Daniel Wallace and Bart Ehrman: We Don't Really Know For Sure

In my mind, I can hear the very normal condescending tones and expressions of James White as I begin to write this, and despite the resulting nausea, I continue to write.   The tone itself is his most effective argument.  If you don't give up, you will be sick to your stomach.  I must remind myself that it is self-imposed jeopardy on my part to look at and listen to him when he speaks.  Nobody thinks he is the smartest person in the room, the state, the country, the universe, more than James White.  But I digress.  This is about another person who has debated Bart Ehrman about the degree of error in Scripture, Daniel Wallace.

Daniel Wallace has a new blog.  So does Bart Ehrman.  Ehrman had heard that liberals don't give to make people's lives better, which is true.  This is all they have, in their own opinion, and still conservatives, which believe in the hereafter, give far more than liberals to things that make people's lives better now.  You would really think that if they believed this was all they had, that they would invest in it.  I think that you understand that generally they're just far more self-centered folks, which is why the statistic.  Ehrman's way of giving more is to write a blog that people will need to pay to read and comment, and their money will go toward reducing hunger and poverty.  Ironic that even when it is time to do something, he's getting other people to do something.  But I digress one more time.

Bart Ehrman attempted to attract more other people to give to his charity by writing a three part series about his debate with Daniel Wallace.   Bart Ehrman is a liar.  His next book, about which he is giddy with excitement, will talk about how Jesus became God.  It's not a book about how Jesus became man, the incarnation.  So don't get mixed up there.  It's going to attack the deity of Christ, the truth that Jesus is God.  And he'll write it in a very popular style to especially propagandize young people who browse at Barnes and Noble.  But I digress again.  Daniel Wallace wasn't happy with what Ehrman said about the debate.  He calls him "disingenuous," a really fancy way of calling someone a liar.   In his answer, he wrote this:

I have never said in our debates that we are absolutely certain of the wording of the text of the New Testament. So, I would agree with him that “we really don’t have any way to know for sure" . . . . He is right that classical scholars do not ‘know exactly’ what these classical authors wrote. This is what I have said regarding the New Testament, too! We may have a high level of confidence, but it never rises to the point where we know exactly with absolute confidence what the text said.

Dan Wallace wants you to know that we are not certain what the words of the New Testament are.  He agrees with Ehrman that we have no way of knowing for sure.  We don't have absolute confidence that we know what the original text said.  This isn't just Bart Ehrman.  This is Daniel Wallace.  And why would Wallace talk like that?  Because he doesn't believe in the preservation of Scripture.  He doesn't believe the Bible teaches it.  And he doesn't believe we have a perfect Bible.  It's all a matter of probability as in the study of a secular text, like Homer or Plato.

Now when Wallace writes these things, people read him now and say, "Right on, Dan!"  That's exactly their thinking.  But remember, this is not the biblical position (which is why Ehrman has a problem with it, he would say) nor the historical position on preservation.  It's what people who believe in textual criticism think. They think, say, and teach that it's all a matter of probability.  It's highly probable, to them, that we have not lost the essential teachings of the originals in the copies that we possess.  No one can be sure, but probability would lean over on the basic message of the Bible being intact.

So, the position of both Bart Ehrman and Dan Wallace is:  we don't really know.  Bart Ehrman asserts.  Dan Wallace agrees.  Now go out and live that!  It's no wonder there is a steep drop in biblical obedience, and it's only getting worse.

A Circle and a Graph: Evangelical Excuses for Disobedience to God

It would be great if evangelicals experienced conviction of sin, felt bad about being evangelicals, for instance.  I believe there are a few signs that they do, which should help some of us breathe a shallow sigh of relief.  One way we see their guilt is in their incessant explanation or excuses for disobedience to God.  I'm saying really that I hope that they know that they're wrong, and they are indicating that with the various ways that they attempt to cope with it.

Inventing ways to survive with false doctrine and evil isn't good.  However, what this says to me is that they feel guilt.  The right response is to repent and confess.  They won't do that.  Instead they create systems to explain their missing the mark.  The Pharisees did this too, which is why an alternative title might be Evangelicals, the Real Legalists Today.  That might be a good theme for part two of what might be two or three.  Instead of doing right, the Pharisees developed schemes to justify their wrongdoing, which they promoted above anything else.  Their system was a giant excuse but also a faux means to propel themselves.

