tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6888282.post8745746862023143605..comments2024-03-07T00:03:12.584-07:00Comments on John's Corner of the World: CHEC "Men's Leadership Summit," Part II--"For Such a Time as This -- The 1000-Year Battle Over the Hearts and Minds of the Next Generation"John Holzmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14849211055450293089noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6888282.post-1266951431109797662009-06-02T14:57:47.824-06:002009-06-02T14:57:47.824-06:00FYI: Pastor Swanson attended Bahnsen Seminary [now...FYI: Pastor Swanson attended Bahnsen Seminary [now defunct]--a long-distance learning institute. It would indeed be hard for teachers to have intimate knowledge of their students and discover any pride.<br /><br />Profile info:<br />http://www.clionline.org/moodle/user/view.php?id=61&course=1Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6888282.post-44372435187045651292009-04-10T08:59:00.000-06:002009-04-10T08:59:00.000-06:00To Anonymous Fri Apr 10, 08:51:00 AM:Please forgiv...To Anonymous Fri Apr 10, 08:51:00 AM:<BR/><BR/>Please forgive me for any confusion my color scheme (or, as you noted, <EM>inconsistent</EM> color scheme) has created. It was (and is) certainly <EM>not</EM> my intention to mislead. But I am realizing I need, somehow, to distinguish <BR/><BR/>* the <EM>original speaker</EM>'s message, accurately conveyed (though not always quoted directly); from <BR/><BR/>* comments <EM>I</EM> am making; from<BR/><BR/>* "Oops! Here's an additional comment that I did not include when I first wrote this article."<BR/><BR/>I am still trying to work out a consistent pattern.<BR/><BR/>I believe I did a better job on my Part III post. . . .<BR/><BR/>Please know, however (and always) that I appreciate your feedback and will be grateful for any suggestions.<BR/><BR/>THANKS!<BR/><BR/>JohnJohn Holzmannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14849211055450293089noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6888282.post-40165004142754980342009-04-10T08:51:00.000-06:002009-04-10T08:51:00.000-06:00I'm only halfway through reading this post but I m...I'm only halfway through reading this post but I must say that the color changes are misleading. You should really work on consistency. Unless you were purposely trying to mislead...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6888282.post-29832387598377715402009-04-01T05:34:00.000-06:002009-04-01T05:34:00.000-06:00Noting Mr. Glover's comment, I wonder why so much ...Noting Mr. Glover's comment, I wonder why so much attention would be paid to Aquinas, making him out to be something of an anti-Rushdoony straw man, if I'm reading the subtleties of what has been written here correctly. <BR/><BR/>Yet the Christian neoplatonism and the Cartesian anxiety that I find to be so problematic in the so-called "Biblical patriarchy" movement goes unnoticed and unaddressed, despite the citing of many of those who built the City of Man? Oh well, each construct of man, that which helps him make sense of the world (each human being's attempt to comprehend the wonder of God's greatness, does have its unique problems due to our human limitations and vantage (something I do know that Aquinas pondered at length). We all have holes in our attempts to understand the fear and trembling of working out our salvation and what it means to be in the world, yet not of it. There appears to be no shortcut or formula or manifesto that circumvents this tension. Yet we try so hard to find the magic passage through it, don't we?Cynthia Kunsmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08060294887790881860noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6888282.post-44819261694304628232009-04-01T05:09:00.000-06:002009-04-01T05:09:00.000-06:00Dear John Holtzmann,I appreciate your review of CH...Dear John Holtzmann,<BR/><BR/>I appreciate your review of CHEC Summit conference, as I do not want to give these folks any more money than I already have, trying only to buy used copies of their books to review. I cant very well find a used mp3 download at this point!<BR/><BR/>Discerning the problems with these ideologues proves to be no simple task. If the differences were plain and obvious, you would likely not be blogging about the matter. As you note in your post, I also share many of the same values along with the "patriocentrics," some concerning essential issues of the Christian faith and some that concern more peripheral matters like grave concerns about our culture. That is how and why I am so familiar with the group. But as you also indicate briefly here, I likewise don't often agree with the causalities that Swanson's group develops or the means by which they seek to preserve/defend our common values, convictions and interests. <BR/><BR/>I appreciate your affirming of those things that you do hold in common and celebrate along with the specifics that Swanson brings up in his presentation. I'm also grateful that you turned up Aquinas in context, as this is something