10. You’re too structured for Charismatics, too loosey-goosey for Anglicans

9. Assumed to be a liberal until you’ve quoted Tim Keller

8. Assumed to be a liberal until you’ve qualified that although you’ve quoted Tim Keller, you also don’t want to change the Book of Church Order

7. You knew that July 10 was John Calvin’s 501st birthday

6. You’ll always add a Latin phrase to your sentences, Deo Volente.

5. You know the Five Solas were not a doo-wop group from Bayonne, New Jersey

4. You hope Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses knock on your door

3. Your idea of decorating a room is adding another bookshelf

2. Your iTunes playlist is all Michael Card, Indelible Grace, and Derik Webb – nothing currently playing on K-Love

1. You not only know all things work to the good, you rely upon it

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Relativism (rel-a-tiv-ism) is “a theory…that conceptions of truth and moral values are not absolute but are relative to the persons or groups holding them” 

Today I’m not going to focus on refuting relativism, but rather relate it’s flaws and consequences.

7 Fatal Flaws of Relativism

From Francis Beckwith and Gregory Koukl’s Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air, we discover the Seven Fatal Flaws of Relativism:

Relativists can’t accuse others of wrongdoing

Relativists can’t complain about the problem of evil

Relativists can’t place blame or accept praise

Relativists can’t make charges of unfairness or injustice

Relativists can’t improve their morality

Relativists can’t hold meaningful moral discussions

Relativists can’t promote the obligation of tolerance

Consequences of Relativism

Generally speaking, it can be argued that moral relativism has seeped into the very fabric of people’s beliefs, especially those 30 and under.  Now, if we follow the trajectory of this belief in our country to its logical conclusion, it’s hard not to imagine that in the future we will be living in a country where:

….nothing is wrong-nothing is considered evil or good, nothing worthy of praise or blame.  It would be a world in which justice and fairness are meaningless concepts, in which there would be no accountability, no possibility of moral improvement, no moral discourse.  And it would be a world in which there is no tolerance.  Moral relativism produces this kind of world.  The late Dr. Francis Schaeffer’s remark could well apply to relativists, who “…have both feet firmly planted in mid-air” (69)

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As I move towards completing my M.Div., I will be taking two classes this summer.  One of my classes revolves primarily around the Pentateuch and you can learn more about there here.

Another class I’m taking this summer is Classics of Christian Thought taught by Dr. Alan Myatt.

This class is what they consider a reading course, which means I will have to read every text in the bibliography, write a short review on each book, and write a final paper at the end of the course that ties together a common theme in no fewer than three of the books (12 to 15 pages).

What I’m looking forward to most in this class is the reading of books that I would not have chosen to read on my own, especially those of John Wesley.  Drawing on multiple Christian Traditions is one of the features that I most appreciate and have benefited from at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary.

Any who, here is the description of the course from the syllabus:

Amidst the discussion of modernity, post modernity and “emergence” currently in vogue, the questions of how we got here and where we should be going are critical.  This course aims to provide context and background, as well as guidance, by means of engaging several critical seminal texts in the history of the church. These are texts that have contributed decisively to the direction of the church at key moments and/or provided continual inspiration in the theological and spiritual formation of Christian. Our objective is to appreciate the contribution of these writings to the development of the church as well as to allow them to speak to us in our own context as we grapple with the issues facing the church today.

The following ten books are what I’ll read over the course of the next twelve weeks:

Origen, An Exhortation to Martyrdom, Prayer, and Selected Works

Saint Augustine, Confessions

Saint Anselm, Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works

Martin Luther, On the Freedom of a Christian

Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (Abridged)

John Owen, Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers

Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections

John Wesley, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

 

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Since I’ve been scurrying the web for preaching, teaching, and writing opportunities, I wanted to share what websites I’ve been using so that others could benefit.

Ministry List

Reformed Theological Seminary Vocational Services

Westminster Theological Seminary Employment Opportunities

Evangelical Presbyterian Church Opportunities List

Presbyterian Church in America Ministry Opportunities

Church Staffing

Church Jobs

[Question: What are some websites that you would add to this list?]