The evangelical excuse feigns with complexity.  It provides a narrative with so many dimensions so as to defy falsehood.  The labyrinth of verbiage immerses the intellect like a piece of modern art.  You've got to act like it means something.   And many then will subscribe to the facade, giving it the credibility of numbers.  Crowds mill the streets of this false-front city.

What are the excuses?  There are two mainly.  Very developed now and gaining in tenure.  Both have a diagram or chart.  One is a circle.  The other is a graph, like a timeline.  The schematics are flawed, but they appear significant---Henry Hill making music.

The Circle

The center of the circle is the target, the goal, the core.  Evangelicals label that the gospel.  That iron-nickel alloy surrounded by a mantle and crust is man's salvation.  Of course.  Perfect.  Evangelicals insist a true theological gravity will press the faithful to the middle.  The other teachings of God so lack in comparison that any insistence on them actually do diminish the center.   By their explanation, the center is kept the center by diminishing the orbiting layers.  You get all this, right?  So if someone were to alter or twist almost anything outside that core,  and yet loyally embrace the middle, he should be in no risk of alienation.

The circle is everywhere.  Math.  Astronomy.  The atom.  Clocks.  Lids.  The moon.  Balls.  Charlie Brown's head.  Who could go wrong with the circle?

The circle is an excuse for missing anything outside the center.   Those who separate over the peripherals are the enemy of the core.   Suddenly disobedient people are not only excused, but they are of superior status.

"Baptism is by immersion.  He was sprinkled."
"Awww, now that really doesn't relate to people bein' saved, does it?"
"No."
"So let's not take away from the importance of the gospel by bringin' that up, OK?"

The circle is a good shape, really.  It's just that the evangelicals mislabel it.  The center should have Scripture on it.  And then the outlying layers should be various and unacceptable degrees of disobedience with the outside being an apostate.  The circle should provide no basis for disobedience.  That can't be right.  But it's one of the systems of the evangelicals used as an excuse for false doctrine and disobedience.

The Graph

The graph or timeline-looking chart or spectrum is the right-middle-left scheme.  Evangelicalism puts itself in the middle, fundamentalism on the right and liberalism on the left.  The three bears could come in here.  Fundamentalism is the papa bear, too hard.  Liberalism is the mama bear, too soft.  Evangelicalism is the baby bear, just right.

The graph is essentially Hegelian dialectics.  The truth or Scripture is thesis, falsehood and lies are antithesis, and synthesis is a compromise between the two.  In the spectrum, evangelicalism is the synthesis, falsehood and lies is liberalism, and biblical Christianity (what those to the left will call fundamentalism) is truth or Scripture.

Again, the graph or chart or spectrum can be a useful illustration if properly labeled.  The middle should be taken as the middle of the road with two ditches on the left and right.  The middle of the road is safe---that is the belief and practice of everything in Scripture.  The left is liberalism, which is taking away from God's Word.  The right is legalism, which is adding to God's Word.  Scripture warns against taking away from or adding to God's Word.  What I'm describing is scriptural, and what evangelicals portray is pragmatic.

Evangelicals place denial of the Word of God and then complete obedience to the Word of God in positions in the extreme.  They put their moderate middle as some superior position reached through compromise or what they might call "epistemological humility."  They see a danger in absolute certainty and complete doubt. They would perceive, of course, the absolute certain also as lacking in compassion.  The superior truths of harmony and toleration necessitate bridging certainty with doubt.

In politics today, we call this the third way.   President Bill Clinton popularized it as political philosophy in part to win reelection in 1996.  For a church, the compromise is an important numeric growth technique.  An allowance of several points of view enlarges the tent for more to get in.

When you think about the evangelical graph, their position on a spectrum, you might think of the same strategy that destroyed Israel and then the churches that Jesus warned in Revelation 2 and 3.  You would be right.  When captive Judah read 1 and 2 Kings and then post-exilic Israel read 1 and 2 Chronicles, they were challenged to identify these evangelical excuses as the very reason for their chastisement.  If their minds drifted to the end of Deuteronomy, they knew there were only two poles from which to choose, one blessing and the other cursing.  Something in the middle wouldn't and couldn't suffice.

Don't be fooled by the evangelical circle or the graph.  They're just excuses for disobedience to God.