that most people would not undertake, nor would I imagine that many would have the opportunity. Drawing on such a work also gives the appearance of the lofty, sounding intellectual and "too wonderful" for most. I believe that most of the people in the target audience would be intimidated by Aquinas. In many ways, I find it curious that Swanson quotes a patristic source (ones that can often be convoluted enough to be used as evidence to support any position). And oddly, I'd just re-read and older book that addresses the quoting highly reputable sources in a review of rhetorical devices as a means to promote doctrine on my own blog this past week, writing about this very subject last week. I'd just been reading the chapters addressing this very technique less than a week ago. It unavoidably smacks of "Appeal to Authority" or Robert Cialdini's "Weapon's of Influence" for me.<BR/><BR/><B>Says James Sire on page 42 of "Scripture Twisting":</B><BR/><I>One of the major rhetorical uses of the Bible or any source of "high quality quotes" such as Shakespeare, Homer or Dante (or even such modern writers as Doestoevsky, C.S. Lewis or Francis Schaeffer!) is as a pretext for one's own ideas. A handy phrase come to mind as we use it, never looking up its original context or caring one whit about what it originally meant.</I><BR/><BR/>My heart grieves because in so many ways, these folks are my brethren and my people, and for the past 10 years, I feel like my corner of the church has been hijacked by means of parachurch organizations and novel doctrines. That makes the "great divide" as RC Sproul, Jr. described the difference between his "movement homeschooler" group and the group into which I assume I fall (list the pejorative of the day...) all the more disappointing and painful. As you note, I find that much of that whole package of which Kevin seems to refer is not of the "City of God."<BR/><BR/>Thank you for your concern for the Body of Christ and for homeschoolers (both Christian and secular who enjoy these liberties as the fruit of so many activists in the '60s and '70s), taking on the task of scraping back the sugary coating and the rhetoric to communicate your own esteem at what you find below the veneer. I appreciate your gracious spirit in doing so as well.<BR/><BR/>May God work this separatism into something that blesses those on both sides of the divide, using these issues as something that will bring us all together into greater knowledge of the truth of the GOSPEL. May we all become oaks of righteousness that are firmly grounded in right perspective and God's truth that He might be glorified. I supposed until He brings this into full fruition, the iron will continue to scrape and the sparks fly.<BR/><BR/>I look forward to your next thoughtful and gracious instalment.Cynthia Kunsmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08060294887790881860noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6888282.post-52746480671522852822009-03-31T05:39:00.000-06:002009-03-31T05:39:00.000-06:00One thought that keeps playing through my head is ...One thought that keeps playing through my head is . . . Where is God's sovereignty; where is His providence in this talk?<BR/><BR/>One toe dipped in the river doesn't mean doom -- it might, but God is powerful enough that it shouldn't be a foregone conclusion. <BR/><BR/>And, Oh my gosh, world history in 30 seconds? I spent 12 years helping my children understand the flow of history, thoughts, philosophies, etc. <BR/><BR/>Francis Schaeffer seems to be a cause of misunderstanding Aquinas. Didn't Aquinas actually say that all truth meets at the top? There are spheres of knowledge, but truth is truth. All truth is God's truth.<BR/><BR/>Descartes took those spheres of knowledge and isolated them from the top. At least that is my understanding.<BR/><BR/>Misc Thoughts:<BR/>1. Loren Haarsma's essays on chance and God are really outstanding. <BR/>2. Building relationships within a family doesn't have to look exactly their model. I rather resent that they feel they can speak for my husband and our family.<BR/>3. Does it bother anyone else that young families are leading this movement? What about those of us who have run the course, finished raising our children, and have evidence of our success or failure?<BR/><BR/>Whew . . . long winded this morning!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6888282.post-12326623885827327662009-03-30T18:22:00.000-06:002009-03-30T18:22:00.000-06:00That's an interesting take on Aquinas. My underst...That's an interesting take on Aquinas. My understanding is that Thomas Aquinas was the intellecutal force behind the medieval synthesis of Aristotilean Scholasticism with Christian Orthodoxy. Aquinas took the cosmological worldview of Aristotle and fully integrated it with Christian theology. As a result, the geocentric cosmos of the Greek philosophers became the cosmological stage upon which the entire Christian drama of creation, the fall, the incarnation and the consumation would unfold. Did I miss the part about keeping science and theology in two separate realms?