Disqus - Latest Comments for wpaulfranks

Re: Charity and Confession: The case of Bruxy Cavey and Tyndale Seminary

W Paul — Sun, 30 Apr 2017 16:12:22 -0000

Hi Randall,

Thanks for your thoughtful response to my question. Sorry I couldn’t respond sooner, grades are due tomorrow and I had a stack of essays to finish. You understand that I’m sure!

I did want to follow up on one thing though. You said that Cavey is “contrasting two views of scriptural authority. The conservative evangelical roots that authority in the status of the Bible as an inerrant word from God. In the second, scriptural authority is sourced in God and his Word, Jesus Christ.”

I’m not sure you provide sufficient evidence to show that the second view is what Cavey really has in mind. If anything, the second view he describes seems to go something like this, “The Bible is not authoritative because if it were, that would mean it’s not the case that ‘*all* authority has been given to Jesus.’” Your remaining comments to my question seem to be supporting his reasons for rejecting the first view.

I’m all for being charitable (and teach the principle to my critical reasoning students), but I’m just honestly not sure he says anything in that video above that suggests the second view you describe. If that *is* what he believes then this is all just a case of him not being very clear in what he wants to communicate. (Given that he’s made the same kind of statements elsewhere I’m not sure that’s very plausible.)

One final possibility. Maybe we're working with two different conceptions of the principal of charity. I'm mostly focusing on what he actually says in the video and trying to figure out, given those statements, the most reasonable way one should understand them. Maybe you're thinking we should keep in mind the fact that he has signed TSB and so should interpret his claims in light of that. (Here, though, are we *sure* he has signed it? He's not listed as a faculty member at tyndale.ca/faculty so maybe there's different provisions for occasional teachers.) If that's right, then it would cause me to re-think what he says the video. But even then (and here I'm just reiterating my point above) I'm truly not sure how to get the view you attribute to him from the claims made in the video.

Re: Charity and Confession: The case of Bruxy Cavey and Tyndale Seminary

W Paul — Fri, 28 Apr 2017 16:16:16 -0000

Great post Randall, I agree with you in particular about the Statement not demanding adherence to PSA. What do you make of the TSB stating that the Bible is authoritative, but Cavey stating that the idea of the Bible being authoritative is itself unbiblical? Can you think of similar way to reconcile the two?

Best,
Paul

Re: Do You Believe in Original Sin?

W Paul — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 19:21:51 -0000

Sorry to have been absent from the discussion, I was away on conference/vacation travels. I think taking into consideration the Jewish perspective is really important, and interesting. Still, it also seems we miss some important questions if we only focus on that. I liked Jonalyn's follow up question, is the child born guilty or not; or is the child born with the consequences of sin (or both, or neither). Even if Jewish ears would've found the question misguided, it's still a question that is worth consideration (unless, of course, one thinks the child is neither guilty nor not guilty; neither innocent nor not innocoent; etc.—but since that amounts to denying the non-contradiction I don't think that's a fruitful route to take :-)).

I've been thinking about the "age of consent" part of this and wonder if it really makes things easier. It seems that whatever we say about the child at birth we'd also be able to say about the child at the age of consent. That is, it seems to just take the problem from birth and push it to some unspecified moment later in life. When that age is reached, is that child automatically deemed guilty? If not, then does original sin still gaurantee that at some point or another there will be a sin? I've not worked through what this might entail (and once I do maybe it will help solve some problems) and so at this point I just don't see how it helps. Maybe Daniel, or some other readers, can help with that.

Re: Do You Believe in Original Sin?

W Paul — Wed, 22 May 2013 16:10:18 -0000

Hi Tim, thanks for the feedback on the post. Two things come to mind concerning your first comment. First, in the journal article Jonalyn references I note that I'm concerned with the logical possibility of one not sinning and so can fully embrace the idea that all who are capable of sinning have in fact sinned (thus, all are in fact in need of the atonement). In some respects, this makes our culpability for sin all the greater because even though we were genuinely able to not sin, we did so anyways.

Secondly, I would say that even those who are unable to sin (or, in the logically possible scenario I consider in which someone is able to sin but never does) are still in need of the atonement. To stick with the story in Jonalyn's original post, Mr. Smith may always feel disgusted by the child's association with his father even though the child is not guilty for the father's actions. If, however, there were some act of reconciliation made by (or for) the child toward Mr. Smith, then Mr. Smith would likely no longer feel that disgust. I take it that those unable to sin would still be unsightly in God's eyes had the atonement not taken place. So, they too fall under the "all" that the author of Hebrews uses.

I hope that clarifies my view a bit, and I think it would also fit with Jonalyn's but I'll let her chime in on that part.

Best,

Paul

Re: If I Was Going to ETS…

W Paul — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 18:48:28 -0000

Hi there! My name is Paul Franks, the author of the paper on Original Sin you mentioned above. I thought you might like to know that a (revised) version of that paper was just published in the most recent issue of Philosophia Christi—Winter 2012 (I did a search with Google looking for the PDF of that table of contents and found this blog post). If you don't subscribe to the journal, let me know and I'd be happy to send you a copy of the paper. (And I'd *love* to hear your thoughts on it.)

