"For what one does not have and does not know, one could neither give to another nor teach another."

Plato, Symposium.  trans. Seth Benardete, p26.

MTD and discipleship

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.

Sociologist Christian Smith wrote a few years ago that significant numbers of American Christians, especially adolescents, are only "tenuously Christian in any sense that is seriously connected to the actual historical Christian tradition" and instead embrace "Christianity's misbegotten step-cousin, Christian Moralistic Therapeutic Deism."

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is the set of beliefs that includes:

1. A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.

2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.

3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life, except when God is needed to resolve a problem.

5. Good people go to heaven when they die.

...

As Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research, recently noted,

The elephant in the Christian church today is that we are not seeing robust disciple-making taking place. You are more likely to find evangelicals affirming that there is more than one way to get to heaven today than you were 15 or 20 years ago. Why? We've done great at getting them in the door and occupying their spiritual appetites, but we've done terrible at actually growing them up and grounding them in the faith.

Although no tradition is entirely without blame, evangelicalism bears a large share of the responsibility. Many of our churches have wholly embraced therapeutic language and concepts while all but abandoning the role of catechesis.

Almost every nondenominational congregation has a worship leader, and yet only a few have a catechist. Sunday school classes may teach the young the stories of the Bible, but few provide in-depth teaching on theology. New adult believers have it even worse. They may be asked to attend a brief class, but doctrine is given short shrift, if presented at all. If they do ask about the content of their faith, what they are expected to believe, they may be given a pamphlet or a book recommendation and a map to the nearest Christian bookstore.

While we have mastered the task of making converts we are by and large failing, as Stetzer says, in our duty of making disciples. Teaching the basic doctrines of the faith is not an optional task, a project that we can undertake if we have time left over from our prayer breakfasts and small group meetings—it is a matter of eternal consequence. ...

Deists Who Love Jesus (and Talk Like Freud)  by Joe Carter
http://thegospelcoalition.org/article/deists-who-love-jesus-and-talk-like-freud/

Like flowers out of the mud (Stott)

Paul’s words in Ephesians 5:4 are quite clear. A morally bankrupt culture will use morally bankrupt language. The people of Paul’s day were familiar with the Greek and Roman Bacchanal parties with their infamous orgies. Those orgies had their own vocabulary. Paul was saying, “That is not our language.” John Stott said this about some men and women from this Corinthian-type culture who were converted to Christ: “When believers rose up out of the environment of the ancient world, they rose up like flowers out of the mud.”

Flattery and Foolish Talk,  by John Sartelle
http://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/flattery-and-foolish-talk/

liberalism and historic leave-taking

"Far more serious still is the division between the Church of Rome and evangelical Protestantism in all its forms. Yet how great is the common heritage which unites the Roman Catholic Church, with its maintenance of the authority of Holy Scripture and with its acceptance of the great early creeds, to devout Protestants today! We would not indeed obscure the difference which divides us from Rome. The gulf is indeed profound. But profound as it is, it seems almost trifling compared to the abyss which stands between us and many ministers of our own Church. The Church of Rome may represent a perversion of the Christian religion; but naturalistic liberalism is not Christianity at all.

That does not mean that conservatives and liberals must live in personal animosity. It does not involve any lack of sympathy on our part for those who have felt obliged by the current of the times to relinquish their confidence in the strange message of the Cross. Many ties—ties of blood, of citizenship, of ethical aims, of humanitarian endeavor—unite us to those who have abandoned the gospel. We trust that those ties may never be weakened, and that ultimately they may serve some purpose in the propagation of the Christian faith. But Christian service consists primarily in the propagation of a message, and specifically Christian fellowship exists only between those to whom the message has become the very basis of all life.”

J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism.  1923. Page 42.
http://ref.ly/o/chrstntylbrlsm/112981 

Consider this in light of the recent Historic leave-taking.

Luther on Vocation (Wingren)

“There is nothing more delightful and lovable on earth than one’s neighbor. Love does not think about doing works, it finds joy in people; and when something good is done for others, that does not appear to love as works but simply as gifts which flow naturally from love. Love never does something because it has to. It is permitted to act…

“Only as the old man, still under the law, does the Christian ask about the righteousness of his works. Faith and the new man knows only one righteousness: the forgiveness of sins. It is his neighbor in whom the new man finds his joy. That which takes place between him and his neighbor is not works, the righteousness of which is of concern to him; he does not ask about the worth of what he does…

“Love discovers for itself what is of the greatest benefit to a neighbor. It cannot busy itself with deeds prescribed by rules of propriety without ceasing to be love. It becomes a bondage under law, concern with one’s own holiness, which, uncertain of salvation, seeks to achieve certainty by requiring sacrifice for a neighbor. It has names for all works, each more formidable than the next. Such sporadic ‘love’ does not live in childlike faith; therefore it lacks the Spirit’s certainty. It is not love, because its first interest is not a neighbor’s need, but the salvation of one’s own soul..."

Gustaf Wingren, Luther on Vocation, pages 43-50



"The old man is characterized by wrath, envy, greed, laziness, pride, unbelief, and such obvious sins, which manifestly constitute a encumbrance on vocation and one’s neighbor. When the demand of vocation and neighbor is laid upon the old man, he is made amenable. These sins are repressed and given place to a gentle and patient new man, who receives his life from God’s hand. In daily activity baptism is realized as a daily repentance. Thus the Christian is both old and new man, not only in relation to God’s judgment, God’s forgives, but also in his encounter with vocation and neighbor. He is still the old man, insofar as the encounter irritates him, and new man she the encounter takes place with inner calm and joy. Since the neighbor is not just one person but many at any given time, and since vocation has many ramifications, the complete interplay of life’s changing situations is tied into relationship with God. In this is the real meaning of the expression simul iustus et peccator (righteous and sinner at the same time).”

Gustaf Wingren, Luther on Vocation, page 55-56

Naturalistic moral outage?

“If we really believed that we are nothing more than accidental collections of atoms, moral outrage over anything would be irrational.”

D.A. Carson, How Long, Oh Lord?

http://ref.ly/o/howlonglord/223757 via the Logos Bible Android app.

The Existence of God (Aquinas)

But as soon as the signification of the word "God" is understood, it is at once seen that God exists. For by this word is signified that thing than which nothing greater can be conceived. But that which exists actually and mentally is greater than that which exists only mentally. Therefore, since as soon as the word "God" is understood it exists mentally, it also follows that it exists actually. Therefore the proposition "God exists" is self-evident.
Summa Theologia, I. Q.2. A.1


Further, the existence of truth is self-evident. For whoever denies the existence of truth grants that truth does not exist: and, if truth does not exist, then the proposition "Truth does not exist" is true: and if there is anything true, there must be truth.
Summa Theologia, I. Q.2. A.2

Divine Praise (John of Damascus)

When I have no books, or when my thoughts, torturing me like thorns, do not let me enjoy reading, I go to church, which is the cure available for every disease of the soul. The freshness of the images draws my attention, captivates my eyes … and slowly leads my soul to divine praise.

JOHN OF DAMASCUS