<BR/><BR/>Thomas Khun, commenting on Dante's Divine Comedy in his book, The Copernican Revolution puts it like this: <BR/>"For the Christian...the ancient universe had symbolic as well as literal meaning...As he [Dante] portrays it, the universe of [concentric] spheres mirrors both man's hope and his fate. Both physically and spiritually man occupies a crucial intermediate position in this universe filled, as it is, by a hierarchical chain of substances that stretches from the inert clay of the center to the pure spirit of the Empyrean [Heavens]. Man is compounded of a material body and a spiritual soul: all other substances are either matter or spirit. Mans' location, too, is intermediate: the earth's surface is close to its debased and corporeal center but within sight of the celestial periphery which surrounds it symmetrically. Man lives in squalor and uncertainty, and his is very close to Hell. But his central location is strategic, for he is everywhere under the eye of God. Both man's double nature and his intermediate position enforce the choice from which the drama of Christianity is compounded. he may follow his corporeal, earthly nature down to its natural place at the corrupt center, or he may follow his soul upward through the successively more spiritual spheres until he reaches God. As one critic of Dante has put it, in the Divine Comedy the 'vastest of all themes, the theme of human sin and salvation, is adjusted to the great plan of the universe.'"<BR/><BR/>Given this mindset, it makes sense that the new cosmology put forth by the Renaisance astronomers would be so strongly opposed by the theologians of their day. Copernicus was branded a heretic by Calvin, Luther, Melanchthon because he dared to upset this system. To suggest that the corruptible earth moved through the immutable heavens literally turned the cosmos up-side-down, or as Calvin preached from the pulpit, it "pervert[ed] the order of nature" -- an order that fit quite nicely with Christian theology at the time. Galileo had his problems with the Catholic Church over these same issues. One could claim that it was Aquinas' attempt to harmonize contemporary (Aristotilean) science with Christian theology hundreds of years earlier that set up this inevitable train wreck. A weck from wich Christianity today still suffers.<BR/><BR/>When the dust of the heliocentric controversy finally settled, and the scientific evidence for Earth's double motion became too great for any educated person to ignore, the perception of many intellectuals was that "the Bible could no longer be trusted." The rise of deism and atheism during the Enlightenment probably had a lot do with how the outcome of this epic showdown between science and the Bible was percieved. The Church lost influence. The authority of the Bible was diminished. All because medieval theologians wove their theology so tightly into the framework of geocentric cosmology that they could not let go of it when old science was replaced with new science.<BR/><BR/>Now fast forward to the 1960s. Morris and Whitcomb took a discredited idea, and idea that originated from within the Seventh-Day Adventist church and was abandoned by the Scriptural Geologists of the early 1800's, and repackaged it under the new name of "Flood Geology". Because of "scientific creationism" many evangelicals today have their theology so tightly woven into a specific view of natural history that they either refuse to acknowlege scientific progress, or they are swept away by the overwhelming evidence of earth's antiquity and abandon their faith. <BR/><BR/>Rather than start a new reformation -- Morris and Whitcomb instead set in motion another epic showdown between science and scripture. At least, that's how the world gleefully perceives it. And unfortunately, there is nothing about these young-earth ideas that can withstand scientific scrutiny. These Young-Earth Creationists are giving the "new atheists" and liberal Christians all the ammunition they need to convince anyone who will listen to them that the Bible can't be trusted on matters of science and history.<BR/><BR/>Sorry John for the rant, but I just thought it was ironic that Swanson evicerates Aquinas and hails Morris and Whitcomb as modern reformers. Like you, I can sympathize with a lot of Swanson says. But the manner in which he presents his case and twists certain facts to bolster his opinions is troubling.Gordon J. Gloverhttp://www.beyondthefirmament.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6888282.post-81417188191849450202009-03-30T15:57:00.000-06:002009-03-30T15:57:00.000-06:00John i give you so much credit for wading waist hi...John i give you so much credit for wading waist high in that mucj!<BR/><BR/>the last sentece you wrote..."that it's their way or the highway" essentailly is what is the most disturbing.<BR/><BR/>Thank you for continuing to research and report on this junk.<BR/><BR/>Blessings<BR/>BarbaraAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com