Images and Pictures of Jesus Christ Forbidden by Scripture

Historically, Baptists have rejected the use of all images in worship, including images of Jesus Christ.  The London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689 states:

The light of nature shews that there is a God, who hath lordship and sovereignty over all; is just, good and doth good unto all; and is therefore to be feared, loved, praised, called upon, trusted in, and served, with all the heart and all the soul, and with all the might. But the acceptable way of worshipping the true God, is instituted by himself, and so limited by his own revealed will, that he may not be worshipped according to the imagination and devices of men, nor the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representations, or any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scriptures. (Chapter 22:1)

In this prohibition of images of all kinds, including those of Jesus Christ, historic Protestant documents agree. For example, the Westminster Larger Catechism states:

The sins forbidden in the second commandment are, all devising, counseling, commanding, using, and any wise approving, any religious worship not instituted by God himself; the making any representation of God, of all or of any of the three persons, either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind of image or likeness of any creature whatsoever; all worshiping of it, or God in it or by it; the making of any representation of feigned deities, and all worship of them, or service belonging to them; all superstitious devices, corrupting the worship of God, adding to it, or taking from it, whether invented and taken up of ourselves, or received by tradition from others, though under the title of antiquity, custom, devotion, good intent, or any other pretense whatsoever; simony; sacrilege; all neglect, contempt, hindering, and opposing the worship and ordinances which God hath appointed.

As noted by the Catechism, the second commandment is central to the question:

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. (Exodus 20:4-6)

Here God forbids any to worship Him with “pictures . . . [or] images” (Num 33:52).  This prohibition forbids the making of any picures of God Himself, as well as practices such as bowing down before statues or pictures (Ezekiel 8:10), even with the intent to worship God, not them.  John 4:24 says, “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”  All physical images of God necessarily misrepresent Him—as an invisible Spirit, He is immaterial and cannot be pictured.  The Lord commands mankind to offer Him spiritual worship as commanded in His Word, not worship with images. Since Jesus Christ is God, no images of Him should be made.  The Trinity is undivided, and prohibitions of images of God include not God the Father and God the Holy Ghost only, but also God the Son.  Furthermore, no image could be made to represent Jesus Christ’s Divine nature, since that is invisible and spiritual.  Nor can any image correctly represents the awe-inspiring glorified body He received after His resurrection.  One who saw His glorified humanity fell at his feet as dead (Revelation 1:10-18);  no image can make this happen.  No image correctly represents His human nature during His earthly ministry, for the Bible records nothing of His appearance at that time (compare 1 Peter 1:8; 2 Corinthians 5:16).  Besides, Christ’s human nature is not divided from His Divine nature;  He is one Person with two natures, and no image can, therefore, correctly represent Him as the Person He is.  The common pictures of Christ with long hair are even worse—indeed, they are a Satanic attempt to imply that He was sinful, since “if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him” (1 Corinthians 11:14).  If you have attempted to worship God using images, including images of Christ, you have broken the second commandment—and worship with an “image . . . the LORD thy God hateth” (Deuteronomy 16:22).  Rather than making pictures of Christ, view Jesus Christ in His ineffable glory by faith through the Word—for then the Holy Spirit will progressively change you into His moral likeness (2 Cor 3:18).  Do not degrade Christ by making or using images of Him.  Do not have such images in your house. Do not use images of the Son in children’s ministries.  You can either cover up pictures of Him if you use children’s curricula that have such images, or use a curriculum—such as this one—that does not contain them.  Do not use such images for any other purpose in God's church.  If you have done so in the past, not having thought about whether what you were doing was right, now is the time to confess your sin (1 John 1:9) and stop.  From this point forward, do not make, use, condone, promote, or contribute in any way to the use of images of the Son of God.

For more information, note the resources here.

—TDR

Land of Liberty

A patriotic favorite, "My Country Tis of Thee," calls America "sweet land of liberty."  Is it?   Liberty is the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority.  People with liberty have rights, I believe, natural ones, given to them by God.  We don't get our liberties from government, but they are natural, God-given rights that the authority of government in a land of the free agrees not to restrict.  Our form of government says that we have liberty, and government will be limited by a constitution from destroying it.

