Monthly Archives: January 2015

Anglicanism – Then and Now

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church08Michael P. Jensen is the author of Sydney Anglicanism: An Apology and (with Tom Frame) Defining Convictions and Decisive Commitments–The Thirty-Nine Articles in Contemporary Anglicanism. He is the rector of St Mark’s Anglican Church, in Sydney, Australia.

In an article entitled “( Things you should really know about Anglicanism” he writes:

1. Since the arrival of Christianity in Britain in the 3rd century, British Christianity has had a distinct flavor and independence of spirit, and was frequently in tension with Roman Catholicism. The Britons were evangelized by Irish missionary monks, and it wasn’t until the 7th century that the Roman church established its authority over Christianity in the British Isles, at the Synod of Whitby. But tensions continued until the 16th century.

2. The break with Rome in the 16th century had political causes, but also saw the emergence of an evangelical theology. The Church of England was not just a church of protest against the pope’s authority and his interference in English affairs. It was also a church that adopted a distinctly evangelical theology. The English Reformation cannot be reduced to the marital strife of Henry VIII.

3. Anglicanism is Reformed. The theology of the founding documents of the Anglican church—the Book of Homilies, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion—expresses a theology in keeping with the Reformed theology of the Swiss and South German Reformation. It is neither Lutheran, nor simply Calvinist, though it resonates with many of Calvin’s thoughts.

4. Scripture is the supreme authority in Anglicanism. Article VI, “Of the sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation,” puts it this way:

Holy Scriptures containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.

In Anglicanism, Scripture alone is supreme as the saving Word of God. Reason and tradition play an auxiliary role. This was the view of divines like Thomas Cranmer and Richard Hooker. There is a popular myth that Anglicanism views reason, tradition, and Scripture as a three-legged stool of authorities, but it is quite false.

5. Justification by faith alone is at the heart of Anglican soteriology. In its liturgy, its view of the sacraments, in its founding documents, and in the mind of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the Church of England holds that works do not save and cannot save a person. Only the blood of Jesus Christ is effective to save.

6. In Anglican thought, the sacraments are “effectual signs” received by faith. For Anglicans, the sacraments—the Lord’s Supper and baptism—do not convey grace in an automatic sense, or by a grace adhering to the objects used in them.

7. The Anglican liturgy—best encapsulated in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer—is designed to soak the congregation in the Scriptures, and to remind them of the priority of grace in the Christian life. There is grace on every page—it is not only the heart of Anglican theology, it is the heart of Anglican spirituality.

8. Anglicanism is a missionary faith, and has sponsored global missions since the 18th century. The sending and funding of missionaries to the far reaches of the globe to preach the gospel has been a constant feature of Anglican life, although this has happened through the various voluntary mission agencies as much as through official channels.

9. Global Anglicanism is more African and Asian than it is English and American. The center of contemporary Anglicanism is found in places like Nigeria, Uganda, and Kenya. In these places there are burgeoning Anglican churches, and a great deal of evangelism and church planting. There are strong Anglican churches too in Asia and elsewhere. Noticeably, where liberal theology has become dominant in Anglicanism—mainly in the “first world”—Anglicanism is rapidly shrinking, and is possibly only a generation from its demise.

Heresy and Heretics

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the “Bible Answer Man, ” in his recent book Christianity in Crisis. Hanegraaff’s Charge resulted in a radical outburst of indignant cries directed not at Hinn but at Hanegraaff.

It seems that the only real and intolerable heresy today is the despicable act of calling someone a heretic. If the one accused is guilty of heresy, he or she will probably elicit more sympathy than his accuser. Anyone who cries “Heretic!” today risks being identified as a native of Salem, Massachusetts.

After Hanegraaff made his charge in print, a couple of things happened. One is that Hinn recanted his own teaching that there are nine persons in the Trinity and apologized to his hearers for that teaching. Such recantations are rare in church history, and it is gratifying that at least in this case on that point Hinn repented of his false teaching.

