Christians today a good bookstore is the only thing that comes close to a real sanctuary from the world.

Walking into a church like the one above is like walking into your neighbor's family reunion. You're not one of them, and they don't even like each other. Though they will show 'some degree' of cohesion in silently accusing you of being a child molester or - worse - one of those regenerated by the Word and the Spirit Christians.

"My God, how weird that person seems. Like he is separated out from the world. Why would he think to show up here? Why would he think he's one of us? Let's give him the silent treatment, and if he stays around too long I have a brother-in-law who is on the police force, and I can call him and have him do a check on him. He'll just have to be escorted out of the building first. Everybody keep an eye on the kids."

Was that 'seperated out from the world' person Jesus Christ? Close; a follower of Jesus Christ, who is experiencing what Jesus experienced.

______

A note on 'sermonizing'... Notice how these 'pastors' speak from their pulpits. Prepared texts giving their audience nothing more than they could get more practically and effectively from a chapter in good book on doctrine. As a Christian if you can't *speak from understanding*, with no prepared script, you shouldn't be speaking at all. When you speak from understanding you not only are speaking from understanding but you are connecting with the audience in a real way. You are delivering understanding to the audience in a direct way. An intangible give-and-take connected way that doesn't occur - can't occur - when you are reciting a prepared text like some honor student performing for your teachers and parents.

Why isn't what I write common knowledge? It's not exactly rare knowledge. It's because the world and the flesh, and the devil own everything involved with Christianity. It's all been turned into Churchianity. (Churchianity is a term I came across in the 1980s from a backwoods preacher from Arkansas, but I see it finding its way into the vocabulary of mainstream types who use it not knowing its meaning, or intentionally using it in a way different from its intended meaning. The world at work again.)

You're not a regenerated Christian if you're accepted by *any* worldly group, folks. That is the hard reality of the faith. Regenerated Christians are *awake* in the world. Awake *to* the world. Not sleeping drones going through the motions the world approves of. Regeneration itself makes you an enemy of the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Terminal knowledge of the truth

1Ti 2:4 Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.

2Ti 3:7 Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

When I listen to liberal Christians and atheists and academic Reformed Christians they all have one thing in common: an inability - or outright refusal - to come to a terminal point regarding knowledge of the truth.

They want to babble vainly day in and day out. They don't value the basics, and the basic are everything regarding the faith. It's like, for them, the basics are something to brush aside so that one can then get to the most 'interesting' aspects of the faith, which turn out to always be their own notions and demands and word games put on endless show.

This is why I often write down a short, balanced list of simple, plain books that for me sum up the faith. A list like this:

Holy Bible, AV1611
Human Nature in its Fourfold State - Boston
Pilgrim's Progress - Bunyan
Manual of Christian Doctrine - Berkhof

This list is balanced in this way: Obviously it includes the Word of God; then a history of redemption (the Boston work), a systematic theology (Berkhof), and an imaginative work that gives visual doctrine (Bunyan), which also is a work on spiritual warfare.

I didn't include Calvin simply because he is dogmatic on the subjects of so-called 'sacraments' and church polity, something the Word of God is not dogmatic on and hence *intentionally not dogmatic on* (dogmatic in the sense of presenting a clear, one approach fits all eras of the history of redemption or all stages of individual Christian development). The devil loves those two subjects. It gives his ministers a wedge to enter churches and keep Christians in the darkness and bondage of the *fear and reverence of man* (i.e. they exalt ritual and man over the Word and the Spirit).

The Boston work is free of those two subjects, even if Boston wasn't himself; and the Berkhof volume is interestingly not dogmatic on the subjects. He is more so in his large Systematic Theology. But it doesn't matter what these people think, the Bible is not dogmatic on the two subjects, and that's all that matters.

The hatred of any notion (which is all they can have) of *regeneration* is also something shared by liberal Christians, atheists, and academic Reformed Christians.