We have a clash in liberty today.  Some see liberty as a right to happiness, not the pursuit of it, but happiness itself.  They see liberty as a right to equal outcome.  Some see those liberties as given to them, not by God, but by government fiat.  Women's rights.  Homosexual rights.  Abortion rights.  Children's rights.  Are these given by God?  Of course not.  Do we have a God-given right to say whatever we want?  Can we scream fire in a crowded building?  Is health care a right?  Does everyone deserve to have their needs or even wants taken care of by government?  Those aren't God-given rights.  They haven't been.   Liberty also provides equal opportunity, not equal outcomes.  A free market says people have the opportunity for an idea, to make something, to work hard, to produce, to offer the product, and then keep what they've earned.  Government regulations---minimum wage, taxation, worker privileges, etc.---take that liberty away.  Men lose opportunity, then jobs.

Others see liberty as freedom from government coercion.  Government should protect liberties, true ones, ones given by God.  The government doesn't have the right to coerce us to live like it wants us to live and buy what it wants us to buy through oppressive and punitive taxation.  We can choose to drive on federal roads and, therefore, buy car insurance.  We can choose to buy or not buy medical care.  All of this is liberty.

For true liberty to work, self-government is a necessity.  Without self-government, men lose their liberties.  Government becomes onerous and intrusive.  Regulations multiply.   Government chooses the winners and losers in the marketplace.  Big Box stores out.  Green business in.

Our country's pledge of allegiance ends with "liberty and justice for all."  Liberty and justice are inexorably tied together.  You really can't have one without the other.  Criminals have more rights.  Victims have less.   Homosexuality in.  God out.

Are we okay with all this?

Local Only Ecclesiology, Baptist History, and Landmarkism, pt. 3

Part One,  Part Two

Fred Moritz in the online only Maranatha Baptist Theological Journal attempts to discredit local only ecclesiology as of recent origin, merely a pendulum swing from Campbellism.  In part two, I showed how that the Church of Christ (COC) stems from a hermeneutical problem, one mirrored by a universal church ecclesiology.  The Bible doesn't support their (COC and universal church people like Moritz) position.  And then Moritz doesn't provide historic evidence.  To do so, he would have needed to give primary source quotations that indicated that local only men, like James R. Graves, were reacting to Campbellism.  He doesn't.

Moritz also tries to trace opposition to alien immersion to Graves.  He defines alien immersion as baptism "administered by a Presbyterian, Methodist, or clergy from some other non-Baptist denomination."  Moritz talks as though this was some strange concoction of the Landmarkers, which seems to indicate a disconnect between Moritz and historic Baptists.  Thomas Crosby couldn't have been influenced by either Campbellists or by James R. Graves, because he wrote his History of English Baptists over 100 years before in 1721, but he does communicate what Baptists historically have believed about the acceptation of baptism.  He writes (pp. 15-16):

But when the Paedobaptists argue after this manner, they don’t consider that they hereby cast the fame odium upon the protestant religion in general, which they have so often endeavoured to fix upon the Baptists only; viz. That they can have no right administrator of baptism amongst them, and consequently no true baptism. For as Bishop Burnet observes, at the beginning of the Reformation, all had been baptized in the corrupt way of the church of Rome. If that baptism was nothing, then there was none truly baptized in beginning.

He writes that Protestants had "no right administrator of baptism among them, and consequently no true baptism."  Those who had come out of the corruption of Rome, "if that baptism was nothing," then their baptism was not true baptism either.  Baptists historically rebaptized those baptized as Roman Catholics and Protestants.  That's why they were mockingly called "anabaptists" or "rebaptizers."  Mosheim wrote in 1790 in the book An Ecclesiastical History (p. 439): “[T]he ancient Anabaptists practiced the repetition of baptism to those who joined them from other Christian churches.”  Again, 1790 was before Thomas or Alexander Campbell and James R. Graves.  The Protestants of that day argues against rebaptism---it's all over their writings.

Moritz acts or writes like opposition to alien immersion was new to the Landmarkers.  This was a historic Baptist practice.  It can be traced as well all the way back to the Donatists.  In the book, Sacred Propulsions, in 1768, is written:

The Donatists were so fierce against the catholics, that they would rebaptize all them who came to their churches from the other: but the catholics, as knowing the Donatists did give right baptism, admitted their converts to repentance, but did not rebaptize them. Upon this score the Donatists triumphed, saying, you catholics confess our baptism to be good, and so lay we, but we Donatists deny your baptism to be good; therefore it is rather to be our fide than yours.

