Weekly Link Round Up

My favorite posts from around the interwebs this week:

• Darryl Dash confesses to flunking Kingdom Economics. Nice job Darryl.
• My new Vineyard friend Ray Hollenbach asks, Is Obedience Possible?
• The digital Jason Evans practices walking as a spiritual discipline. Sounds like a Phil Dick novel to me.
• In the wake recent proclamations of the death of the Emerging Church, of Jamie Arpin-Ricci posts some very helpful thoughts as usual.
• On to the latest Missonal uproar. Bill Kinnon fired a beautifully snarky shot, Dan MacDonald claims Mercy = Missional and Vice Versa (and I largely agree), and Rick Meigs provides a nice running catalog of several good responses.
• JR Rozko stays out of it so far, be he did post an excellent piece on how existing traditional churches can become missional. A hugely important topic.
• On to a couple fantastic stories in a local rag, the San Diego City Beat: First, The $140 Million Foreskin and the (ahem) short follow up piece.
• Finally, a couple of excellent religion-related articles from Io9: First, the delicious little piece, Is Vat Grown Meat Kosher? and second, Digital Maps Reveal Hidden Geographies of Sex and Religion. Oh yes, you read that right.

Technorati Tags: Bill Kinnon, Dan MacDonald, Darryl Dash, I09, Jamie Arpin-Ricc, Jason Evans, JR Rozko, Links, Ray Hollenbach, Rick Meigs, San Diego City Beat

The scriptural bias toward chaos

I’m a day behind Darryl in this informal conversation about the sovereignty of God, but yesterday he posted his latest in the series, “Does God control human decisions and actions?” Not to spoil the ending for you, but Darryl’s answer to that questions seems to be “Yes.” As usual, Darryl is humble and gracious, but he brings the big guns to this topic, citing no less than 51 passages of scripture. You really should read it yourself, but in his conclusion, he writes:

At every turn, the Biblical writers see God’s hand in everything that takes place. God is in control of everything – our lives, our desires, our actions – even the sinful ones. He is able to control things so that they accomplish his purposes. At the same time, humans make meaningful choices and are in no way puppets – as contradictory as this appears to us.

I really appreciate the way Darryl has approached this subject, and I’m impressed with his dispassionate approach. Still, I must point out that none of the passages he cites preclude the Kingdom-oriented view of God’s sovereignty I briefly summarized in my last two posts (here and here). For anyone who takes scripture seriously (as I think we all do here) there is no question that an important theme of the bible is that, “God is in control.” That’s not really in dispute.

However, the question remains: at what level of circumstance is his control exercised?

Continue reading…

Technorati Tags: Arminianism, Calvinism, Darryl Dash, God, sovereignty

Birds, the Bible, and broken down cars

Update #1: Jenell (no, not my wife Jenell surprisingly), has posted a brilliant and hilarious response to John Piper’s latest strange rant about the Lutheran and bad weather. Trust me, read it.

Update #2: Greg Boyd has the unforgivable audacity to weigh in on the discussion of John Piper’s recent post with scientific understanding and common sense. Scandalous!

Update #3: Today (8/22) John Piper clarifies his intentions about the tornado blog post. I have tremendous respect for Piper’s life and work, but frankly I’m having a hard time swallowing his explanation. His entire original post was written to single out the ECLA and their particular sin. How can he credibly claim that he was making a general point?

Update #4: Michael Spencer (aka the Internet Monk) weighs in with his thoughts on the whole topic. His post is excellent…but then, I would think so because I agree. : )

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Daryll Dash began his blog series on the topic of God’s sovereignty and evil today, and he does a great job of modeling a humble, reasonable, and irenic tone. In other words, he’s everything I’m not.

The whole post is worth reading here, but the main scriptural points he makes are:

• God controls the events of the natural world, including the weather (Psalm 65:9-11; Psalm 135:6-7; Psalm 147:15-18; Jeremiah 5:22; Nahum 1:3; Acts 14:17). God governs the events of nature.
• God sometimes favors one group over another through natural events (Genesis 41:32; Exodus 9:13-26; Amos 4:7).
• According to Jesus, this divine control extends over even the smallest details (Matthew 5:45; Matthew 6:26-30; Luke 12:4-7).
• Jesus, as God, calmed the sea at his command (Matthew 8:23-27).

Let me begin by addressing the passages themselves:

Continue reading…

Technorati Tags: Arminianism, Bill Kinnon, Calvinism, creation, Darryl Dash, Gospel, nature, sovereignty

The not-God of I35, Job, and John Piper

My online friend Bill Kinnon has gotten himself into a bit of a row over the subject of God’s sovereignty with this post at his blog Kinnon.tv. In it, he not-so-gently mocks John Piper’s comments about God’s supposed role in the I35 bridge collapse a couple years ago in Minneapolis. Here’s the shot he fired across every neo-Calvinist’s bow:

I do not believe in a God who foreordains every action, but in a God who is not surprised by anything. As an example, the collapse of the I35 bridge in Minneapolis/St. Paul was not part of God’s sovereign plan – no matter what Piper told his young daughter.

Daryl Dash got into the action by announcing a subsequent, yet still impending, blog series on the topic and Bill seems to enjoy jousting with others in the comments section resulting in this rebuke by another reader:

God has foreordained everything to happen. The Scriptures are blatant about this side of the truth revealed about God’s sovereignty. Just because you can’t logically conceive of this as compatible with suffering in this present fallen world doesn’t mean you have to denigrate God’s pre-determination of all things.

Here’s my question: Doesn’t Jesus’ gospel – that is, the pronouncement of God’s inaugurated kingdom (i.e. Matt 4:23) – fundamentally presume the existence of a realm in which God is not king, where his rule and reign are not?

Continue reading…

Technorati Tags: Bill Kinnon, Darryl Dash, Evil, God, Job, John Piper, sovereignty