The second interesting footnote to the Hanegraaff-Hinn saga was the appearance of an editorial by the editor of a leading charismatic magazine in which Hanegraaff was castigated for calling Hinn a heretic. At the 1993 Christian Booksellers Association convention, I was present for and witness to a discussion between Hanegraaff and the magazine editor. I asked the editor a few questions. The first was, “Is there such a thing as heresy?” The editor acknowledged that there was. My second question was, “Is heresy a serious matter?” Again he agreed that it was. My next question was obvious. “Then why are you criticizing Hanegraaff for saying that Hinn was teaching heresy when even Hinn admits it now?”

The editor expressed concern about tolerance, charity, the unity of Christians, and matters of that sort. He expressed a concern about witch hunts in the evangelical church. My sentiments about that are clear. We don’t need to hunt witches in the evangelical world. There is no need to hunt what is not hiding. The “witches” are in plain view, every day on national television, teaching blatant heresy without fear of censure.

Consider the case of Jimmy Swaggart. For years Swaggart has publicly repudiated the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. Swaggart was not challenged (to my knowledge) by his church for his heresy. He was censured for sexual immorality but not heresy. I guess this church regards romping with prostitutes in private a more serious offense than denying the Trinity before the watching world.

As I documented in The Agony of Deceit, Paul Crouch teaches heresy. So do Kenneth Copeland and Kenneth Hagin. These men seem to teach their heresies with impunity.

But what do we mean by heresy? Is every theological error a heresy? In a broad sense, every departure from biblical truth may be regarded as a heresy. But in the currency of Christian thought, the term heresy has usually been reserved for gross and heinous distortions of biblical truth, for errors so grave that they threaten either the essence (esse) of the Christian faith or the well-being (bene esse) of the Christian church.

Luther was excommunicated by Rome and declared a heretic for teaching justification by faith alone. Luther replied that the church had embraced a heretical view of salvation. The issue still burns as to who the heretic is.

In Luther’s response to Erasmus’ Diatribe, he acknowledged that many of the points at issue were trifles. They did not warrant rupturing the unity of the church. They could be “covered” by the love and forbearance that covers a multitude of sins. When it came to justification, however, Luther sang a different tune. He called justification the article upon which the church stands or falls, a doctrine so vital that it touches the very heart of the Gospel. A church that rejects justification by faith alone (and anathematizes it as a deadly heresy) is nolonger an orthodox church. Luther wasn’t shadow boxing on that issue; nor was the Reformation a mere misunderstanding between warring factions in the church. No teapot was big enough to contain the tempest it provoked.

In graduate school in Holland, it was the custom of my tutor, Professor G.C. Berkouwer, to lecture on one doctrine per year. In 1965 he departed from his normal policy and lectured on “The History of Heresy in the Christian Church.”

Berkouwer canvassed the most important struggles the church faced against heresy. It was Marcion’s heretical canon that made it necessary for the church to formalize the contents of the true canon of sacred Scripture. It was Arius’s adoptionism that necessitated the conciliar decrees of Nicaea. It was the heresies of Eutyches (monophysitism) and Nestorius that provoked the watershed ecumenical council of Chalcedon in 451. The heresies of Sabellius, Apollinarius, the Socinians, and others have driven the church through the ages to define the limits of orthodoxy.

One of the major points in Berkouwer’s study was the historical tendency for heresies to beget other heresies, particularly heresies in the opposite direction. For example, efforts to defend the true humanity of Jesus often led to the denial of His deity. Zeal to defend the deity of Christ often led to a denial of His humanity. Likewise the zeal for the unity of the Godhead and monotheism have led to the denial of the personal distinctions in the being of God, whereas zeal for personal distinctives have led to tritheism and a denial of the essential unity of God. Likewise, efforts to correct the heresy of legalism have produced the antinomian heresy and vice versa.

