Category Archives: Uncategorized

A reminder to remember our brothers in the persecuted church

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Howard Friedman at the Religion Clause blog points us to the 2008 Annual Report of the U. S. Commission on International Religious Freedom:

Today the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom announced release of its 2008 Annual Report (full text) recommending eleven countries be designated as “countries of particular concern”– those that are are most restrictive of religious freedom. The countries on the list are: Burma, North Korea, Eritrea, Iran, Pakistan, China, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. The Report also includes a Watch List of countries that require close monitoring, though which are less oppressive that the CPCs. Those on the Watch List are Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Cuba, Egypt, Indonesia, and Nigeria. The Commission is postponing its recommendations as to Iraq pending a Commission visit to the country later this month. This compromise was approved after a sharp party-line split among Commissioners over the draft chapter in the report on Iraq. (New York Sun). USCIRF’s recommendations are made pursuant to provisions of the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act. This year’s recommendations largely mirror those in last year’s report. USCIRF’s recommendations go to the State Department for its use in preparing its annual report on international religious freedom. [Thanks to Blog from the Capital for the lead.]

Visit www.persecution.org for daily updates on the persecuted church around the world; then thank God for your freedom of worship.

The 9 Marks e-Journal

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Every pastor and church leader should subscribe to the FREE 9 Marks e-Journal, an email publication from Mark Dever’s 9 Marks Ministries.

Each issue covers important theological and cultural topics relevant to the church. The current issue is focused on what it means for us to live together as God’s church. It also contains several excellent book reviews as well as an audio interview with Kent Hughes on pastoral leadership.

Click here to download the May/June 08 issue in PDF format

Click Here to Subscribe for FREE

Monergism v. Synergism

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Steve Camp points us to an excellent essay by John Hendryx on the critical distinctions between Monergism and Synergism. Hendryx writes:

Monergism: The doctrine that the Holy Spirit is the only efficient agent in regeneration – that the human will possesses no inclination to holiness until regenerated, and therefore cannot cooperate in regeneration. Monergism is when God conveys that power into the fallen soul whereby the person who is to be saved is enabled to receive the offer of redemption. It refers to the first step (regeneration) which has causal priority over, and gives rise to, the spiritual ability to comply with all the other aspects of the process of being united to Christ, (i.e., the ability to apprehend the Redeemer by a living faith, to repent of sin and to love God and the Mediator supremely) It does not refer to the whole process that it gives rise to (justification, sanctification), but only the granting of the spiritual capacity to comply with the terms of the covenant of grace.

Synergism: “…the doctrine that there are two efficient agents in regeneration, namely the human will and the divine Spirit, which, in the strict sense of the term, cooperate. This theory accordingly holds that the soul has not lost in the fall all inclination toward holiness, nor all power to seek for it under the influence of ordinary motives.” This unscriptural view is the greatest threat to a true understanding of salvation in the Church today.

The essay goes on to point out how these differences affect our view of regeneration, humanity, and the gospel. I commend it to you and thank Steve Camp for pointing us to it.

Emergent Meets Reformed

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Tony Jones is the National Director of Emergent Village and author of the book, The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier. Collin Hansen is editor-at-large for Christianity Today and the author of the new book, Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist’s Journey with the New Calvinists.

Tony and Collin recently began an email exchange which Christianity Today is letting us peak in on here.

A debate worth your attention

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Phil Johnson works for John MacArthur and blogs at Pyromaniacs. His recent post on How Evangelicals Traded Their Spiritual Authority for a Mess of Political Pottage concludes…

…it is my conviction that because they have invested so much in the political process, evangelicals have weakened their own movement with a tendency to compromise; they have sacrificed evangelical distinctives, and they have gone far off message from the central truths of the gospel. Political activism has been a disaster for the American evangelical movement on every front. Not only have we completely failed at the political process; we have failed even more egregiously to remain distinct from the world.

and has generated a response from my friend Joe Carter over at the Evangelical Outpost titled, A Herd of Unicorns: The Myth of Evangelical Political Engagement in which he responds in part…

Contrary to what many secularists claim–and many Christians believe–we evangelicals are not all that politically involved. Sure, like most Americans we talk a lot about politics, especially in an election season. But the claim that we are involved in actual political activities–lobbying, organizing, campaigning, etc.–would be difficult to support with actual evidence.

. . . . . .

Rather than assuming that evangelicals are a large, powerful, committed political bloc that, for some inexplicable reason, is completely ineffective, the more realistic conclusion is that politically engaged evangelicals are like a herd of unicorns: powerful and abundant in the imagination while not actually existing in the real world.

Read Phil then Joe and then hope that both honor my request to join me on a future edition of The Paul Edwards Program to bring the debate into the real world of talk radio.

UPDATE: Joe Carter and Frank Turk (from Pyromaniacs Blog) will join Paul this afternoon at 4:30 pm.