Why do I support Israel as a Christian?
A Thread
I support Israel as a nation because I support the Jewish people, the relatives of my Lord Jesus Christ.
1/20 First, I am an amillennialist. This has nothing to do with dispensationalism. My view of the post-biblical Jewish people is derived from Paul's teaching in Romans. Paul acknowledges the unfaithfulness of some Jews (3:3), but still says the election of God is not nullified. 2/20

A 🧵on How John Piper Totally Crushes Biblicism
('Providence', p. 16)

He notes that the word providence is not found in the Bible . . . and neither are the words Trinity, discipleship, evangelism, exposition, counselling, ethics, politics & charismatics. 1/5 He writes: "The Bible itself makes clear that it is not enough just to say the words of the Bible. The Bible mandates that all churches have teachers . . . The task of a teacher is not just to read the Bible to his hearers, but to explain it. 2/5

🧵Theology in the Dark Ages
I am not interested in debating atheists who deny God's existence. Nor am I interested in debating Marxists & Pomo's who deny that 2+2=4. I'm glad someone does that dreary work (see Ed Feser's, The Last Superstition), but I have other priorities. 1/5 I want to spend my remaining yrs thinking about the being of God & the implications of God being God for everything else that exists. This is not to snub anyone; it is just that I am done w. letting Western modernity set the agenda, define the questions & determine the rules. 2/5

🧵
Matthew Newkirk denies the trad. interp. of Ex 3:14 (which dominates the pre-Enlightenment tradition going all the way bk to the LXX). This sort of higher critical skepticism has penetrated deep into the heart of contemporary evangelical bib. studies.
crossway.org/articles/what-… He asks: "Would Israelites suffering under the weight of Egyptian oppression truly need to be informed of God’s ontological aseity? Does the flow of the narr. lead us to conclude that God would reveal this rather philosophical aspect of his identity at this particular juncture?"

It is hard to think of anything more pathetic & useless than pleading with the sexual revolutionaries for religious tolerance for trad. Christianity. They do not want our silence; they demand our conversion to their neo-pagan religion. This is clear in the J. Peterson case. 1/3 I entitled my piece "The Re-education of J. Peterson" b/c the Ont. College of Psychologists is not merely demanding that he be silent. That is what an authoritarian govt. would do. But they demand that he say he agrees with their revolutionary views. This is totalitarianism. 2/3

On Narratives of Decline:
I believe that Western culture is in terminal decline; modernity is a pathological condition.

But I know that many would disagree. Many would argue that the world has always been bad & there never was a 'golden age,' etc.
1/8 At a certain level of abstraction that is quite true. Sin has pervaded human hist. since the Fall; there was never a 'golden age' in which sin was not corrosive of human life. But I'm not suggesting the world in general is getting worse or better at that high abstract level. 2/8

We do not have complete religious liberty (RL). We never had it & we never will b/c it is logically impossible to have complete RL in any society. @andrewtwalk @tlloydcline

If Muslims had RL in Canada some of them would impose an Islamic theocracy by force.
1/4 The state says they can't do it & would fine, jail, expel, & if necessary kill them to prevent it. So it is not strictly true to say that mod. liberal democracies do not kill people for their rel. ISTM that in WWII we killed a lot of Nazis/Japanese for practicing their rel.
2/4

🧵
Contemplating God is the work of the theologian. It is worthwhile for its own sake because it fulfills our telos to gaze on our Creator.

However, like most intrinsic goods, it also has several important side-benefits that surround the central one like a halo:
1/4 1) The more we focus on God's goodness & beauty the less inclined we are to sin; thus we grow in SANCTIFICATION;

2) The more we focus on God's goodness & beauty the more we are enabled to speak of him in such a way as to edify the saints & inspire them to WORSHIP God;
2/4

Two Approaches to Theology: Revisionism v. Retrieval

Many Evangelicals today have become addicted to revisionism. They think that if they just concede a bit of ground here & there to modernity, then there can be a compromise. But by its very nature, revisionism never ends. 1/7 Once a negotiated settlement has been reached, there is always a new challenge to received orthodoxy. Revisionism seems less dangerous b/c of its incrementalism but actually this is its most dangerous feature. 2/7

1/4
What is Christian Platonism? (one more time!)
CP = the classical metaphysics of Plato & Aristotle as integrated into theology by Aug. & Aq. The Reformers presuppose it & Prot scholastics used it. So the Great Trad. goes fr the 2nd C (Justin Martyr) all the way to Turretin. 2/4
The Protestants who wrote the great confessions (incl. 39 Art, Augs, WCF, Savoy, 2LCF) all worked in the context of this trad. But the Enlightenment rejected CP & Liberal Prot's tried to revise doctrine to fit into the philosophical naturalism permitted by the Enlightenment.