We live in a climate where heresy is embraced and proclaimed with the greatest of ease. I can’t think of any of these major heresies that I haven’t heard repeatedly and openly on national tv by so-called “evangelical preachers” such as Hinn, Crouch, and the like. Where our fathers saw these issues as matters of life and death, indeed of eternal life and death, we have so surrendered to relativism and pluralism that we simply don’t care about serious doctrinal error. We prefer peace to truth and accuse the orthodox of being divisive when they call a heretic a heretic. It is the heretic who divides the church and disrupts the unity of the body of Christ.

How I Almost Lost the Bible

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Gregory Alan Thornbury is president of The King’s College and the author of Recovering Classic Evangelicalism: Applying the Wisdom and Vision of Carl F. H. Henry (Crossway). In an article “How I Almost Lost the Bible” he I likely would have gone the way of liberal scholar Bart Ehrman.

I was born at the Evangelical Community Hospital in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania—a fact that once prompted a friend of mine to say, “You’re evangelical born, evangelical bred, and when you die, you’ll be evangelical dead.” My father, John Forrest Thornbury, was the model of a country parson, serving as the pastor of Winfield Baptist Church, a historic congregation in the American Baptist tradition, for 44 years.

My childhood environs prefigured what has become my life’s passion: the relationship of Christian faith to higher education. Lewisburg is home to Bucknell University, an elite private college whose alumni include two evangelical luminaries: Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, and Makoto Fujimura, acclaimed contemporary painter. Several years ago, Tim told me that he had occasionally attended my father’s church while at Bucknell.

Founded by a Baptist association, Bucknell originally existed to further the cause of Christ. Writing to fellow churches across Pennsylvania, the association’s leaders explained that through Bucknell, they sought “to see . . . the cause of God, the honor and glory of the Redeemer’s kingdom promoted in all our bounds, and spreading far and wide until the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and his Christ.” Bucknell held its first classes in the basement of the First Baptist Church in the fall of 1846.

The school’s reputation loomed large in our community, but like so many other premier US colleges and universities, it slowly abandoned orthodoxy. Today, you would be hard-pressed to find anything on Bucknell’s website about its origins as a Christian institution. As I grew up, perhaps unconsciously I was aware of this fact: Faith is something that can be lost.

Still, because of my father, I heard the gospel faithfully preached every Sunday. My mother cooked bacon and eggs for me every morning and read to me passages from Jonathan Edwards, Matthew Henry, and Scottish minister Robert Murray M’Cheyne. But John and Reta Thornbury weren’t fundamentalists. My father wrote biographies of Reformed evangelist Asahel Nettleton and missionary David Brainerd, but he also kept the house supplied with records by Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Reed, and Marty Robbins. And he never came home from the newsstand without bringing some comic books for me.

I professed faith and was baptized at age 9. My father had been nervous baptizing me, saying that I should be buffeted about by the world more before being baptized. I remember him citing as support Edwards, who said that authentic child conversions are rare. He was right. On every level, I seemed to be a fine Christian young person. I even preached my first sermon at age 14 to a statewide Sunday school convention, but I had no business doing so.

After high school, I attended a Christian liberal arts college. In the first semester of my freshman year, I signed up for a course with a brilliant, articulate, recently minted DPhil graduate of Oxford University. The textbook for our introduction to the Bible course was Jesus: A New Vision, by Marcus J. Borg, a prominent fellow of the Jesus Seminar. The scholarly project intended to discover “the historical Jesus” apart from creedal commitments or church teaching.

In that volume, Borg coolly explained that Jesus had never claimed to be the Son of God and had never thought of himself as Savior. We learned that the Bible was a pastiche of traditions and sources, cobbled together mainly in the second century. Our task as biblical interpreters was to unravel what was “authentically Jesus” from mythology and church tradition.

