The Fatherhood of God

For those of you who have taken a peek at the heresy being purveyed at that linked site in my last post. Here is a nice, I won't say little, but a very refreshing defense of the Fatherhood of God:

The Fatherhood of God

Demonstrations cheerfully provided!

Just in case anyone needed a discussion demonstrating the truth of the definition of religious feminism I gave in the previous post. Check out this discussion before it gets hidden from public view:

Answering the claim of liberal feministic theology

Defining Feminism

Since a Denver Seminary student has commented on this blog disputing whether or not the seminary teaches feminism in its classes, it seems appropriate to offer at least a preliminary definition of feminism:

Feminism is the belief which denies the created order of the sexes. Religious feminism, in particular, is the heresy which denies the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the authorship of Scripture and denies the paradox at the heart of orthodox Christian anthropology - that man and woman are equally created in the image and likeness of God and that, by creation and sovereign decree, God has established the headship of the man over the woman.

The hazards of "googling"

Mother Google is getting a bit too clever for my tastes. Why can't I simply enter search terms and get a listing of all pages that fit? Why does it "help" google to know where I am from and what my search history is? It skews the results and ends up in frustration because it gives me what it thinks I want and that is, with increasing frequency, not what I want. This morning's search was a case in point. While searching for "Celtic Christianity", I stumbled across a new church in the Denver area. It is "co-pastored" by a Denver Seminary professor and his wife (she, a former PCUSA pastor). They are currently preaching through Saint Patrick's Breastplate.

This got me wondering that, with all of Denver Seminary's expansion lately, are they not managing to train enough pastors in the trendy new thing? Are they unsatisfied with how their students are doing?

Apparently not being satisfied with teaching feminism on campus, they have to put it into practice as co-pastors. Not that feminism is the only cultural trend they are chasing after. In an effort to echo the title of a Philip Rieff book, Denver Seminary's counseling program seems to have triumphed as well. I am guessing such a therapeutic view of things is the source for their support of another professor-church planter who is divorced and re-married. That church, which currently meets on the seminary campus, describes their leadership council as being composed of men and women fitting the biblical qualifications as elders.


Never mind that women aren't included in the biblical listing of elder qualifications because, apparently, this particular church pays no never mind to that husband of one wife thing, either.

To quote yet another Denver Seminary professor, "The genius of Evangelicalism is its ability to re-invent itself".

Indeed.

Flat, grey and ugly

That's the landscape presented to us by religious feminism. You know they protest most vigorously whenever they are called on their leveling of the tremendous differences between men and women. They cry foul and protest that theirs is a technicolor world and ours is thegrey one, cramped by rules.

But then these spayers and gelders (to borrow my dear friend Anthony Esolen's phrase) let their slip show, proving my point in rather unspectacular fashion. These people who claim to exist for the sole purpose of lifting up women from their prison of kinder, kuche, kirche (unless, of course, the kirche bit includes leading men around by the, ahem, nose in their positions as pastorettes), well, one of them just inevitably goes and says something like this:

God chose to inform Mary first of the impending conception and some time later Joseph was told. If God saw Joseph as the leader of the home he surely would have sent the angel to Joseph first.

Just what are we supposed to do with that? This is the moment upon which history turns. And our wise ones reduce it to "God chose to inform" and "impending conception"?!

There is no beauty, no sense of humble obedience, willingly embracing God's plan here in the religious feminist explanation. And certainly no Magnificat!

My soul magnifies the Lord,

And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.

For He has regarded the low estate of His handmaiden,

For behold, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.

For He who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is His name.

And His mercy is on those who fear Him from generation to generation.

He has shown strength with His arm:

He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He has put down the mighty from their thrones,

and exalted those of low degree.

He has filled the hungry with good things;

and the rich He has sent empty away.

He has helped His servant Israel, in remembrance of His mercy;

As He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to His posterity forever.

Why it matters

Religious feminists often accuse orthodox Christians of adding to the Gospel, of being pharisees who pile on requirements of the law, adding to some supposed pure Gospel. Unless, of course, it is their idea that the "gospel of equality" is the pure and simple gospel.

