- J.I.Packer on the Anglican Debate Over Homosexuality
- The Westminster Confession Of Faith And The Cessation Of Special Revelation
- The WCF And Exclusive Psalmody 1
- The WCF And Exclusive Psalmody 2
- Keeping Up Appearances – Piercing And Tattoos
- Is The Creation Of Human/Animal Hybrids Legitimate Or Ethical Science?
- Obama’s Reasons For Keeping Christian Ethics Out Of The Public Square
- If Aborted,They Call It A Foetus. If Wanted, she Becomes Australia's Smallest Baby.
Prominent Christian Theologian Dr. James Packer Speaks Out on Homosexuality
By Thaddeus M. Baklinski
VANCOUVER, July 21, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Dr. James Innell Packer, a noted Canadian theologian, author and a Board of Governors Professor of Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, as well as an executive editor of Christianity Today, recently addressed the contentious problem of homosexuality and same-sex unions in the Anglican church.
The Anglican Church has come to a cross-roads because of the issue of same-sex "marriage," with a massive split in the Global Communion looking increasingly inevitable. Dr. Packer opened his remarks with a statement explaining why this issue is of such great importance in the Anglican Church today. "In brief," he said, "because it involves the denial of something that's integral to the Christian Gospel."That is, whereas the Bible says that same-sex unions are off limits as far as God is concerned, and that the Gospel requires any who have been involved in them to repent of that involvement and to abandon it, this point of view against which we are standing, treats gay unions...as a form of holiness, and encourages, affirms and blesses them, rather than saying, as we believe the Gospel requires us to say, that this is the wrong track.""You are required to abandon it and we, in the Christian fellowship, will help you to…walk chaste, not yield to your besetting temptations," he continued. "And that is God's way for you. We are obliged by the Gospel to say that because the apostle Paul, proclaiming the Gospel to the Corinthians, says explicitly that they mustn't be deceived…and those living in homosexual relationships will not inherit the Kingdom of God.""In other words, they don't qualify for Christ's salvation in terms of the Gospel that God has revealed."
Dr. Packer asserted that the blessing of same-sex unions is a direct contradiction of Scripture and there can be no compromise on the issue. "The Scripture teaching that is being denied is an element of the Gospel itself, that is God's message about how we sinners can be saved. If you refuse to repent, at some point where the Gospel requires you to repent, well, you are not walking according to the Gospel, and what Paul says is that your soul is in danger.""Now I don't want to believe that, but I dare not disbelieve it - it's apostolic teaching, it's the word of God."
The misinterpretation of Scripture to suit the homosexual position is in fact a direct attack on God's "straight forward" use of the language in the Bible, he said, which is directed toward giving us an understanding of salvation. Dr. Packer explained that "the folk who are affirming gay sex as a form of holiness are understanding the Bible in a very different way from that in which the rest of us think that it asks to be understood."
"God uses language to tell us things, and the Bible is the language that he's used. The Bible is personal communication from the Creator to us creatures, and in personal communication you speak and write to be understood. You don't communicate in code; you don't say one thing in a way which is intended to be understood as meaning its opposite."
"God is, we believe, straight forward; the Bible, in that sense, is straight forward, and Paul in 1st Corinthians is straight forward.""The heart of the Christian message," Dr. Packer concludes, "is the transformation of lifestyle," which is enabled by the grace of God.
Dr. Packer is widely regarded as one of the most important Protestant theologians today. He has stated that the Anglican Church of Canada has been "poisoned" by a liberal theology that "knows nothing of a God who uses [the Bible] to tell us things and knows nothing of sin in the heart and in the head." He said the Church is being ruined by its attempts to "play catch-up with the culture" by adopting whatever "is the in-thing."
Sermon: Where The Lord Is To Be Found
Daily Devotions: July 20 to July 26
UN Human Rights Council Elections: Islamic States Increase chokehold .
May 21, 2008: At the General Assembly's UN Human Rights Council elections, held in New York, Islamic states increased their numbers and the number of democracies decreased. Foxes still minding the chicken coop. www.eyeontheun.org - click on picture to right to activate video. top
Daily Devotions May 25th - May 31st
Now That British Politicians Have Approved The Creation Of Chimeras, or a Frankenstein, We must Continue To Ask -
Is the Creation of Human/Animal Hybrids Legitimate or Ethical Science?