In a subsequent course on the synoptic Gospels, we read works from Robert W. Funk, the founder of the Jesus Seminar. We learned how to do form and redaction analysis, a method of study that assumes the author of a biblical text is motivated by a theological agenda rather than by reporting what he had seen. We simply “knew” that the book we were holding in our hands did not have a direct connection to the apostles whose names were associated with the Gospels and Epistles.

For me, this dose of higher criticism was nearly lethal. Any sense that the Bible was divinely inspired and trustworthy, or that the creeds had metaphysical gravitas, started to seem implausible. The best I could muster was that, somehow mystically, perhaps Jesus was the Christ, existentially speaking. I was approaching something close to New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman’s own story of losing faith.

Philosopher’s Defense

When I told my father what I was thinking, he was alarmed. He recommended different apologetics works that defended biblical authority. I sloughed them off. Keep in mind that this was an era before figures such as Craig Blomberg, N. T. Wright, and Luke Timothy Johnson had gained notoriety among evangelicals and had written their best work on the historical reliability of the Scriptures.
Then Dad had a brainstorm. He knew that I was enamored with modern philosophy. So one day when I phoned home, he said, “There’s an evangelical theologian who might interest you. His PhD is in philosophy. He believes the Bible is inerrant. His name is Carl F. H. Henry. Find the volumes of God, Revelation, and Authority in your library, and read them before you decide to give up the faith.”

Soon after, I walked down the long staircase at the college library, sat down on the floor in the stacks, and pulled out God, Revelation, and Authority. It was my own tolle lege—“take up and read!”—moment of crisis. The first lines of the first chapter of the first volume rang out to me:

No fact of contemporary Western life is more evident than its growing distrust of final truth and its implacable questioning of any sure word.

That was me. I kept reading for days on end. I cried and kept searching, and genuine faith began to awaken.

Henry helped secure my faith because he was doing more than responding tit-for-tat to higher critics of the Bible’s historical reliability. Henry did that, but he went one step further: He brought philosophical gravitas to God, Revelation, and Authority. His focus was broad. He addressed epistemology—how we can know the truth, which was my primary concern as an undergraduate philosophy student. I had come within a whisker of losing my faith. But because Henry was a philosopher defending biblical authority, I rallied.

Humanly speaking, had it not been for the first editor of Christianity Today, the theologian with a titanic brain and a journalist’s pen, I could have gone the other way. Henry showed me how to be both a scholar and a follower of Jesus. From that moment in my undergraduate days, I covenanted with God to help people like the 18-year-old version of myself—people who are on the boundary of leaving the church, and are looking for just one good reason to stay.

Nearly one decade after my dark night of the soul, Paul House, C. Ben Mitchell, Richard Bailey, and I wrote Henry at his retirement home in Watertown, Wisconsin, to express our collective appreciation for and indebtedness to his work. He wrote back, and invited us to visit him and his wife, Helga. Our time together began a wonderful season of visits, correspondence, and mutual encouragement.
Carl combined head and heart. Both piety and doctrinal precision mattered to him. Once, in a PhD seminar, a student asked 20th-century evangelicalism’s leading thinker: “What is the greatest question being asked in contemporary theology?”

Carl didn’t miss a beat: “The same question that the apostles posed to their generation: ‘Have you met the resurrected Lord?’ ”
That gritty, realistic response took me back to that library and to the books that helped secure my faith in the resurrected Lord. And all these years later, it’s clearer to me now more than ever: Carl F. H. Henry is still asking the right questions.

The Question of Altar Calls

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A Transcript: From the second Question and Answer session at “The Truth of the Cross – 2014 Regional Ligonier Conference”

What is your opinion of altar calls?

stephen-nicholsDr. Stephen Nichols: I’ll speak about a Church history sermon, “Sinners in the hands of an angry God” and Eleazar Wheelock was there present at Enfield when that sermon was preached. He went on to found Dartmouth University (College), and he recorded for us what happened at that sermon. And this of course is the sermon when Edwards had to stop speaking because of the shrieks of the congregation. And so at the conclusion of this Eleazar Wheelock writes that the minister concluded his sermon. We sung a hymn and we went home.

