Blog Archives
The Total Inability of Calvin To Explain Man’s Ability to Respond to God?
Total: Completely, Absolutely
Inability: lack of sufficient power, resources, or capacity
It’s true that humanity can’ come to Christ unaided. The Scriptures and the early church agree on this. Both sides of the Monergism vs Synergism civil war agree on it. Without God’s grace, no one is able to come to Christ. Period!
But how does it work? Nobody knows and those who say they do don’t understand what they’re saying. How God works this out in humanity lies within the mystery of God himself.
Calvin, and the the followers he inspired, believe this means humanity can not even respond to God unaided. People must first be born again and then after that, exercise faith in Christ. One can’t say “yes” to God until after the new birth takes place. Which leads them to teach things like this:
“This doctrine of total inability which declares that men are dead in sin does not mean that all men are equally bad, nor that any man is as bad as he could be, nor that anyone is entirely destitute of virtue, nor that human nature is equal in itself, nor that man’s spirit in inactive, and much less does it mean that the body is dead… The inability under which he labors is not an inability to exercise volition, but an inability to be willing to exercise holy volitions.” (The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination)
“The inability under which he labors is not an inability to exercise volition, but an inability to be willing to exercise holy volitions.”
Essentially, reformed theology teaches that human beings do not have the capacity to desire God, to obey Him or answer when He calls. I have wrestled with this pretty much all of my Christian life for several reasons. Three of which I now share here.
Read the rest of this entryContending for THE Faith?
Things are slow around here so when I saw this and I just couldn’t resist.
That sound you are hearing? That is me stirring the pot!
Calvin’s faith is certainly different from the faith of the early church, but is it going to far to say he reinvented or re–delivered a new faith?
You decide.
Play nice, please.
A Very Old Prayer for Your New Year!
The following New Years prayer was first offered back in the 1700’s. It is from the largely forgotten deposit of the Puritan Movement of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These people knew God and they certainly knew how to pray. We can learn a lot from them. They are written in old english. I have updated a few outdated words and changed the Thee’s and Thou’s to make it more 2015. However, they still have the feel of that era. This prayer, along with many others, can be found in a book titled “The Valley of Vision”, by Arthur Bennet… Read the rest of this entry
Great Resource Alert: The Writings of the Early Church All In One Place and FREE!
Introducing a GREAT resource: Early Christian Writings
Early Christian Writings is the most complete collection of Christian texts before the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. The site provides translations and commentary for these sources, including the New Testament, Apocrypha, Gnostics, Church Fathers, and some non-Christian references.
If you want to read ANY work from the first 325 years of church history, you will find it at this site. Free.
Blogging Tips 101: Becoming A Better Blogger
You will love it and hate it.
It is both rewarding and frustrating.
You will see it as a good investment of your time and a gigantic waste of your time all in the same week.
You may want to give it up and you will think you can’t live without it.
Welcome to the world of blogging. Can we sign you up?
I started this blog back in 2010 with my very first post, Whatever Happened to the Message of The Cross? Since then, we have posted hundreds of articles and had thousands of comments and conversations. I have experienced every single one of the things mentioned in the first paragraph of this post! Yet I am still here, typing out my thoughts. Even after all this time, I still love blogging!
If you are reading this, you are either new to blogging or you have been doing it a for a while. Either way, I want to help you become a better blogger. I am not talking about writing better blog posts. Rather, I want to share my thoughts on how YOU can become a better blogging person! I am going to assume you already know what your topics are, and where to go to get help to become a better writer. I want to help you become a better blogger so that your experience blogging is as enriching and rewarding as it can be. So here is my advice: Read the rest of this entry
The Top 10 Posts of 2014
That’s right, my friends. The following post contains our own version of the Top 10 list: The top 10 posts written at Not For Itching Ears this year. We want to thank all of you for taking time to visit our site, read the articles, like them and comment on them. It means a lot to us and it makes blogging fun!
We work hard on all our posts and are glad when they get attention. Starting it off, we have Questioning Our Protestant Tradition of Sola Scriptura. We wrote it in December and it is this year’s winner in two categories. The most read and the most commented on. In fact, it received more comments than any post ever. All time! Surprisingly, the debate was friendly.
We didn’t expect the About Jim page to get a lot of activity and boy were we wrong! Who knew? It is the 10th entry this year. There are some thought provoking articles in between those two. You may or may not agree with our conclusions, and that is perfectly fine. We want Not For Itching Ears to be a place to discuss the issues without the name calling that is sadly typical in the blogosphere. We might not agree on anything, but it is enriching to discuss the issues, get clarity on other peoples positions and agree to disagree if need be.