This Baptist practice goes back to the acceptance of the Donatist practice of rejecting Catholic baptism.

Many who call themselves Baptists, like Moritz, would consider themselves to be Baptist in their baptism merely because they have a proper recipient, a believer, and then a proper mode, immersion.  They leave out one other historic Baptist and biblical facet, that being a proper administrator.  Can baptism be accomplished by just anyone?  Both Baptists and Protestants wrote a lot about this before James R. Graves and those men ever came on the scene.  Graves and the Landmarkers were only reflecting already historic ecclesiology.

[I'm not going to make an all-out argument in this post, but the Bible does also put an emphasis on the administrator of the baptism (I talk about this in this post).]

Trying to Have his Readers Think that Landmarkism Is a Theory that Churches Can and Should Be Able to Trace a Physical Lineage Back to the First Church in Jerusalem

Moritz speculates that the Landmarkers would rebaptize anyone from any church that could not trace, chain-link, all the way back to the Jerusalem church.  That's not even what these "Landmarkers" believed. J. R. Graves wrote in his Old Landmarkism:  What Is It? (p. 85):

Nor do we admit the claims of the ‘Liberals’ upon us, to prove the continuous existence of the church, of which we are a member, or which baptized us, in order to prove our doctrine of church succession, and that we have been scripturally baptized or ordained. As well might the Infidel call upon me to prove every link of my descent from Adam, before I am allowed to claim an interest in the redemptive work of Christ, which was confined to the family of Adam! We point to the Word of God, and, until the Infidel can destroy its authenticity, our hope is unshaken. In like manner, we point the ‘Liberal’ Baptist to the words of Christ, and will he say they are not sufficient?

Another "Landmarker" and defender of Graves' position, I. K. Cross, wrote in his Landmarkism:  An Update (quote off back cover):

I do not know of a reputable Landmark Baptist student of church history who claims that every congregation must trace its individual history link by link back to Christ and the apostles. If this were true there would be few, if any, churches that could validate themselves. This is not [bold in original] the claim of true Baptist church perpetuity. This does not, however, weaken the need for church succession in New Testament church history.

Moritz is arguing a strawman.  He doesn't even quote Graves to represent the position of Graves, when Graves' materials are readily available.  Landmarkers almost exclusively did not and do not believe in a chain-link position.  Some try to go back as far as they can.  What I have witnessed of and heard from them is that they believe that succession does exist and that by faith we should look to establish church authority for someone's baptism and church membership.  This is what Baptists have believed.  Moritz claims to be a Baptist, but in this case, he really argues from the standpoint of a Protestant.  He takes the universal church position, which is Roman Catholic and Reformed, and then attempts to smear those who practice according to a historical Baptist heritage.  It's sad that he would resort to the type of work that he does in order to propagate his position.

I had never even heard of Graves when I came to my position, and yet I read many others who would not have even been called Landmarkers, who took an identical viewpoint.  I in no way am even attempting to defend Graves or the Landmarkers.  What we want is the repudiation of a false position, the Catholic and Protestant ecclesiology, and support for the biblical one, which happens to be Baptist, and different than the one espoused in the journal article by Fred Moritz.

More to Come.

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Local Only Ecclesiology, Baptist History, and Landmarkism, pt. 2

Part One

In a recent article in the new Maranatha Baptist Theological Journal, Fred Moritz attempts to accomplish a few goals.  One, he wants to debunk local only ecclesiology as unscriptural and of recent origin (19th century) merely as a reaction to Campbellism and an invention by three Southern Baptists, primarily James R. Graves.  Two, he tries to have his readers think that Landmarkism is a theory that churches can and should be able to trace a physical lineage back to the first church in Jerusalem.  Three, he attempts to get his audience to believe that landmarkism, local-only ecclesiology, and the Graves group are heretical, that is divisive to the cause of true churches, essentially cultic.  Four, he doesn't say, but I believe his number one and really only goal is to do away with local only ecclesiology and thinking once and for all at Maranatha.  Moritz is a long time universal church advocate and promoter, spending a great deal of time leading a parachurch organization (BWM), and he doesn't want a whiff of local only ecclesiology and association left at Maranatha.  Does he succeed at his goal?  Let's look.