In those days they had this idea that if someone was so anxious they would, after the sermon, write a note and then have an elder or deacon from the Church come to them, and then as they counselled with them they would make a profession of faith and then on another Lord’s day or a few Lord’s day following they would then make their public profession of faith, and they would become full members and communicate members and partake of the Lord’s supper. This was how it was done in Edward’s Churches and the new England Churches in the Great Awakening. We really see the altar call as an American phenomenon in the Second Great Awakening with Charles Finney. And Finney had this idea of what he called “The Anxious Bench” – if you are so anxious then come down forward and you’ll be dealt with here in the service, and Finney called that an “anxious bench.” And that’s where the introduction of the altar call in American Church history. And this is what Church historians are good for. They simply give you the historical data; they leave it to the pastors and the theologians to judge. I just report. You can judge.

Dr. Lawson, you come from a Baptist tradition where altar calls are prominent. What is your opinion on that?

steve_lawsonDr. Steve Lawson: I remember when I graduated from seminary in 1980 I immediately went to a large Southern Baptist Church, and the very first week I was there I stepped into the College ministry, overseeing it as well as young marrieds. And I remember the very first weekend that I was there. There was already scheduled a young couples retreat. So there were about 50-60 of us that went on this young couple’s retreat and I remember Friday night we all got in a big circle and just as kind of an ice breaker way to start the weekend and for me to know the people I said “let’s go around the circle and I would like for everyone to give us your name, where you are from and give us your testimony, when you came to know Christ.”

And by the time we got all the way round the circle my jaw was on the floor. I could not believe what I was hearing. And what I heard again and again and again and again and again was the testimony of people who had walked forward as a child, as a teenager “but my life never changed, I went off to College, I lived like the world, I sowed my wild oats and prayed for crop failure… (that hit a nerve didn’t it?) … and then was married and we had a child, etc. etc.’ They finally got serious and committed their life to Christ. But what I heard again and again and again, non stop was people walking forward and there was no conversion, though people were praying, signing a card, whatever.. people were not being saved.

So after that the next week I was appointed (since I am the College pastor) to be the guy standing at the front while the pastor stands in the pulpit and gives the alter call.

So, as the people come forward I gather them, ok. I take them back stage and I have now maybe 30 seconds to get their name, their address, their phone number, when they were saved, get their testimony and then bring them back out before we finish “Just as I am” – you know, the 48th verse!

So I mean I actually lived through this.

After about 3 weeks of this I just realized this is absolutely insane! I mean we are presenting people back before the Church, I don’t even know who this person is. I mean you’ve got 15 seconds to give me your testimony. I’m having to sort through just awful, bad testimonies, trying to interpret.. I’m finishing their sentences for them “what you’re trying to say…” and then bring them back out so I just had to completely stop this.

I said to the pastor, this is killing my conscience. You are the pastor, we can do however you lead us but I cannot be the person out here to do this.

So I eventually pastored a large Southern Baptist Church of 4 to 5 thousand members and there was an altar call at the end. I mean that’s what you do if you’re the pastor of such a church. And so I preached there for 8 years.

The interesting thing was, I would preach and literally no one would walk forward. My office was behind the pulpit area (the choir loft). I’d go back to my office and literally week after week after week, there would be this knock on the door.. and after the service is over.. its like Spurgeon said, “A wounded deer wants to withdraw to the thicket to lick its wounds.” It does not want to be paraded in front of people as an object.

