Bully's Blog

Joe Rigney and Doug Wilson sit down to discuss the life, theology, and impact of Jonathan Edwards.

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“Survival is not the highest good.”

Doug Wilson tackles contrived ethical dilemmas in his review of The Hunger Games.
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“The abundant life is a life that is constantly being beheaded by the truth.”

Legalism and Leadership

“For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:20)

You may have had some experience with a “legalistic” church or Christian. We all know that a domineering leadership is a curse to the work of God, but so many people who make the decision to leave such ministries, or individuals, behind become “lawless” in their liberty. What’s really going on there, and what is the Bible’s solution for legalism?

[This post has been refined and included in Sweet Counsel: Essays to Brighten the Eyes.]
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Douglas Wilson writes:

“What is the meaning of ”one is taken and the other left’? This is commonly thought to refer to the rapture — one taken up into heaven, and the other left on earth to kick himself for not praying the sinner’s prayer when he had a chance. On the bright side, there will be a lot of free, unmanned cars available” (Heaven Misplaced, p. 104).

Matthew 24 is a prediction of the Covenant curses falling upon Judah for the last time. One being taken and the other left has to do with displacement. Titus enslaved the best Jews and took them in ships to Egypt.

“And the Lord will take you back to Egypt in ships, by the way of which I said to you, ‘You shall never see it again.’ And there you shall be offered for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.” (Deuteronomy 28:68)

It’s one thing to get the historical fulfilment correct, but there’s a whole lot more going on here. In His speech, as the fulfilment of Israel, Jesus is working through the Bible Matrix, a combination of the Creation week, the weekly and annual Feasts, and the process of Dominion. This means that He is using examples of all the previous historical Covenant structures to make His point. The Covenant cycle has snowballed through history and picked up a lot of events on its way.

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“Identify…”

Putting Your Water Where Your Mouth Is

Part 1 here.

Doug Wilson recently gave a good rundown on his own doctrinal journey over the years since he began pastoring. It’s well worth a read. But the thing that stuck in my mind was his reason for moving to the practice of paedobaptism. Since he had already become Reformed in his doctrine, another minister said he should “put his water where his mouth is.” I know it was a call to consistency, but to me it highlights how the conflation of the Covenant sign with parenting allows baptism to usurp the place of preaching. It’s putting water where your mouth ought to be.

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What worship does to the citadels of unbelief: Sneak Peek of Grace Agenda Conference DVD from Canon Wired on Vimeo.

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“Rend your heart, and not your garments.” – Joel 2:13

Doug Wilson writes:

True repentance is frequently expressed in a state of consternation. Repentance is not just a state of turning away from sin. It is what happens when someone is given a glimpse of what that sin is actually like. Repentance is not technically turning away from something that was technically wrong. Repentance is actually turning away, with revulsion, from something that is now seen in its true colors. This is why repentance is expressed in consternation.

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Douglas Wilson and Mark Driscoll whip up a feast for critical bloggers… great stuff.

Doug Wilson Interviews Mark Driscoll | Part II – Spiritual Gifts & Cessationism from Canon Wired on Vimeo.

“The ancient Hebrews had Ten Commandments, and one slim volume of commentary on those commandments. Go to the nearest law library and ask to see the regulations that you, enlightened modern man, live under. They will show you shelf after shelf of big fat books, and the incoming regulations will, on a daily basis, far surpass the Mosaic code in volume, and what they overdo in quantity they will make up for in pettiness, hubris, and incoherence” (Douglas Wilson, God Is: How Christianity Explains Everything, p. 46).

“…sprinkling or pouring conflates the Covenant head with the Covenant body.”

Doug Wilson writes:

“God, in baptizing the disciples with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, did so by pouring out His Spirit upon them. Pouring is therefore very clearly described as a biblical mode of baptism” (To a Thousand Generations, p. 102).

God poured out the Spirit, certainly. But can we then assume that the apostles poured water on new believers and their babies? Single words are clues, but they can be misleading. The effectiveness of word studies is limited because context is crucial. And the context of the Bible is most importantly structural. Structure is the answer.

The reason is that all of God’s new creations follow the structure of Genesis 1. It’s almost like, when God speaks, the Spirit will pick up anything available, anything lying around, and arrange it into the familiar pattern. This means that the Bible Matrix is crucial in identifying the meanings of many Bible symbols. Baptism and the Day of Atonement might not look anything like each other to us, but the Bible keeps tying them together, along with some other things, to tell us the same part of the Creation story. If we have eyes to see, this method also gives us hints as to the correct mode of baptism. It’s not about the motion of the water. It’s about the motion of the one being baptized. [1]

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