Ronnie W. Rogers, “Taking every thought captive…”

Those of you who know me know that I am deeply concerned about not only false teaching, but particularly the shallow insubstantial teaching of the Scripture in a growing number of our evangelical churches.  This leaves this generation of Christians un-equipped and the next generation with very little knowledge of the Christian faith to not only follow but to pass down to the next generation. 

The dumbing down of the church is dishonoring to God, harmful to Christians, and consigns future generations to either perish without the truth or to live only principles of Scripture without knowing God in a way that allows them to teach the generation that succeeds them—if there is such a generation.

Simply put, one cannot teach what one does not know, and if the church abrogates her teaching responsibility, those who should be learning the faith to pass it on will be no more than emotional Christians.

C. S. Lewis (1898 – 1963) taught at Oxford for 29 years and later held the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge until his death.  He saw the necessity and importance of correct teaching and spoke pointedly about it in one of his God in the Dock Essays.

He said, “This very obvious fact—that each generation is taught by an earlier generation—must be kept very firmly in mind . . . None can give to another what he does not possess himself. No generation can bequeath to its successor what it has not got. You may frame the syllabus as you please. But when you have planned and reported ad nauseam, if we are skeptical we shall teach only skepticism to our pupils, if fools only folly, if vulgar only vulgarity, if saints sanctity, if heroes heroism.

Education is only the most fully conscious of the channels whereby each generation influences the next. It is not a closed system. Nothing which was not in the teachers can flow from them into the pupils. We shall all admit that a man who knows no Greek himself cannot teach Greek to his form; but it is equally certain that a man whose mind was formed in a period of cynicism and disillusion, cannot teach hope or fortitude.  A society which is predominantly Christian will propagate Christianity through its schools: one which is not, will not. All the ministries of education in the world cannot alter this law . . . “¹

1. C. S. Lewis, “On the Transmission of Christianity,” God in the Dock: Essays on Theology & Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids; Eerdmans, 1972), 116-117. [↩]

This article includes an introduction to my views concerning the theological system of Calvinism, followed by a table of contents with links to articles on my thoughts regarding specific theological areas of concern or disagreement with Calvinism. 

My prayer is that this article will help all of you who have asked me questions or are presently confused regarding biblical issues like election, predestination, sovereignty of God, free choice, faith and works, God’s love, hell, etc.

I am forever grateful to God for the joy of shepherding the fellowship of Trinity Baptist Church. (more…)

Someone once wrote:
He knew the unknowable: the human heart and all things;
He loved the unlovable: the human sinner;
He did the impossible: He died and rose again;
He was the impossible: a sinless character.

“Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.””(John 20:28-29)

The emergent church proclaims that they are seeking to reach this generation of postmoderns.  While I applaud that goal, I am quite concerned with the message of most of the emergent church.  I mention four areas that I have noticed being promoted by emergent leaders. (more…)

Billy Wolf has provided me with a chart that succinctly summarizes some of the fundamental differences between a biblical view of scriptural doctrines and the teaching of the postmodern emergent church.  Although the emergent church leaders may be good writers, winsome, and quite capable of persuading young men and women who have little knowledge of the Scripture, they are actually communicating some of the same distortions that have been taught by liberalism or neo-orthodoxy in the past, albeit with a little different twist. 

These are not stylistic differences or ancillary doctrines; they are distorting the essential truths of the Scripture.  They have in many cases become too much like the ones to whom they are seeking to be relevant.  Thus, if they reach these postmoderns, many remain lost because too much truth was sacrificed in the quest for relevance.

postmodern-and-orthodox-church-chart-3-09

Here is the summary of our study on what the Bible says concerning homosexuality.  If you have not been with us over the last eight weeks of examining every major passage on homosexuality in the Bible, then these conclusions may look overly ambitious.  If you have not been with us, I encourage you to download the entire series.  This summary is merely to serve as a reminder of the major conclusions that can be drawn from the Scripture concerning homosexuality.

If you have not been taught what the Scripture teaches concerning homosexuality, I want to encourage you to listen to this series entitled, “Loving the Homosexual to Healing with Truth.”  We still have several weeks to go in this study, but we have concluded the section which looks at each of the major passages in detail.

It is important that Christians speak the truth in love, which requires loving God, the people Christ died for, and the truth, and also knowing the truth. (more…)

Like many readers of this current best-selling novel, I was given a copy of The Shack by a colleague at work. She said her husband was teaching it in their Sunday School class. While I had not even heard of this book, I’ve since discovered that it is being given high profile displays in our local bookstores, both secular and Christian, and that it may be made into a feature film.