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From The Wall Street Journal: Medical Schools Can’t Keep Up by Suzanne Sataline and Shirley Wang,

The new federal health-care law has raised the stakes for hospitals and schools already scrambling to train more doctors.

Experts warn there won’t be enough doctors to treat the millions of people newly insured under the law. At current graduation and training rates, the nation could face a shortage of as many as 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges

What the Shortage Will Mean

A shortage of primary-care and other physicians could mean more-limited access to health care and longer wait times for patients.

Limited Number of Resident Positions where Future Doctors are Trained

But medical colleges and hospitals warn that these efforts will hit a big bottleneck: There is a shortage of medical resident positions. The residency is the minimum three-year period when medical-school graduates train in hospitals and clinics.

There are about 110,000 resident positions in the U.S., according to the AAMC. Teaching hospitals rely heavily on Medicare funding to pay for these slots. In 1997, Congress imposed a cap on funding for medical residencies, which hospitals say has increasingly hurt their ability to expand the number of positions.

Medicare pays $9.1 billion a year to teaching hospitals, which goes toward resident salaries and direct teaching costs, as well as the higher operating costs associated with teaching hospitals, which tend to see the sickest and most costly patients.

Doctors’ groups and medical schools had hoped that the new health-care law, passed in March, would increase the number of funded residency slots, but such a provision didn’t make it into the final bill.

 

[Question: Should have the House and Senate included funds for additional residents?  With the proposed expansion of health-care, how can the government also encourage an increase in Doctors?]

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Reformed

For a nearly exhaustive site for resources on Reformed Theology, check-out what resources Monergism has put together here.

Reforming

(Free) The Necessity of Reforming the Church by John Calvin

If you’re involved in any facet of ministry, have you been more concerned with building your own empire or the Kingdom of God?  Either way you should read Glenn Lucke’s Empire vs. Kingdom at Resurgence.

Is Christian Democracy an oxymoron?  Have you ever struggled with the concept of Christians involved within the Political Process here in the United States?  If so, you may find Dr. James Skillen work on “Christian Democracy” – An Oxymoron helpful in Reforming the Christian mentality in the Public Square (Also see my work on Christianity and Democracy)

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Greetings all!  I wanted to let you know that on Tuesday, August the 4th, we will be celebrating the “Official Blog Launch.”

At the moment I’m planning, preparing, experiencing trial-and-error, and having some friends of mine do some graphics work behind the scenes (Many kudos).  So, for the month of August, here is what to tentatively expect:

A series on Christ Centered Citizenship that will begin on the Official Blog Launch day.  This series will run until the month of January, 2010 and individual posts will be made every Tuesday.  The series in-and-of-itself will address the tension that exists in the relationship of Christians with government, particularly in the United States of America.

On Wednesday, the 5th of August, I will pick-up from my first post on John Calvin and continue until the end of September.  During this time we’ll look into the life of John Calvin and consider his historic influence and continuing legacy.

Beginning that Thursday, the 6th of August, I’ll begin another series entitled, “The Gift of Prophecy Today.”  My hope is to relate a Biblical understanding of the gift of prophecy, particularly through the lens of a Reformed perspective, which of course is hotly debated today.  This series will tentatively run until the 5th of November.

On Friday, the 7th of August, I’ll begin an ongoing series either titled Nominal or Cultural Christianity.  Beginning in the month of August until the end of September we’ll look into the pre-em-i-nence of Jesus Christ over all of life and how we should live our lives in light of His authority.

Finally, throughout each week it is my desire to highlight community comments and provide links to helpful resources and interesting topics.

I’ve been eagerly looking forward to beginning this blog, Pre-em-i-nence, for quite some time.  The idea behind this has been a desire of mine for nearly a year now.

For those of you who plan on becoming a part of this community, I thank you in advance and look forward to dialoguing with you soon.

While the plans become further fine-tuned, what are some things that you’ll would like to see?

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