biblicalthought.com

One of our readers, Travis, sent me an email with an excellent question.  We are delighted to hear from Christians of all ages that strive for excellence rather than settling for mediocrity.  Travis has granted permission to post part of his email here and looks forward to the response of the biblicalthought.com community.  Here’s part of his email:

“Stephen,   I have been reading and listening to Dr. Bob for about 2
years now, and it’s been awesome. I am going to Iraq in a month and
one thing I have never learned is how to be disciplined in reading
and writing a paper of what I have read. I will have a lot of free
time at nights and want some good books to read and not only read but
report on, I cant afford the classes or I would buy the CBUS classes,
but even if I did buy the classes what does Dr. Bob or yourself
expect when taking a course or reading a book..   Sorry if this
sounds confusing, (LA unified school district) but I really want to
learn more.”

Travis plans on writing a paper on the emergent church’s view of Hell before he leaves for Iraq.  I will offer one response of my own and then quote from Dr. Morey on book reviews.  Then, I would like as many comments to this post from everyone (that includes you!) so that Travis can have a pretty good idea how God is working in other people’s lives as well.

Prayer – When I began reading Justification and Variegated Nomism Vol. 1, I realized that much of the content was upper echelon academic essays on extremely narrow fields of study.  I was intimidated by the mental investment that these essays would demand from me.  However, I was doing research for my New Perspective Crash Course and these books (vols. 1&2) were essential prerequisite reading.  I forfeited the challenge and prayed.  I asked God the Father, through Jesus Christ, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, to grant me the ability to read, comprehend, and retain, that I may recall what I’ve read so that I may Glorify Him in defending the reformed faith and refuting the heresy of the New Perspective.  In faith, I began reading.  After a few paragraphs, it was like reading Snow White.  This is not to say that anyone who prays for reading help will all of a sudden be able to translate the Alexandrian Septuagints into modern English.  To each is given a particular capacity for learning and your goal is to find, follow, and finish God’s will for your life.  Philippians 4:8 categorizes the “whatevers” as excellence.  If reading and writing are means to your goal of excellence, then prayer is where you should begin.  Download and listen to these 2 excellent sermon on excellence and training your mind to think differently: http://www.faithdefenders.com/podcasts/september/

Here’s what Dr. Bob has to say:

Our Foundational Principles

We have been writing book reviews for Christian magazines and theological journals for many years. Our reviews are based upon the following principles:

1. God has revealed in Scripture propositional truths concerning His nature and attributes.

2. Our views of God and Christ must arise from a careful exegesis of Scripture and not from a priori philosophic speculations.

3. Historical, classical, traditional, confessional, orthodox theology as expressed in the great creeds of the Church for nearly two thousand years is the Biblical position set forth in confessional form.

4. Any theology that denies the historical, classical, traditional, confessional, orthodox understanding of the nature and attributes of God and the two natures of Christ is heretical.

5. We are not deceived by heretics when they use orthodox terms such as God, omniscience, Trinity, etc., but give them an unorthodox meaning. For example, the Socinians pretended that they believed in the “omniscience” of God while denying that God knew the future!

The liberal theology created by Karl Barth is called “neo-orthodoxy” even though it is not orthodox Christianity. Just because someone uses the same religious terms we use does not mean that he is orthodox in his definition of those terms.

As Francis Schaeffer pointed out, our beliefs about God and the world must conform to the “orthodoxy of history” as well as to the “orthodoxy of Scripture.” The moment someone denies the historical, classical, traditional, confessional, orthodox definition of God and Christ, they have opened the door to the relativism of modern liberal theology and the cults.

This is what cultists such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses have always done as well as Liberal theologians. They all dismiss historical, classical, traditional, confessional, orthodox theology as being Platonic, or Aristotelian, etc. In its place, they substitute their own views of God as being more “biblical” than the orthodox creeds! [1]

If I wasn’t a Calvinist, I would wish you good luck!  Instead, I wish you good providence!  So here’s your opportunity Biblical Thought family, to assist a fellow soldier along the way who was humble enough to ask for help.  By God’s grace it will be an excellent paper and we can post it here.  Leave your comments for Travis, and feel free to use the comments section as an open forum for discussion.

[1]  Quote from Dr. Robert Morey taken from the Journal of Biblical Apologetics, Vol. 2, Spring 2001 pg. 61