At first, I thought the author was just using literary license and creativity to help the story’s protagonist come to grips with the age-old question, Why does a loving God allow bad things to happen to good people? But the more I read, the more frequently I began to sense that the author was intentionally distorting scriptural truths. And when I did a Google search of “The Shack and Critics,” I discovered numerous online blogs, critiques and reports by people who had interviewed the author, who were confirming my suspicion that we might be dealing with a false teacher. (more…)

Genesis has been a battleground for some time, and today is no different.  This is particularly true of Genesis 1-3, which is the account of the creation and the fall.  When I first began studying the Scripture, I recognized the importance of the first eleven chapters of Genesis but in retrospect I did not fully appreciate the magnitude of their significance.  As I studied other areas of the Scripture and began learning the breadth and depth of God’s revelation, I saw that without the truthfulness and perspicuity of the first eleven chapters of Genesis, every major theme of Scripture lay in jeopardy.

Probably the most hotly debated issue, at least among those who would claim any God honoring respect for the Scripture, is whether or not the days of Genesis 1 are lunar days or indefinite periods of time.  In other words, did God create the world in 6 days or is the simple language of Genesis concealing a deeper esoteric meaning only fully revealed to scientists quite apart from the Scripture. Scientists like Hugh Ross accept the theory of evolution and seek to interpret Genesis through the prism of evolution.  In doing so, they seem to undermine what is otherwise the clear teaching of Scripture.

The place to start is always the Scripture rather than psychology, sociology, evolution, etc.  We should evaluate the teachings of man in light of the clear teachings of Scripture rather than seeking to harmonize the Scripture with modern theories about man, God and His world.  I am not at all against learning from science, and/or other disciplines, but to interpret Scripture in light of them rather than through consistent and sound hermeneutics is to subjugate the Scripture to the whims of man. 

Consequently, this article looks at the strengths of interpreting the word “day” in Genesis chapter 1 as a normal lunar day and answers objections to this normal reading of the text.

(more…)

Recently, I was asked what the Bible says about public nudity. As you well know, many believe that the taboo of public nudity is merely social, and that apart from societal mores, there is nothing immoral about public nudity. What does the Bible say?

First let me be clear. I draw a distinction between task nudity and social or sexual nudity. Task nudity refers to a person being nude for such things as taking a shower at the gym. Therefore, this article does not refer to task nudity but rather whether it is moral to be nude in public, in mixed company other than with one’s spouse, and/or for the purpose of being nude, disrobed etc., for either sexual or social nudity. (more…)

I affirm that God predetermined to seek and to save all, and desires every person to be saved.  This is demonstrated by His words, acts, and His provision for everything necessary for a genuine offer of salvation, which can be received or rejected, by enabling and allowing them a real choice as a free moral agent like Adam (Acts 17:30, 2 Peter 3:9, 1John 2:2; Ezekiel 18:21-23 & Ezekiel 18:32); further, that those who by faith accept grace and mercy to trust are saved, and those who spurn His grace go to hell, which is a place created not for men, but for Satan and demons (Matthew 25:41).

I disaffirm that God elected some to go to heaven by regenerating them prior to faith and some to hell without a chance to be regenerated in response to faith;¹ further that Romans 8:29-30, a reference to God’s foreknowing, is satisfactorily handled by making it merely love, and/or synonymous with “predestined.”

Next Topic: Where Did Sin Come From?

1. Calvinists are clear about their understanding of predestination, which either emphatically declares God determined to send some to hell or it happens as a consequence by His determining to only offer real salvation to some; for example, “By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man. All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestinated to life or to death.” John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, translated by Henry Beveridge, (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997 reprint), Volume 2, Book 3, Chapter 21, Section 5, page 206. “We say, then, that Scripture clearly proves this much, that God by his eternal and immutable counsel determined once for all those whom it was his pleasure one day to admit to salvation, and those whom, on the other hand, it was his pleasure to doom to destruction. We maintain that this counsel, as regards the elect, is founded on his free mercy, without any respect to human worth, while those whom he dooms to destruction are excluded from access to life by a just and blameless, but at the same time incomprehensible judgment.” Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, Volume 2, Book 3, Chapter 21, Section 7, pages 210-211. “We say, then, that the scripture clearly proves this much, that God by his eternal and immutable counsel determined once for all those whom it was his good pleasure one day to admit to salvation, and those whom, on the other hand, it was his good pleasure to doom to destruction.” (Canons of Dordt, First Head of Doctrine, 3:21:7) [↩]