I actually consider all Christians to be 'liberal' if they don't hold to Federal Theology (five solas, doctrines of grace, classical Covenant of Redemption, Works, and Grace theology) and the received Word of God rather than the constructed Word of God (actually word of man) liberal scholars have made the norm to an unsuspecting world. I.e., if you're liberal on the Word of God it doesn't matter if you hold to the five solas and doctrines of grace: you are a liberal. You have yet to humble yourself to the Word of God and the Holy Spirit. You are unbroken. You are telling God that He and His Word need you more than you need God and His Word.

With these simple, plain works you will be mocked as 'unwashed' and 'uneducated' and not 'sophisticated', but you will have a terminal degree of knowledge and understanding of the faith.

__________________
Postscript: I'd also put a word in for The Pearl of Christian Comfort by Dathenus, a 16th century work on law and gospel that is simple and plain and on-the-mark on that important and often difficult subject.

Religious affections

[Below is an email I wrote to a group of people involved in 'Work', or Fourth Way ideas, practices, and goals... (Ouspensky, Nicoll, etc.)]

This may seem like my 'inside baseball' involvement with seminary types on the internet, but it's interesting from a Work perspective.

There is a glimmer of a movement within Reformed Christianity to oust Jonathan Edwards from the canon (basically) because he is too 'embarrassing' (my word) in talking about emotions (affections) in religious experience and so on.

One professor has coined QIRE (quest for illegitimate religious experience) and thus puts anything and everything he can't understand or hasn't experienced under this dire acronym, and he apparently speaks for the 'mainstream' of Reformed, seminary-educated types.

This professor has rightfully been accused by some of his peers, though, as being a deist and engaging in 'dead orthodoxy', but he seems to be pretty hardened against such constructive hints and plows forward.

What caught my attention is this passage from Jonathan Edwards' Religious Affections (to a person who knows the Work, he is talking about higher centers) -

http://heidelblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/21/heidelcast-21-feb-2010-ecstasy-is-not-christianity/#comment-16700

That's a comment in a thread, and the link should take you directly to it, I hope.

This is something that nags at me, and something I observe in others who are not at the most innocent - or crowd-influenced - level of the faith: not feeling the strong spiritual affections such as joy and sacrifice and zeal and love that Jonathan Edwards is talking about in that passage. Also, not feeling anything unusual for the Person of Jesus Christ. The latter just seems strange because we don't like to idolize humans (and Jesus was human, the God-man), and it's difficult to separate sexual things and context out from having a rapturous love for a human.

I think the rapturous love for Jesus Himself may be a bit of the fake kind of piety. Wriggling out of my fallen state I can work up an obvious total respect and gratitude for Jesus, and reliance on him, but He is God, so...it has to be sort of "duh" (and I don't say that in a flippant or disrespectful way, just, He is my King and Saviour and Lord and Mediator and God Himself; yet I'll say in times of peril or struggle or suffering the *connection* to Jesus via the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, will induce inner emotional and psychological phenomena stronger than what we experience in our everyday mundane existence)... As for the other affections in general I have to see those in the context of higher centers (Work language) which obviously some Christians have been given access to in unusual times and circumstances, and if we are to be able to experience them we need a development and change of being to have access to something we don't have access to now.

Read the passage linked and see what I mean. Edwards' book Religious Affections is considered one of the central, great classics of theology, by the way. Don't know why I've never looked into it. /ct

I found a gem of a book

[below is an email]

I came across a really unusual book this evening in a Barnes and Noble store. It was published last Sept. (2009). It's called:

Shakespeare's Sonnets and the Bible

by Ira B. Zinman

It's very simply arranged. Every sonnet of Shakespeare is dealt with, in a quick and to-the-point manner. The author presents the sonnet itself, then states its theme, then gives a quick commentary for each quatrain (3 quatrains in each sonnet of course) and then one for the concluding couplet.