Wanting to Debunk Local Only Ecclesiology and Show of Recent Origin

I'm accustomed to reading history, judging and evaluating what I read, as to whether it's true, whether the point has been proven or not.  Moritz doesn't come close.  I'm assuming he thinks he has a sympathetic audience who doesn't need proof, i.e., he thinks he's preaching to the choir.  By the way, I find this typical of fundamentalism, which commonly writes articles for itself, for its own crowd, where it won't receive criticism. His article is an insult to hundreds of Maranatha graduates, but that doesn't seem to matter to modern Maranatha, which wants to separate itself from its past.  Its present and future have dimmed because of this.

If local only ecclesiology is only of recent origin, as Moritz is asserting, then it is no better than the Campbellite baptismal regeneration that Moritz also targets in his article.  In other words, an ecclesiology other than Moritz's own is cultic in this analysis.  I'll deal with that, but, first, I find that ironic in that the problem of Campbell's baptismal regeneration teaching, and the proceeding Church of Christ (COC) denomination, is a hermeneutical one.

Campbell and the COC style themselves as "speaking where Scripture speaks and being silent where Scripture is silent."  This is patently untrue, because Scripture is silent when it comes to any condemnation for the non-baptized, and yet Campbell and the COC condemn those who go unbaptized.  What Campbell does is take a few pet baptism references and then attempt to conform all of the doctrine of baptism to fit those few.  Right hermeneutics fit all the verses into the whole.  If we were to compare this to mathematics, Campbell uses addition instead of division.  He adds all the verses up into one baptism doctrine.  That's not how right hermeneutics operate.  It's similar to the way Mormons get to their proxy baptism doctrine from 1 Corinthians 15:29.  Campbell, and others, need to use division, akin to fractions.  A few baptism passages, like Acts 2:38 and 1 Peter 3:20-21 are a fraction, just a division, of the overall baptism passages to which they fit.

The irony for Moritz is that the Campbellite false hermeneutic is the same error that he uses to get his universal church doctrine, except for Moritz it's worse.  You've got way more usages of the "church" than you do "baptism," a much larger sample size.  When you read the 120 or so uses of ekklesia in the New Testament, you don't have, based upon Greek grammar, one unambiguous reference of a universal church in all the New Testament.   It's local church only all over the place.  Universal church teaching doesn't come from the Bible.

Baptistmal regeneration didn't start with Campbell and the COC.  Baptismal regeneration came from a Roman Catholic hermeneutic, so can be traced back to a few centuries after the church in Jerusalem.  Guess what?  So can the universal church doctrine.  Both baptismal regeneration and the Catholic (universal) church  are Roman Catholic.  And then they are also Protestant.  The reformers hung on to Catholic baptism and Catholic church.   Moritz ditches the Catholic baptism, and in so doing, says he's a Baptist (I'll deal with this a little later), but he keeps the Catholic church teaching with the same Campbellite-like hermeneutic.

When you read through Moritz's article, if you are open-minded (like I like to be), then you will see that he doesn't actually prove anything historically.  A major point to his whole thesis is that Graves was in fact a reaction to Campbell.  In other words, all of Graves's local only ecclesiology came out of a reaction to Campbell's doctrine, that is, Graves was using local only ecclesiology and some kind of chain-link authority pattern to alleviate the baptismal regeneration arguments of Campbell.  That would be a necessary historical link to make in order to prove his point.  Moritz doesn't do that, at all.  Not one bit.  And like I said, he probably doesn't think he needs to do that, because his one job with this article is merely to smear people before an uncritical audience.

Here's how good Moritz does at making that link.  He takes one historical event that was occurring around the time of Graves, the Campbell event, and assumes that because they were happening in the same era of history, they must have been related.  Sometimes these kinds of ties might be true.  However, many times they're just fools' gold, as it happens to be in this case.

In order to make the above assertion, Moritz relies on an Alan Lafever, director of the Texas Baptist historical collection.  Lafever opines that Landmarkism would never have occurred without Campbellism.  He doesn't prove it, just states it.  So Moritz uses one guy with an opinion, who does not prove that connection.  That is such a typical fundamentalist manner of operation.  If you quote someone else, you've proven it.  He's done nothing but quote someone who doesn't prove anything, which means he's still not proven anything.

What is really tell-tale about Moritz's assertion is what we see Moritz ultimately do in defining Landmarkism. He says that it is something that it actually is not.  He misdefines Landmarkism.  That alone should send his article to the trash can.  And I'll talk about that in the next part of my response to Moritz's essay.