You've got an interesting blog, kudos!

Re: What EXACTLY is "Church"? (part 3) ...A Way Forward

W Paul — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 22:04:47 -0000

I guess my concern is really a prudential one. Is one required to attend church regularly to be a "good" Christian? No. But I'm not convinced there's a whole lot of alternatives out there. I'm guessing one "home church" out of 1000 will have someone in it that is actually sufficiently trained to deal with complex theological (or even just hermeneutical) issues. My own experience (and this where anecdotal evidences becomes quite tricky) has demonstrated that the large majority of people that stop attending church regularly either don't replace church attendance with some other gathering or if they do, it's not for very long. But here we might have the similar question. Why think any regular gathering at all is required? Well, my experiences (here we go again!) show that those that "go it alone" almost never continue to grow as Christians.

I'm also not convinced that what you previously (Post 2) deemed as systemic issues are actually inherent to the system. They may be widespread problems, but at this point I'm not convinced they are essentially tied to the way we go about church itself.

Three final, and only somewhat related, thoughts. First, I think Willard is only half right. If we see the church as being for the individuals themselves, then as one grows in Christ he should no longer 'need' the church. But, if the church is about the community of believers, then even if you or I get to the point that we don't need the church, there will be others around that need us. Instead of leaving the church because we no longer need it, we ought to stick around because other people need us. We can play this role outside the local church walls, but here again I'm not convinced there is a better way of doing it.

Second, I sometimes wonder if our beginning assumption is really just a false dichotomy. It's easy for me to act as if someone has the choice to only go to church or only participate in something like a house church, when in fact there is nothing preventing people from doing both. Perhaps we need these types of discussions to drive home that the church is not The Church and we should consider the ways in which the latter can operate outside the former. But that doesn't automatically mean we don't need the former (recall my 'prudential point' above).

Finally, are you familiar with 'Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion' by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck? I've not read it yet, but it seems relevant to this discussion.

Cheers,

Re: What EXACTLY is "Church"? (part 3) ...A Way Forward

W Paul — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 23:50:41 -0000

Dale,

I think you're on to something in general regarding the obsession we tend to have about churches and church attendance, but there are two things that make me wonder a bit. First, I get the feeling that the large percentage of people that 'give up on church' don't replace it with anything like what you would probably consider a good replacement. Instead they just sit around their house Sunday mornings (or whichever day a replacement might come) and become more and more isolated from the Church. I know things like the home church movement is growing, but I wonder if there are any numbers regarding how many people actually move from a traditional church setting to a replacement that actually encourages and helps them grow as Christians.

The second thing I wonder about is that one might easily suggest that whatever we replace the "community center" with is just that, a replacement. So instead of having a formal Sunday service we get something else that, sooner or later, will end up with the same (or very similar) types of problems at the current "community centers." Perhaps the problem just isn't with the concept behind "community centers" at all but instead with the fact that they are made up of people that don't regularly participate in them in the way that God desires. And of course, that wouldn't change just because the group got smaller and met more informally.

Re: Government Soul: Taxing Generosity

W Paul — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 22:48:48 -0000

I too am a bit concerned, but in a different way.

What bothers me is that the result is likely to be a greater dependence on the government for social assistance programs and less dependence on actual charitable organizations. There seems to be a fundamental misconception that the government helping the poor is an act of charity, when instead it is an act of coercion. As a Christian, I believe part of the Christian life is to help the needy. But I am to do it as an act of worship. As soon as it becomes a law that I give to the poor it is not longer charity. Instead, it is coercive because if I don't give I am punished. How can I be coerced into doing something and it still be considered an act of worship?

I guess this gets to the heart of Fiona's response. Let's imagine I'm well off financially (& not losing 25% of my paycheck every time I convert $CAD to $US to pay off school loans). And let's also imagine the family down the road has worked just as hard as me but didn't have nearly the amount of success I did. As a Christian I might very well recognize my duty to help such a family but once the government makes me help that family it can no longer be, in principle, a Christian act. I am robbed of the ability to help of my own accord.

On the other hand, if I were to freely give my money to a private charity (without penalty for withholding) I am able to engage in charity. In addition, smaller organizations (like most private charities) are more adept at figuring out who is in actual need of the money and who isn't. There's a higher level of accountability for the help received and, in return, those receiving the assistance are afforded a greater degree of human dignity.

There you go, my point of view as an unapologetic capitalist from the U.S. trying to get used to living in Toronto! (Sorry Fiona, couldn't resist the parallel. Cheers!)

Re: Wisdom from “Joe”–Sex, Money, Good Grades, Good Job–The False Masculinity of an Emasculated America (what’s the church’s response?)

W Paul — Tue, 30 May 2006 13:10:52 -0000

This may be crass, but I'm still convinced that Eldredge had an overbearing mother that didn't let him play outside as a kid and probably got beat up at school. He was forced to act differently than he wanted to and that became ingrained until much later in life. It's good he's discovering who he really is, but it's a mistake to assume everyone else has the same story. Most of the men (not all, just most) I know that love the book are men that got beat up or were made fun of in high school. They have (what I think is) a similar story as Eldredge and so relate most to his book.
There's a lot of conjecture in this post I know, but I think I might be on to something.