And so I am back in my pastor’s study and as RC would say, “stop me if I’m lying…” it was the most amazing thing, Wednesday night, Sunday night, Sunday morning, there were Church members just being converted week by week by week by week. Nobody would walk forward but everyone was being converted by themselves. People would be converted in the parking lot, on the front doorsteps of the Church.. I don’t think hardly anyone walked forward…

So when we started our new Church I said, “this is crazy!” There will be no altar call whatsoever. I’m going to preach the word. The entire sermon is going to be a summons to give your life to Christ and I’m the easiest person to find after the service. I’m at the front, I’m in the lobby, I’m the last person to leave. If you want more information, please come talk to me, but the fact is, there was no precedence till the 19th century. So somehow for 18 hundred years in Church history, people were being saved without any sawdust trail, without any walking forward.

So I think it lends itself to great abuse and I’ve experienced it and lived through it.

RCtestDr. R. C. Sproul: The sad abuse is that it gives multitudes of people a false sense of security who think that they’re saved because they raised their hand or prayed a prayer or walked an aisle. You know Edwards preached that sermon a warning to professors (it was not a warning to academic teachers). It was to those who had made a profession of faith and who believed that because they made a profession of faith that they were saved. Now everybody who is saved is called to make a profession of faith, but Jesus warned again and again and again many will come to Me on that last day saying “Lord, Lord, didn’t I do this, didn’t I do that?” And He will say, “Depart from Me you workers of iniquity. I never knew you.”

You are not justified by a profession of faith. You’re justified by a possession of it. And you can’t manipulate that. Only the Holy Spirit can convert. Only the Holy Spirit can change the disposition of the soul and regenerate that person who is dead in sin and trespasses. We can’t force that, and when we do, we put people at everlasting peril when we give them a false sense of security.

Whatever the motivation…

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I appreciate the answer given by Dr. James White below:

I just wrote this Twishort response to a tweet by @PoliClark where, tagging Dan Savage as well, he wrote, “hi James- can you give me feedback? My neighbor was working today (sabbath) so I murdered him. This is correct?” So here was my reply:

@PoliClark Dear Clark, thanks for writing. As a good citizen, I’ve turned your admission of the murder of your neighbor over to the authorities, but my response should give you something helpful to do during the booking process. I am so sorry you relied upon Internet Bible “experts” for your information. It is such a common thing today for people who have not even bothered to read and understand the text, even in a modern English translation (let alone consult the original Hebrew!) to pretend that reading what one person quotes from another person who quotes from another person who actually only saw it on West Wing back in the late 90s is sufficient basis for their actions or opinions. Amazing the shallow, surface-level argumentation that some people will use! But in reference to your question (you did ask if what you did was correct), no, it was not.

First, you obviously have no zeal for the Lord or His law, so you would have no basis upon which to be acting as the magistrate of a nation that no longer exists. The Israelite theocracy was brought into existence first and foremost to be the vehicle through which the Messiah would come who, by His self-giving, sacrificial death on the cross, would provide full and perfect redemption for all who would turn in true repentance and faith to Him. That nation ceased to exist as a nation in AD 70, so you were about 1950 years off in your dating there.

Secondly, you seem to be laboring under the misconception that modern Christians are free to pick and choose from among the Mosaic laws what they will obey and what they won’t. The process of examination of the purpose and applicability of the Mosaic laws is a difficult one to be sure. It requires examination of the text in light of the entirety of biblical revelation, a knowledge of the original context, historical backgrounds, etc.

Indeed, while it is not my scholarly focus (I have only taught basic Hebrew and Hebrew exegesis on the graduate level in the past), I have invested a great deal of time recently on the topic, as I am preaching through the very Holiness Code I surmise you are referring to. Assuming you have neglected such a study, and not availed yourself of those who have done so with an eye first and foremost to honoring God and His Word (your imminent incarceration being good evidence of this), I will lay out a basic answer to your question.

1) A Sabbath breaker under the ancient Israelite theocracy would be executed upon examination by the governing authorities, not by individual Israelites. Mistake #1.

2) There is no evidence the NT apostles viewed this law as being applicable outside of national Israel, which no longer exists, and hence it would be inappropriate to seek its institution, let alone its enactment and resultant punishment. Mistake #2.