Garnet Milne
The British Parliament has just decided that it will permit the creation of a hybrid embryo either by mixing animal sperm with human eggs or human sperm with animal eggs. They have already approved a process where other human genetic material is injected into animal eggs to make hybrid cells, with the proviso that the living material must be destroyed at 14 days. They were created by injecting DNA from human skin cells into eggs taken from cows which had almost all their genetic material removed. Moreover, already scientists in different countries have fused rabbit and human cells, made human blood flow through pigs and are planning to grow human brains in mice. British scientists want to use the hybridizing techniques so that they can produce embryonic stem cells in order to discover causes and cures of diseases such as motor neurone disease, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.
How are we as Christians to evaluate these processes and technologies? Does the manufacture of animal/human hybrids or living hybrid cells or embryos offend against the Law of God?...MORE.top.
Obama seeks to move the US into a post-Christian nightmare where the values of atheists and idolaters hold sway: Or Obama’s reasons for keeping Christian ethics out of the public square
Garnet Milne PhD
The Muslim terrorists who drove airliners into the twin towers in New York managed to kill several thousand, maim many others and create fear among the general population in the US. Obviously this audacious terrorist act of evil was devastating. Nonetheless, the terrorists who planned and executed this mayhem could have achieved a far greater ‘victory’ for their cause had they done something more cerebral and more profound. Had they sought to argue for an Islamic morality in a peaceful manner, they might have conceivably been successful in changing the thinking of many Americans about ultimate issues such as the identity of God and the source of morality - they could have exceeded their wildest dreams and begun to take over a nation for their false god Allah.
While military might has often been used to defeat an ideological enemy, true victory only occurs when a population agrees with its (former) enemies because there has been a fundamental shift in the moral and philosophical mindset. You have to win hearts and minds as well as real estate.
9/11 achieved the opposite for the terrorists. They only managed to mobilise a good part of the free world against their cause, making their safe house of Afghanistan no longer safe. But what 9/11 could never achieve may be accomplished by the fresh-faced black senator Barack Hussein Obama.
Although many Americans do not realise it, Obama and his closest advisors are intent on shifting the underlying mindset or ethos of the US majority to a radically different ideology of secularism sanitised by vaguely religious rhetoric. And he plans to expunge Christian and biblical discourse from the public square unless it happens to coincide with the morality of non-Christian idolaters and atheists. Whatever his speech may appear to offer Christians with one hand, he takes it away with another.
Obama exposes his true motives in a speech he gave to the Renewal Conference on Wednesday, June 28, 2006, where he revealed his true intentions for the US, and if it was in his power, for the rest of the world. For this reason his election to the office of president must be opposed by every legal device possible. Well, what did he say at this conference in a speech ostensibly about the relationship between politics and religion – specifically American politics and Christianity?
In this speech Obama deliberately brings confusion to the idea that God has spoken concerning both public and private morality....MORE...top. Or follow this link for a MS Word copy.
How The Westminster Assembly Taught In Their Confession Of Faith That Only The Biblical Psalms Could Be Sung In Worship.
Essay 2 – Exclusive Psalmody, The Default Practice And The Position Of The Early English Puritans
The recovery of congregational singing only occurred at the time of the sixteenth-century Reformation, even though there were those, such as the Swiss Reformer Zwingli, who did not agree with sung praise in worship. And it was only after Calvin arrived, that congregational singing was included as part of public worship in Geneva on the Lord’s Day. Calvin had also accepted a call to serve a French congregation in Strasbourg (or Strassburg) in 1538. A liturgy ascribed to Calvin appeared first in 1540 which including the singing of the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed and the Song of Simeon. Calvin returned to Geneva in 1541 where he introduced the Strasbourg liturgy for the end of a communion service but without reference to the Song of Simeon.1 We can say that there was a movement towards exclusive psalmody, but not quite arriving there. However, in order to understand developments in England and Scotland we cannot ignore two streams of thinking within the Protestant communities of Marian exiles in the sixteenth century.