Then a more involved commentary follows discussing more in depth the biblical theme(s) of the sonnet. Then biblical passages that parallel the sonnet are presented.

What is striking is the very fact that these sonnets are biblical through and through. Like one sonnet is actually directed to the Holy Spirit rather than the other speculations by critics like the 'dark lady.'

The author uses the King James translation too, fortunately.

Fortunately you can read a few of the treatments from this site.

Read the page, then scroll down to the bottom and see a list of PDFs. You have to click on the check mark(s) to get the PDFs (it's kind of awkward to find the links).

I havn't read the book, obviously since I just acquired it, and my enthusiasm may be diminished when I actually look into it, but at this point it just seems remarkable. For one thing, Shakespeare's sonnets have always presented a strange impression. One never quite knew what to make of them. Having this key opens them up. Strange it isn't common knowledge. Goes to show how literary critics will see anything other than biblical truth in non-biblical authors and writings.

What is the center-of-gravity of the Christian experience?

What is the center-of-gravity of the Christian experience?

This is a great unasked, un-thought-about question.

For most it is unconsciously taken for granted that 'church' is the center-of-gravity of the Christian experience.

For the unregenerate this is probably true.

But for the regenerate?

For the regenerate spiritual warfare is the center-of-gravity of the Christian experience.

With regeneration comes battle (and you don't even have to seek it). The three-front war with our 1) inner 'Old Man' (i.e. the flesh), 2) the world, and 3) the devil.

The world and the devil notice you and confront you once you are regenerated by the Word and the Spirit.

And your inner Old Man (all the features of your fallen nature) fights you for its very survival.

Before regeneration you are a tame slave in the devil's kingdom. You are going with the flow. Swimming with the currents of the world. And if you are an unregenerate self-identified Christian you are justifying your going with the flow in a thousand different ways. You stay snug and smug - and dead asleep - in Bunyan's Village of Morality. And the devil grins and leaves you alone because you are not a threat to him or his kingdom. The world as well has no problem with you because you are staying in your place. And the features of your Old Man (fallen nature) are being given free reign to rule you internally, as you sleep and imagine you are a follower of Christ.

This is not the experience of Christians who have been, despite themselves, regenerated by the Word and the Spirit.

Regenerated Christians find themselves on the spiritual battlefield. They find themselves in the midst of spiritual warfare. Internal and external.

This - spiritual warfare - is the true center-of-gravity of the Christian experience.

Spiritual warfare is what unites Christians who have been regenerated by the Word and the Spirit.

Notice spiritual warfare is not a subject talked about by the 'church' Christians. Seminaries don't teach it. Books are not written by their professors and teachers on it. Only the Puritans and the mystics knew the subject and valued it enough to write on it.

There is no mention of church and 'sacraments' in Ephesian 6:10-18. The armor of God is not a wafer and some grape juice (or whatever). The armor of God does not include a cleric sprinkling 'special water' on you. The armor of God does not include listening to a 'sermon.'

Real Christians are on the battlefield.

And like soldiers in flesh and blood wars they are of varying degrees adept in the battle. They are of varying degrees equipped in the battle. They are of varying degrees disciplined in the battle. They are of varying degrees awake in the battle.

Spiritual warfare is the center-of-gravity of the Christian experience.


* * *

"What? You're saying there are Christians in churches who aren't regenerate?"

Yes. It's, well, rather obvious. When you don't value the Word of God; when you are continually learning, arguing (babbling) and never able to (never want to) come to understanding of the truth; when you mock true believers, when you mock spiritual warfare, when you mock the very fact of regeneration by the Word and the Spirit; when you exalt inane 'sacraments' (clerical ritual) over the Word and the Spirit; you are not regenerate.

Of course they take great offense at being told this (who cares?). Of course it's considered some kind of big crime to even bring the subject up (God doesn't consider it so). To [heck] with them. They're dead people walking, and they want you *right there with them*, dead asleep, tame, and obedient in the devil's kingdom.