It is now clear that Solzhenitsyn was right. When he came to the West he predicted that the soul-destroying totalitarianism he saw in the USSR would grow in the West. He was laughed at by the "smart people" & the events of 1979 were over-interpreted as the "end of history." 1/7 But Solzhenitsyn was right. He understood that the Gulag - like the Holocaust - resulted not from a technical error in getting the political system fine tuned perfectly. It was a spiritual flaw - a false view of the human person. Man is not a purely material being. 2/7

The problem with Evangelicalism is that it has been cut off from its historic roots in the post-Ref orthodoxy of the 16-18th Cen. It emerged out of Protestantism in the 1830's but has danced on the edge of sectarianism for its whole history. 1/x Apart from its roots in historic Protestantism - symbolized in the great confessions of the Reformation era - Evangelicalism is just an amorphous, culture-driven, overly-emotional, style of religion that ranges from orthodox to heretical & back again. 1/x

Observations on ETS 2021. These are not scientific, just my own impressions based on conversations, hearing papers, & reading the schedule.

Here are 5 up & coming theologians to keep an eye on:
1. Steve Duby
2. Adonis Vidu
3. Tyler Wittmann
4. D. Blair Smith
5. Glenn Butner Here are 4 "Godfathers" whose influence through their students/writings/example is massive:
1. Matthew Barrett
2. Scott Swain
3. Mike Allen
4. Fred Sanders

1/6. Before the "Enlightenment," Xian hermeneutics did not have a problem affirming both the literal (historical) sense & the spiritual sense. This is b/c of its biblical metaphysics which combines the duality of earthly & heavenly reality with a linear concept of history. 2/6. B. S. Childs mentions that the tendency to overstate the contrast bet. the Alexandrian tradition (esp. Origen), which stressed the Platonic contrast bet the earthly (carnal) & heavenly (spiritual) sense & the Antiochene tradition which stressed prophecy & fulfillment . . .

1/5. There is a tremendous amount of confusion surrounding the Xian doc of God today. As a result many people sincerely believe themselves to be Nicene Trinitarians but they are not actually Nicene. Some think that all one needs to do to be a Trinitarian is to believe that . . . 2/5. . . the Father, Son & Spirit are all divine. Everything else is details to be argued over. But if you said to Athanasius or Gregory Nazianzus, for example, that you are a Trinitarian & you believe in the deity of all 3 persons, he would not know if you were Nicene or not.

1/5. Eric Voegelin's preface to the 2nd ed. of his 1938 book, 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑃𝑜𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝑅𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑔𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠, contains a reply to critics who blamed him for not condemning the National Socialist regime more forcefully but maintaining an objective tone.

What a reply he gave! 2/5. He said that moral condemnations were fine, but they could obscure the real roots of Nazism: "𝐚 𝐝𝐞𝐞𝐩𝐞𝐫 & 𝐦𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐥 𝐢𝐬 𝐡𝐢𝐝𝐝𝐞𝐧 𝐛𝐞𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐧𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬." What did he mean?

1/8. John Bolt argues that Bavinck was alert to the danger of the idea of "worldview" becoming an ideology: "WV analysis becomes an ideology when it is used an an interpretive grid that excludes insights from other viewpoints b/c of religious disagreement. For eg, a Xian . . . 2/8. . . philosopher would then refuse to acknowledge 'truth' in a pagan (Greek) or mod secular thinker, strictly on the basis of a crucially diff starting pt. At that point WV practitioners would lose the ability to correct themselves & be corrected by others; they already . . .

"As the Biden administration advances a divisive and extreme social agenda, our response can’t simply be a polite request to be left alone. We need to oppose the left’s agenda on the merits." - Ryan T. Anderson

wsj.com/articles/relig… We need to understand that the leftist ideology of the Biden admin. does not have a basis for rel. liberty. Xianity does have a principled basis for respecting dissent, which is why is it compatible with liberal democracy. But leftist ideology is incompatible with lib. democracy.

1/6. A passage of Scrip. can have layers of meaning including a spiritual meaning that builds on & goes further than the literal, historical meaning.

This was commonly held by the mainstream of Xianity prior to the Enlightenment. I'm teaching Ps. 3 tomorrow & it is an example. 2/6. Augustine knows that the background of Ps. 3 is the rebellion against David by Absalom, his son. (See 2 Sam. 13-19) However, Augustine believes this Ps. can be interpreted Christologically as well. He sees Judas as Absalom & says:

1/8. In this article Michael Horton criticizes what he calls "Christian Americanism." He defines this as the ideal of a Xian nation other than the universal church & connects it to "saving faith as . . . legislated & enforced."
thegospelcoalition.org/article/cult-c… 2/8. His critique is very familiar to me, since I wrote a book on John Howard Yoder & I have read Stanley Hauerwas extensively. Their Anabaptist critique of "Christendom" as founded on coercion has apparently been embraced by Horton, as a Reformed theologian. This is pretty sig.

1/x. R. Scott Clark quotes me in this article as saying that some Baptists are functionally anabaptist. This is true, but it also should be pointed out that most Presbyterians in the US are as well. Confessional Protestantism is a minority.

heidelblog.net/2020/12/unders… 2/x. One issue Clark zeros in on in the 16th C. is that some anabaptists claimed to receive ongoing revelations fr the HS. The Reformers rightly rejected this & confessed Scrip. as the proper source of special rev. today. The YRR movement certainly was not clear enough on this.