Two Streams
The English/Scottish exile communities at Strasbourg and Geneva (although the exiles at Wessel and other centres made a contribution) were to be the greatest influence for later English and Scottish congregational singing. The British practise of congregational singing, therefore, cannot be understood without some insight into a dispute which occurred within an English exile congregation in Frankfurt. The Frankfurt congregation was established in 1554 at the time of Queen Mary, the persecuting Roman Catholic queen who had taken over the throne of England following the death of Edward VI in 1553. Her desire was to return back to the religious status quo at the beginning of Henry VIII’s reign and place England once more under the authority of the pope....MORE...top
1. Robin A. Leaver, ‘Goostly psalms and spirituall songes’, English and Dutch Metrical Psalms from Coverdale to Utenhove, 1535-1566 (London: Clarendon Press, 1991), 46-47.
How The Westminster Assembly Taught In Their Confession Of Faith That Only The Biblical Psalms Could Be Sung In Worship.
Essay 1 - An Introduction To The Debate
It would probably come as a shock to many Presbyterian elders and ministers to hear that their subscription to the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) required them to uphold the practice of exclusive psalmody. WCF 21:5 lists one element of public worship as the ‘singing of Psalms with grace in the heart’.
A complete study has never been attempted of the Westminster Standards and the views of their authors over the identity of ‘Psalms’ these standards instruct us are to be sung in worship. While many contemporary Presbyterian or Reformed churches have rejected the teaching of the Westminster Standards at various points, making such precise questions irrelevant in their eyes, those remaining churches which have wanted to maintain the view that they really are the heirs of the English Presbyterian Puritans, or the Scottish Presbyterians have not uncommonly sanitised the WCF and other Reformed standards to ease their consciences over subscription. Removing references to the pope as antichrist is one example, but many modern Presbyterians do not only differ with the Westminster eschatology. They have also modified their worship practices in a manner which would leave them unrecognisable to the Reformed orthodox of a more consistent age.
When this modification has taken place in subscriptionist churches, such denominations have not necessarily seen fit to add a declaratory act to their subscription standards, or change the WCF to fit their beliefs. Instead, they have argued that the WCF or other subordinate standards allow more than one interpretation. Alternatively they might contend that where the WCF is silent on a matter, other practices are not ipso facto excluded. For example, because Christmas and Easter are not specifically mentioned in the WCF, some would argue that it is therefore lawful to celebrate those feast days. Another example might be that since musical instruments are not discussed, it is not, therefore, contrary to the Confession of Faith to use such instruments in public worship. Thus it is not considered inconsistent to claim a strict subscription to the Westminster Standards while observing feast days, using musical instruments, performing dance and drama, or singing uninspired hymns in public worship. This new attitude towards subscription and the Westminster Standards, however, must be challenged, because it is a departure from the attainments of the Second Reformation and a dishonest interpretation of the intentions of the Westminster divines who composed these documents of uniformity – a uniformity which they had hoped would usher in a more pure Reformation even beyond the shores of the British Isles.
This series of essays will make the case from primary and secondary sources: Why Full Subscription To The Westminster Confession Requires A Commitment To Exclusive Psalmody: Or How The Westminster Assembly Taught In Their Confession Of Faith That Only The Biblical Psalms Could Be Sung In Worship....MORE...top.
(If you wish to be notified as each essay becomes available please send me a note with your email address included here.)
Garnet Milne
Keeping Up Appearances – Piercing And Tattoos
We live in a society, where many former taboos have become acceptable. It has long been chic to be a social iconoclast. It is uncool to be decent and cool to be indecent. What was once evil is now good (Isaiah 5:20).
When it comes to specifics like appearance, standards and values have indeed changed. Growing up in the fifties and sixties, you will recall that male students were expelled from school if they failed to cut their hair to the required length. How times have changed, although hair length has always been the subject of fluctuation. But times have changed in church life as well. Few young men wear a tie these days, and often instead wear casual clothing, which once would not have been considered acceptable in church.