So without further commentary, here are our Top 10 Posts of 2014!
Our Top 10 Post of 2014
Questioning Our Protestant Tradition of Sola Scriptura
Worship: Why Your Church Is Failing And What You Can Do About It
Is the Casual Approach to Church Producing Casual Christians?
Why God Might Not Be Concerned About Our Doctrinal Differences
Idol Worship: How Your Church May Be Doing It and How To Fix It
It’s Official: People Don’t Want to Sing So Much on Sundays
God Doesn’t Need Our Worship….We Need It!
How To Get More Men into Your Church Service…the Easy Way
An Open Letter to the Worship Leaders in the Evangelical Church
The Early Church Teaches Us…How To Pray! Instructions on the Lord’s Prayer from the 300’s
It’s old….But it is still GOOD!
Quite good as a matter of fact.
Recently I read through perhaps the earliest Catechism of the church, St Cyril of Jerusalem’s Catechism c. 350ad. The only possible earlier one still in existence today is the Didache, though some people dispute that being a Catechism.
Reading through that was simply amazing. I will be sharing a lot on this in upcoming posts. Today, I wanted to give you a taste. Enjoy Cyril’s instruction on what the Lord’s Prayer means. You might be a little surprised! Read the rest of this entry
Are the Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Views on How One is Saved Actually That Different?
Not Really!
I am beginning to think that there is less disagreement between the Protestant view and the Catholic / Orthodox view on salvation than we realize.
The misunderstanding is a result of how each part of the church defines “salvation.”
When a Protestant talks about “being saved”, “getting saved”, “accepting Christ” or any other number of terms we use for this, we are primarily referring to the idea of forgiveness of sins. Our sins are forgiven when we “come to Christ”. We have been ‘saved” from sins eternal penalty. We can not earn this forgiveness of sins, it is a merciful free gift from God and we resist anything that makes it look like it must be earned.
In this sense Salvation IS an event, we have been forgiven of our sins! However, Read the rest of this entry
Inspiring Lives From Church History: Perpetua, Felicitas and Their Companions a MUST Read account!
People have been living and dying for Christ for over 2000 years and history is full of wonderful examples of men and women who followed Christ faithfully. We can learn a lot from studying their lives. Yet, there is something truly compelling about those who suffer for Him and pay the ultimate price for their faith.
When I read the historical record of what some of these ancient brothers and sisters went through, it challenges me deeply. I often wonder how I would respond in such situations. I guess we won’t ever know unless and until we find ourselves in the same place. The one thing I can say with certainty is Read the rest of this entry
Worship Leaders: It IS all about YOU!
Like it or not, if you are the worship leader at your church, it IS all..about…you! Just not in the way you would expect.
You are in charge of planning, preparing and executing one third to one half of the entire service. How well you do that is essential to the people you are charged with leading week after week.
I know there is a lot more to being a good song leader than what the congregations hears on Sunday morning. It takes a lot of work away from the stage to create a service that effectively inspires God’s people to worship rather than being entertained. The responsibility for that lies squarely on your shoulders. In that sense, it IS all about you. It is about how you view the gathering and how you prepare for it.
Choosing Better Songs
If you want the majority of the men and women in the congregation to sing with the team, you Read the rest of this entry
The Whole World Stops For 4 Weeks Tomorrow. So Must We
Every four years, the world effectively shuts down for the greatest sports event on the planet.
What is that event? Most Americans can’t answer that question so we share the answer here:
The World Cup!
That time is upon us, it starts on Thursday.
Not many people know this, but over here at Not For Itching Ears, we are hard core futbol, or soccer fans. We watch every single game. No matter what time the game is on, we watch it. What’s not to like about it? 204 teams compete over a three year period to win an invitation to the World Cup, which happens every 4 years. The host country team gets in free. So there is some great competition.
To make room in our schedule, Not For Itching Ears will be on vacation until the World Cup ends. We have priorities, so we will also be foregoing all yard work. All items on the “Honey Do” List have been temporarily removed. We were supposed to be in Brasil for the games, but alas, we are not!
Soccer is God’s greatest gift for world evangelism. It is an instant conversation starter. Just ask ANY non-American, male or female, who they are rooting for or what they think or their countries chances and you’ll have a 5 – 10 minute conversation about soccer. After that, the rest is up to you.
Our staff is rooting for in this order:
1. The USA and Ecuador (it’s a tie actually) Neither will win, but Ecuador has the best chance of advancing out of their group. Sadly, the USA is in the “Group of Death”
2. Any South American Country
The teams we most want to lose: Ghana, (sorry friends, you have beaten us one to many times) and Mexico. You can’t throw beer bottles at the USA team on their home field in the USA and expect us NOT to despise your team (we love you though!)