3) If your neighbor had never entered into covenant with the God of Israel to keep the Sabbath day, well…mistake #3, big time.

4) It might be helpful to consider the abiding moral element of the law as it relates to honoring God with your time and observing a cessation of work and labor so as to focus upon His worship, but your neighbor won’t be able to do that anymore due to your action. Mistake #4.

Now, Clark, after your conviction and incarceration, I would direct you to consider the differences between the laws given in the Bible specifically for national Israel, those that were ceremonial in nature, those that pointed to a coming fulfillment in Christ, and those that by their very nature embodied universal moral principles—those mainly being those that derive from God’s act of creation. So, laws that reflect God creating man male and female would be creation ordinances since they reflect God’s creative purposes; those relating specifically to such things as styles of dress that were connected to the pagan worship practices of the nations around Israel while no longer being specifically applicable would still communicate the need to not engage in the behaviors of those pagans.

For example, the single prohibition against a tattoo (Lev. 19:28—though we are actually not certain whether ????????? means tattoo in the modern sense of permanent, injected pigment) is actually found in a passage about doing things “for the dead.” The Deuteronomistic parallel (14:1) further shows that it is not the actual tattoo that is in view, as the parallel refers to “shaving the forehead” as the parallel to ?????????. The point is that the pagan religions around Israel contained beliefs relating to the dead—either provisions for honoring the dead, or, fear of the curses of the dead. As the people of God, the Israelites were to realize that the dead had no power over them, hence, they were not to alter their appearances to either honor the dead, or (as I think more likely), to hide from their curses. And that principle would continue to this day: as God’s people, we are not to concern ourselves about the activities of the dead: God is in control of our lives, not the dead.

So can a Christian have a tattoo?

That would, as I see if, fall under the over-arching concept of Romans 14: that as a believer I am to please my Lord and do all that I do under His Lordship. As such, if I desire to glorify God with a piece of artwork that reminds me of my duties to Him, and I do not do it to sinfully attract attention to myself, then I see no problem with it at all.

Now, before I close off (I mean, booking only takes so long), let me take a wild guess and assume that your actions were motivated by the general assertion that the Levitical law is no longer relevant primarily in the area of sexual ethics and behavior. You might even suggest that the prohibition against homosexuality found in Lev. 18:22 and Lev. 20:13 is only in reference to the pagan practices of the peoples around Israel, an issue I myself raised above. I have much to say on this topic, but will be brief for now, if you don’t mind.

There is no question of the sexual immorality of the Assyrian and Mesopotamian religions of the time period immediately preceding the Exodus. And unless you are ready to proclaim all sexual practices moral, even you would have to admit the truth of this statement. So are we just picking and choosing when we cite Lev. 18:22 and Lev. 20:13 regarding homosexuality? No, we are not. Lots of reasons, let me give you two and let you go with the police.

1) When Moses gives the series of sexual sin laws in Lev. 18 there follows a lengthy discussion of how the peoples before Israel had violated these laws *and as a result* the land had vomited them out. Their actions had defiled themselves, and the land. Remember, theses are people to whom the Mosaic law was never given. Hence, these laws are binding outside the national boundaries of Israel, they are creation ordinances that reflect God’s creation order.

2) This is confirmed in Paul’s usage of these laws in Romans 1 and 1 Cor. 6:9-11, where he even joins two terms from Lev. 20:13, ??????? ??????, into a single term to refer to homosexuals. Clearly, then, the Apostle of Christ understood these laws as continuing in their abiding validity, and that is why Christians have followed in their footsteps. I am so sorry you did not ask for this information before acting as you did, but hopefully now you will be able to be a model inmate!

On Reading Old Books

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C.S. Lewis’ famous quote from his essay on “Old Books”

“Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united—united with each other and against earlier and later ages—by a great mass of common assumptions. We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century—the blindness about which posterity will ask, “But how could they have thought that?”—lies where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt or between Mr. H. G. Wells and Karl Barth. None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them.”