In this post, Doug Wilson gets it:

When God gave us the world, Hegave us certain building blocks for the understanding -- heaven and earth, sea and dry land, sun and moon, male and female. Let me try to imagine a place which had heaven and earth muddled, sea and dry land reversed, sun and moon backwards, and the female in combat and the male in drag, but where everybody was sound on Christ crucified and justification by faith alone. Can't picture that? Neither can I.

Nether can I.

To shut it again on something solid

As is frequently the case, the religious feminists over at CBE's blog have again brought to mind a Chesterton quote:

The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.

Their current post is about "pedagogy and gender" and reads like nothing so much as a primer on postmodern/post evangelical reimagining of Christianity. In the post author's own words, "knowledge is dialogical and communal". While I will readily admit that certain forms of knowledge are indeed communal, I hasten to add that Truth is not. Truth takes the form of a person, the God-Man Jesus Christ. But the enlightened ones over at CBE appear to be more interested in whining about patriarchalists not "sharing" than they are in bowing their knee to the one who is Truth incarnate.

To all their concerns about about closure, the opportunity for which is denied if religious feminists are excluded (as the blog manager moans in his response), I can only say that their quibble is with God himself. It is God who established patriarchy-- it is written into his works as well as his word. All known cultures have been patriarchal, even if some have been matrilineal in the reckoning of inheritance. In the beginning God established patriarchy by creating Adam first and then creating Eve from him and for him, then by calling Adam to account for the rebellion even though it was Eve who took and ate first. He established Israel as a patriarchy and eventually gave it Kings (not queens) and priests (not priestesses).

Then, in the fullness of time, God set forth his Son. Did you catch that? In the fullness of time. Jesus Christ did not take on male flesh because the patriarchal culture of his time required it, the culture of his time was patriarchal because it was right, the time was full. Jesus continued this practice by numbering only men among the twelve. After his death and resurrection, they continued His practice by only considering men as possible replacements for Judas Iscariot. This practice was continued by the early church through the Fathers and on down to our present age.

In other words, closure has long been established on this matter. It is not the patriarchalists who exclude the religious feminists. It is the religious feminists who have excluded themselves by their rebellion against God's established order.

Doubting Beauty

An old friend recently posted a short piece on his blog about the all too frequent lack of good apologetic answers on the part of Christians who encounter someone with doubts. His prejudice, I know from experience, is that arguments will save the soul of the doubter.

The problem is more likely a case of inadequate, stunted apologetics. Reformed and conservative Protestant Christians may know Lee Strobel or Josh McDowell by heart. They know how to deal with intellectual doubt and answer questions logically and rationally. But do they know Beauty? They believe they have a handle on Truth - but are utterly ignorant of her sisters, Goodness and Beauty.

I have long been convinced that one of the reasons Evangelicalism fell so spectacularly fast and so very thoroughly to the heresy that likes to call itself Egalitarianism is that their theology is inadequate. They are so afraid of anything with a whiff of incense, the least taint of Rome, that they run headlong away from anything but their Bibles and a few acceptable authors. They have even trimmed the cardinal Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura into just me and my Bible, also known as solo scriptura.

There is no room in their universe for an argument from Beauty - beauty isn't so easily contained in their tight little logic boxes. Beauty is a wild card, she is dangerous. Beauty unleashes, in the words of a friend, titanic realities. Beauty opens the door to the past, to a time when we weren't so, ahem, enlightened. And she opens the door to her nature, to transcendence. She can be terrifying and comforting, wild and yet as tame as a purring cat curled up on your lap. Beauty can be found in a ray of sunshine falling across your shoulder, in the laugh of a child, in the almost imperceptible first strains of the violins opening On the Beautiful Blue Danube, in the eyes of a friend, or in the simple and accidental touch of your beloved.

Will philosophy, logic, rational arguments win the soul of a doubter? Perhaps. But I think it more likely that Dostoyevsky was right. Beauty will save world.

As if the kids aren't bad enough . . .

I am at the library today, trying to find some articles online using their search engines. And, truthfully, the boys aren't bad. They are minding their own business, playing their computer games. But the woman next to me is old enough to know better.

Popping your gum? Seriously?

I'm a bit surprised

Months after I highlighted on this blog the heresy-spouting paganism of one of CBE's authors (profiled on their blog's contributor's page with a link to her blog), they have now scrubbed her entry.


Funny that.