Take my advice: Stop blogging for a month and enjoy the World Cup. See you Mid-July! If you don’t know much about it check out this article on the Ten things Non-Soccer Fans Need To Know About the World Cup.
What a Prayer! Not Bad for Being 1600 Years old!
I often find nourishment for my faith when I read and pray through old prayers. Sure, the church has changed over the years. What it means to follow Christ in a fallen world hasn’t. Those who have faithfully walked the walk before us down through the ages, though gone, can still minister to us. One of the ways this can happen is when we read and prayer the prayers they left behind.
Today, I share with you a 1600 year old prayer from Basil The Great. I have updated it for the modern reader. The Thee’s and Thou’s have been changed.
O God and Lord of the Powers, and Maker of all creation,
Who, because of Your clemency and incomparable mercy,
did send Your Only-Begotten Son and our Lord Jesus Christ for the salvation of mankind,
and with His venerable Cross did tear asunder the record of our sins,
and thereby did conquer the rulers and powers of darkness;receive from us sinful people, O merciful Master, these prayers of gratitude and supplication,
and deliver us from every destructive and gloomy transgression,
and from all visible and invisible enemies who seek to injure us.Nail down our flesh with fear of You,
and let not our hearts be inclined to words or thoughts of evil,
but pierce our souls with Your love, that ever contemplating You, being enlightened by You, and discerning You, the unapproachable and everlasting Light,
we may unceasingly render confession and gratitude to You:The eternal Father,
with Your Only-Begotten Son,
and with Your All-Holy, Gracious, and Life-Giving Spirit,now and ever, and unto ages of ages.
Amen
Is Worship A Life Well Lived or A Song Well Sung?
We love to discuss those things we are passionate about, don’t we? Be it our favorite football team (THE Washington Redskins), politics, sports, movies, cultural issues. Heck we even argue about beer! Remember the Miller Lite commercials? For years, Miller Lite drinkers, including the likes of Rodney Dangerfield and John Madden, bickered back and forth on our TV sets. The argument? What made Miller Lite such a great beer. Some said the drink tasted great. Others said it was less filling. Though they were very entertaining commercials, it makes one wonder: Don’t we have anything better to discuss than beer?
Of course we do! Over here at Not For Itching Ears, we’ve been spending a lot of time talking about a topic that is higher up the food chain: Worshipping God. If you read these posts (millions of people do each hour) Read the rest of this entry
God Doesn’t Need Our Worship….We Need It!
Nothing
Zip
Nada
Zero
Zilch
Nil
That’s how much our worship of God adds to God. Our “worship” doesn’t enhance Him and our lack of worship doesn’t take anything away from Him. Put another way, God doesn’t need our worship. In fact God doesn’t need anything from us: our money, our time, our dedication, our service.
Theologians refer to this as God’s Independence:
“God does not need us or the rest of creation for anything, yet we and the rest of creation can glorify him and bring him joy.” Grudem, Systematic Theology.
The New Testament states it this way:
24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. Acts 17:24-25
Is God An Egomaniac?
Think about this: If God doesn’t need our worship, why does he require it?
Is it because he’s the ultimate egomaniac?
Because he loves to hear the sound of his own name on the lips of his adoring fans?
No. When we look at God’s acts in history that’s NOT the picture we see. It must be something else.
We All Worship Something
Humans are pretty predictable. We are the ultimate evaluators. We evaluate everything in life and prioritize them according to what we think is best. For example, I highly value guitars. But I value my wife and children more. There is really no comparison; I rank family higher in importance. What do I value more than family? Whatever the answer to that questions is, I may value something even more than that. I can keep going up the ladder of importance until I finally reach that one thing I esteem more than anything or anyone else.
Whatever that thing or person is, that is what we worship. We all worship someone or something, even if it is ourselves!
God Doesn’t Need Our Worship…We Need It!
God doesn’t need our worship; we need the worship we offer him. That’s why God demands our devotion. There’s no other thing or being more worthy of our ultimate devotion than Him. We become like the one we worship. God, in his mercy, created us to become like him. If that’s going to happen, then we must actively place him at the top of our “Top Ten List of Things I Value The Most” list.
Looking at worship this way means leads to the understanding that worship, though directed at God, is truly meant to serve humanity.
We are to worship God, not ourselves.
But God demands our worship, NOT for himself but for the good of his people.
At least, that’s the way I see it.
On a side note, that’s one of the reasons I am so passionate and often critical about corporate worship. It has the potential to profoundly shape us. Yet, we squander those opportunities because we don’t understand what worship is and why God demands it of us.