The Travesty and Contradiction of Theologically Conservative But Culturally Liberal

This last week I talked to a man involved in the new, hottest, local, hopeful mega-church, and he described its new meeting space at a vacant Circuit City.   39,000 square feet of space.   They didn't have to set-up, take down their stage.  They have room in the old warehouse for their "kidzone," with its own stage and game space.  Folks stuck in line at IHOP decided to come to church and afterwards probably didn't have to go back because of the free donuts, coffee, and then ice cream afterwards.  As we conversed, I asked if his pastor was Calvinist---thought he might be because he graduated from Trinity and D. A. Carson's there.  He said he didn't know.  I told him I'd asked because I knew of "new Calvinists" like Mark Driscoll, who utilized new measures (slipping in Finneyism for my own enjoyment, because he wouldn't catch it), including the kegger party for the church social and the grunge band, hoping to attract adolescent males.  He said that went too far from him.  He knew about Driscoll.  I mentioned Driscoll's statement of "theologically conservative and culturally liberal." He laughed.

How can anything be "too far," when you've already decided that your boundary line, your only prohibitions, may be set only by express and clear wording of Scripture?  And then anything else adds or takes away from the Word of God.  If it's "too far for you," and it's not mentioned at all in the Bible, then you're joining those applying some sort of scriptural principle.  You too are drawing a line, just further to the left.  Based on your own standard, you are "exceeding that which is written" and elevating man-made tradition to the level of God's Word.  It reminded me of another longtime mega-church in our area, where a man participating in the band took it past a point of the comfort of the audience, so he was asked to stop.  They do draw lines, just ones of pragmatism.  Their methods already "exceed what is written" in Scripture, crafted to lure and keep an unsaved audience.  "Exceeding what is written," to them, ironically applies only against actual application of the Bible, not to their own pragmatism.

Two thoughts bounced around in my mind after our talk.  First, this is Jack Hyles on steroids.  All the people who would have mocked Hyles now walk in his Barnum and Bailey path, except worse.  Second, was the contradiction of theological conservatism and cultural liberalism.  I brought that up because I didn't think it would sound acceptable to him, even though it's how his church actually practiced.  And his laughter indicated to me that I was right.  It's not going to stop them because it works, people like it, and since it works, it must be that "God is working."  It's a form of continuationism.

Can you be a theological conservative and a cultural liberal?  Driscoll says he is.   Grace Community Church and John MacArthur won't stop rock or pop music there because they say to do so would "exceed what is written."  Know this, cultural liberalism is nothing more than "fleshly lust," "worldly lust," "making provision for the flesh," "loving the world," and "conforming to the world."  It is conduct unbecoming sound doctrine.  None of those phrases exceed what is written---they are what is written.     We've got to apply Scripture, and this is what cultural liberalism fails to do.  Cultural liberalism is an attack on the application of the Bible for pragmatic purposes.  It is what God's Word calls "licentiousness" and "using grace as an occasion of the flesh" and "turning the grace of God into lasciviousness."

You can't be a theological conservative and a cultural liberal.  The two cannot coexist.  In essence, being a theological conservative is the "saying you know God" and the cultural liberal is the "not doing what He says."  You are not a friend of God, which is the theological part of it, and you are friend of the world, which is the cultural part of it.

If you say that you are a cultural liberal, then you are borrowing a Christian worldview for theological conservatism.  Theological conservatism says that there is one God and one doctrine, God cannot deny Himself.  Cultural liberalism says that God can deny His own goodness and beauty.  There is one Jesus and He isn't a goodymeister.  He isn't a genie in a bottle, who will pop out to give you all your wishes.  You can't believe in Jesus and separate Him from culture.  Your culture will conform to that Jesus, to that one and only true God.  And if your culture doesn't conform to the one and true Jesus, then it conforms to another Jesus, and then you're not a theological conservative anymore.  You have a different Jesus.

When the culture isn't changed by the theology, people will not see the one and only true God in the culture.  Whatever theology one says He believes, others will not see it in a culture that denies that very God.  The travesty is that a conservative theology has already changed with a liberal culture.  It just isn't admitting it.  In the end, a liberal culture will change a conservative theology into a liberal one, in deed and in faith.