I'm sure that there are some reading this who lament this change, as indeed I do. I think, however, that we can agree that it is very unlikely that most of the younger generation will begin to wear suits and ties again. Some people don't even own one. And it is also true that ‘best clothes’ for the younger generation are now something other than a pin-striped suit. For some, I know, if a suit is required as part of one's employment, it is seen by them as a uniform, say like that of a policeman or a bus driver. If you remember back to the fifties and early sixties families would go uptown on Friday night and dad would wear his suit and probably a hat as well. There were also recognisable occasions when you donned your suit. You probably only had one and it was definitely your best clothing. Today it is so different.
Should there be standards of appearance?
But this raises the question, are there to be any standards concerning appearance for the Christian? I want to suggest that not only are there such standards, but that our standards are slipping. There are two areas of appearance that we will briefly look at – tattoos and body piercing.... MORE...top.
The Westminster Confession of Faith and the Cessation of Special Revelation - The
Majority Puritan Viewpoint on Whether Extra-biblical Prophecy is Still Possible.
By Garnet Howard Milne (Published by Paternoster in Bletchley, Milton Keynes UK, 2007)When the seventeenth-century English Puritan-dominated parliament became embroiled in a conflict with Charles I, the members of the Long Parliament sought military assistance from the Scots. The Scots, however, also desired to see a united Reformation of church and society and proposed a covenant to institute a greater religious uniformity in the three kingdoms. The English parliament established the Westminster Assembly to prepare the documents for that uniformity. One of those documents, the Westminster Confession of Faith, addressed the major theological disputes of the day; one of which centred on whether God still revealed His will outside of the Bible. The book concludes that the Westminster divines believed that God still directed people in all of life, though revelation which came immediately from God had ceased now that the church had the completed Scriptures.
In the opening chapter of the Confession, the divines of Westminster included a clause which implied that there would no longer be any special immediate revelation from God. Means by which God had once communicated the divine will, such as dreams, visions, and the miraculous gifts of the Spirit, were said to be no longer available. However, many of the authors of the WCF accepted that 'prophecy' continued in their time, and a number of them apparently believed that disclosure of God's will through dreams, visions, and angelic communication remained possible. How is the 'cessationist' clause of WCF l:l to be read in the light of these claims? This book reconciles this paradox in a detailed study of the writings of the authors of the Westminster Confession of Faith.
What Others Think
'Garnet Milne presents us with a much-needed study... He builds his case by presenting judicious and thorough evidence from a large number of both primary and secondary sources. It is a fascinating and groundbreaking book ...and clarifies a remarkable amount of profound, theological detail.'
Joel R. Beeke, from the Foreword - President and Professor of Systematic Theology, Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA'Connecting the past to the present is always a difficult but necessary task for the responsible Christian theologian. Dr Milne's work is a good example of how modern questions can be sensitively engaged in a manner which gives due respect to the great formulations of the past without either imposing Procrustean criteria on such historic discussions or simply historicising such to the point of irrelevance.'
Carl R. Trueman, Professor of Church History and Historical Theology, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, USA'Scholars in puritan studies are increasingly alert to the variety of the movement's theology and spirituality. Garnet Milne's carefully-argued conclusions will provide a major resource for the reassessment of the most critical of puritan doctrines - the sufficiency of Scripture.'
Crawford Gribben, Long Room Hub Senior Lecturer in Early Modern Print Studies, Trinity College, DublinFor different purchase options email me at the contact box in the left hand nav bar....top
If Aborted,They Call It A Foetus. If Wanted, It Becomes Australia's Smallest Baby.
Women receive abortions in New Zealand into the third trimester. Little babies have to be killed in a brutal and callous manner. But the abortionist and the present government and the vast majority of our other politicians and media claim that this 'foetus' even into the third trimester is not a human being. However, when a baby in its second trimester with 16 weeks before full term is born alive as this little baby was, it is graphic evidence that a baby is a human being. This little cutey can fit into her mother's hand. Born in January weighing 319 grams Elora De Bondi defied the pessimism of the doctors and nurses and lived to prove that not only is an unborn child of 24 weeks a real human being, but is also perfectly formed and ready for life...MORE..top.