Everything I Know About The Lord I Learned In Church?
“Your challenge is NOT that people won’t believe what you teach.
Your challenge is that most people are going to believe EVERYTHING you teach. When you stand in the pulpit and teach God’s word, you better make sure you know what you are talking about!”
I have never forgotten how my Greek professor started that Intro to Greek class. He laid out a challenge to the entire class that has shaped me all these years. When I was preaching every week, it guided my preparation time. It is why I spent 30-40 hours every week as a pastor studying the texts I was teaching on. I took it THAT seriously.
A lot of us out here in the blogosphere know how to study the scriptures for ourselves. We read books and articles all the time that help shape our faith and practice. Still, vast majorities of people rely on the church corporately and pastors specifically to teach them the faith. How are we doing?
According to a report by George Barna, the church is failing miserably in this area. “Believers” know less and less about God and understand the Bible less and less. Yet it is the Church’s job to make disciples and to “Teach them to Obey everything I (Jesus) commanded you.”
Why is this happening? If you read this blog, you know that I don’t lack an opinion on this!
Could one of those reasons be the failure of our younger pastors to grasp the significance of their preaching task? I have been to over 30 40 different churches in the last 8 years. One of the things I have noticed is the casual manner that a majority of pastors have towards their preaching. I can tell when someone has prepared. It is obvious to a wordsmith when a fellow wordsmith has put in the study and preparation time. It is just as obvious when they are winging it.
From what I have seen, many pastors are winging it!
The reasons for this can be summed up into to broad categories: Time Management and Skill/training
Pastoring has never been an easy job. Preaching week after week is not for the faint of heart. The demands of today’s ministry on a pastor’s time only make it harder to be faithful in your study. I am no longer pastoring, and I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to get quiet alone time to study in today’s world.
For many pastors, there just isn’t enough time to adequately study AND keep up with the ever increasing demands of today’s ministry. The only solution I know for this is to let other things go. Pastor, if you find that you don’t have time week after week to study the word and show yourself approved, you need cut other less valuable things out of your schedule. You know what those things are.
The other issue that may be causing this “Wing It!” mentality is a lack of skill in studying the Bible. Judging by what I’ve seen, our seminaries may no longer teach Hermeneutics. I doubt they are teaching Homiletics. If you don’t know how to study a text or passage, and you are a preacher, you need to stop reading this and go learn how to do it!
When you stand in that pulpit to teach God’s word, we are listening! We are ready to believe what you teach. Many of us will believe what you teach even when you are off base and wrong, due to a lack of serious thought on the text. For our sake, and for His sake, take some extra time and prepare the way you should.
If your pastor is already doing this, rejoice! Send him a note and thank him! Encourage him to keep doing it! Find out when he studies and never call or email or text him during those times, unless it is a real emergency. Teach others in the congregation to do the same. Help guard your pastors study time, and you, he and the entire congregation will be the better for it!
Can You Write a Better Worship Song Than These Song Writers? We Don’t Think So
Enjoy this satirical look at modern worship lyrics. Song writers were challenged to write a worship song using the name of Soap Opera’s as their dominant lyrics. Hilarious, and surprisingly similar to the typical worship song being written and sung in churches across the USA.
Two Different Views of Salvation: Protestant vs Orthodox – Which Makes More Sense to You?
If you are like me, you might not even know what the Orthodox Church is!
The Orthodox view salvation and the purpose of mankind through a different lens than most Protestants do. In this short video, you will see a very accurate portrayal of mainstream protestant soteriology which you will recognize immediately. You will also be introduced to the Orthodox view.
After you watch it, come back and share your thoughts about the video. Which view best represents the Gospel in your opinion?
Not For Itching Ears 
Bible Study Resource Alert: Verse by Verse Commentary on the Gospels by The Early Church!
Jan 3
Posted by Jim
For each of the four Gospel writers, the Catena Aurea starts by indicating the verses to be analyzed, then phrase-by-phrase, provides the early Fathers’ insights into the passage. It includes the work of over eighty Church Fathers.
The four volume set will cost you about $150, but thanks to Catechetics online, you can read these works for FREE!
Here is a sample of their commentary on John 3:16-19
Posted in Christianity, Early Church History
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Tags: Bible Commentary, Bible study resources, catena aurea, early church fathers, early church history, Eastern Orthodox, El cristianismo, faith, God, Gospel of John, Gospel of Luke, Gospel of Mark, Gospel of Matthew, inspiration, John 3:16, John 3:16-19, Not For itching Ears, Passion of the Christ, spirituality